Looking for user experiences with EastWest PLAY engine in Sonar

Forum search turned up no responses so I'm starting this thread.
 
I'm in need of a decent all-in-one orchestral library (I'm well aware no single library nails all the sections) and EastWest looks to be the best option for my needs and budget. The only possible drawback is their proprietary PLAY engine. I've been away for awhile, but I remember when it first came out there were many issues with it and Sonar. Have things improved? I'd love to hear from current PLAY users about your experiences with installations and day to day usage.
 
Thanks.

I've used Play and Sonar for years now without any problems.  Play has been really stable for me.  I also have it running along side Kontakt and VSL with no ploblems.

I use Play all the time...no issues...

Latest issue is with Platinum and the latest version of Kontakt...

The sound quality is crappy...everything else works fine...also had an
issue with Melodyne Editor, but an uninstall of ME, rescan, and reinstall, rescan
solved the problem.

As I have whined about many times before, I've had issues with it for years in Sonar. Basically I get pops and clicks when I bounce tracks. This is despite using it off a dedicated SSD, having 16GB of RAM and so on. I haven't tried it on my new system, but I got fed up with it.
 
You can hear some of the issues I had here and here. Eastwest never was willing to acknowledge it as a real issue. They'd blame it on my system not being powerful enough, say it must be something running in the background, and so on.
 
I finally had enough of it, you can find the post somewhere here on the forum, bought Komplete 9 on the advice of people here and got the Kirk Hunter libraries. I like EastWest's sounds, I still use Colossus (the Kontakt/Kompakt version of Goliath) but I'm done with Play. I'm disinterested in all the messing around.
 
So my recommendation would be to not get any of their stuff. I won't give them anymore money. However I'll state, as always, that my experience is not universal. Others have not seen the issues I have. So it can vary for sure. Just know that if you have issues, EastWest is likely to be supremely unhelpful. As far as they are concerned they have the very best software because they've hired the world's best programmers (Doug Rogers really said his programmers are the world's best) so the problem is yours.

I have EW Platinum Symphony with all the bells and wistles.  I bought it when the PLAY engine was still at version 3.  It did not work on my system.  V4 of the PLAY engine came out and it finally worked but I had issues with pops, drop outs, crashes etc.  PLAY v4.2.2 finally came out and NOW my EWSO library works as advertised.
 
it NOW works in Sonar X3 Pro with no noticeable issues.  I have 32gig ram and a quad 3.5 ghz machine with sdd hard drives.
 
Now that I have played with PLAY and EWSO all I have to say is if I had it to do over again I would NOT buy EW and I would NOT buy the EWSO library for orchestration.
 
Once you buy EW your stuck, there is no resale of license or transfer.  I don't buy software to resale it, but it's a huge investment and you should know your stuck with it once ya buy.
 
I am saving up money now for Vienna libraries.

TerraSin
I own most of the EW libraries. Play use to be pretty terrible. It's gotten much better over the years than it was. Hollywood is a BEAST of a plugin though so make sure your machine is fit to run it if you go that route. Play Pro has also been announced for later this year. I am not sure how I feel about that yet but we'll see what happens.

Just watch out with EW and announced. They suck at making deadlines. Play Pro was announced over 5 years ago. Initially called Play 2, they changed it on the suggestion of people since it was confusing in that it was an upgrade, not a replacement. They even put it on preorder sale. Then... nothing, for years and years nothing.
 
With EW, never believe a product until it is on the market. They are notorious for pushing their deadlines again and again.

I started small with Goliath and now have several of the Composer Collections. It works very well for me. In early version 3 I had some problems but that was then. Play 4.2.2 is trouble free.

I used to have problems in rendering the close microphone to audio, I'd get all sorts of noises that weren't in the original. One day I decided to experiment and opened the Play interface, opened the Mixer tab and muted the stage and surround mics, then went back to render out just the close mic but this time I did a realtime bounce. Perfect, no noises! Ever since I do a realtime bounce of the close mic and fast bounces of the stage and surround mics. If you're having problems still give it a try :)
 
Bill

Used Play with Sonar for around 5 years. I have never had a serious issue. I visit the EW website a couple of times a day and it seems that those that have problems these days are more often than not on Macs. Most people seem to have no issues but then there is the random individual who for whatever reason seems to have a nightmare. Not sure why but that is just the way it is.