Has anyone tried EastWest's new Solo Cello?

Solo Cello was offered as a gift to ComposerCloud subscribers, and I tried it out today. Sounds okay, although IMHO the legato patches aren't nearly as nice as the Tina Guo Acoutsic Cello legato patches from Cinesamples.
 
It's still very useable, though. I'd be curious to get others opinions on it...

I wish they would just put up MIDI files and patch names and let people see what they are complaining about.  I subscribed to CC for Xmas and have downloaded everything (took three days, not bad).  But I don't think I have the composer skills to tell there is something wrong with the Cello.  It sounds alright to me.

Wow, that VI-C thread was hard to read and really left a bad taste in my mouth from their reps responses.

MBGanttJust remember the rep is in a pretty bad spot a lot of the time. From what I have seen he is usually a decent guy who does often help people with issues but then often has to do what EW tells him. However East West is another story and has gone from my favorite sample developer to one of the least favorites over the past year or so. The company attitude is one thing which is not the best but it is the instruments themselves that have really turned me off. I haven't heard anything I like in a while. Hollywood Percussion seems decent enough but Hollywood Woodwinds was a waste of money as was the older Solo Violin. In addition to those being quite disappointing Doug Rodgers had promised the Hollywood Harp free to anyone who owned part of the Hollywood series only to go back on his word as well as promise anyone who bought the Solo Violin a discount on the new one (because the old one was so bad he even said it was not great) and I haven't heard a word on that at all.
 
As far as the new cello, I can't say I like anything about it. It does not sound that good, not bad but not good either. I hear much better from other companies that sound better, allow more control over the instrument and are priced much better. I for one will not be wasting my money on EW anytime soon until they can wow me once again. I can put up with bad service or a poor business model from a customer's point of view but not poor sounding instruments in this day and age.

I've seen the opposite after reading through a lot of what he's said. He's a self-proclaimed hardass who doesn't take any crap from anyone. In some jobs this is fine, as a service representative for a company, not so much. People in his line of work are ambassadors for their company and reading a lot of his replies make me not want to buy anything more from them regardless of how he's helping people on the other end. The fact that he acts like he does with a lot of criticizing posts and topics is unacceptable. There are times you need to just step back and not respond if you can't do so formally.
 
I feel the same about development. I've become very jaded with EW as of late and have gone from being a huge fan of their stuff to full on regret investing my money into most of it. They change positions and minds more than a politician. The harp thing was terrible. They have been in this game long enough to know how it works and how long things take to sample. I don't think they will follow through on the discount for Solo Violin customers either, not that I'd likely buy it considering what I've heard so far sounds flat which is great for an orchestra but not a solo instrument because it lacks dynamic.
 
With so many great solo instruments coming out, EW hasn't stepped up their game or changed anything about their instruments at all and are now falling very far behind very quickly. The lack of updates to existing instruments when there are known issues is also a bit troubling considering how much these instruments cost at release.
 
I won't waste the time complaining about it as it's been rehashed over and over. I'll simply take my money elsewhere.

I think their stuff is ok - I originally bought a composer collection with Gold versions of HW Strings, Woodwind and Brass, and plus QL Pianos Gold, and a few others. And it all worked well enough, for me.
 
However, once I bought Komplete Ultimate and had access to Kontakt (and could therefore buy all the great Kontakt libraries out there), I really started using EastWest stuff less and less. Kontakt is usually the first thing I load up, nowadays, and I find myself turning to Play much less often, and only for very specific things. The only EW libraries that get any real use are HW Strings Gold and Stormdrum 2 & 3.
 
As for customer service, I've had a few technical issues that were cleared up quickly and efficiently. I personally have had no issues with their customer service.
 
The new cello is okay-ish, but I expected better from EW. I toyed around with some piano/cello stuff last night, just to see how it worked into a mix, and compared it with the two other cellos I have in my collection (Tina Guo Legato Cello by Cinemsaples, and the free Blakus pocketCello), and the EW one came in last. It was basically useable, but I think its telling that the Blakus pocketCello freebie -- a small throwaway library made by a dude who isn't a professional sample creater (from what I can tell, anyway) -- produced better results than the library by the pros at EW. The Cinesamples worked best for me, and it remains my goto for expressive solo cello lines.
 
I do have a question for those of you who have the Solo Cello from EW: last night I came across a sample that sounds pretty bad (to my ears, anyway). If you load up the "Solo Cello Leg Slur.ewi" patch, in the "05 Legato" folder, and play the sample for B-2 (the B natural found one octave below middle C / C3), do you hear some sort of audio artifact in it? There is a discordant sound about a half second into the sample -- maybe the bow scraping, or something similiar. It caught my attention last night. Does anyone else hear this?
 
Thanks,
Rob

I recorded the cello lines individually, for my test, trying to work with each library's strengths and weaknesses, and did a bit of minor tweaking for each one. I wanted to get the best out of them, without spending too much time. They all have limitations, but I found the EW one was the hardest to work with. Doesn't mean its a bad library, necessarily, as it might give great results after time is spent getting a feel for it and learning how it works. But it didn't make a great first impression.

msorrels
I wanted to expand my sample library to include a better full orchestra (I have the full IK Miro and a very old GPO).  After doing the math, I decided a year of CC was worth it.  It would let me exercise the new gear bug and help me work out what (if anything) I really wanted to buy.  Based on these first few weeks I now know a lot more about these sample libraries.  I'm also pretty sure unless they really step up I won't be renewing.  It was worth the money to me to learn these things (vs buying a library blind).  I also now have a deadline so I will focus harder on learning as much about these orchestra libraries as I can so I'll make a better decision on what to buy.  Plus I bought a year of time -- I fully expect competitor products to advance a bit before the end of the year.
 

Hollywood Strings and Hollywood Brass are among the best out there. The Storm Drums are great and Symphonic Orchestra in spite of being older is still really good. I also love the Gypsy Violin which was years ahead of everything else I tried. The thing with the Hollywood series is that they do require a bit more work than Symphonic Orchestra does but it can do much more than SO can. I love their older stuff but it seems the newer it is the less I like it. They have been passed by so many of their competitors at this point I wonder if they will ever find their footing again. They certainly stay alive on the bang for your buck though. If they had the subscription service way back when, I am sure I would have been sucked into it. But since I own most of their stuff it just doesn't make sense.

I already owned Stormdrum 1 & 2 and the Plat Choirs, since the Kontakt days (and upgraded to the Play versions).  And I picked up Dark Side a few years ago at Halloween.  I was going to get (for many years) the Symphonic Orchestra, but then they started with the Hollywood series and the price jumped and it wasn't complete.  So I've just held off, but now that is finished seems like a good time to look at them seriously.  In hindsight perhaps I should have just bitten the bullet and gotten Albion 1/One.  But I now have a full year to play with both Gold Symphonic and Hollywood Gold.  I suspect I just don't need a high end orchestra.  I'm not that kind of composer really.
 
As long as users seem to believe things must be in continuous development, product developers are going to have to move more and more to reoccurring payments.  I don't really have a problem with it as much as most people.  It's a product, evaluate it on that basis (features/benefits/costs).  If it doesn't make sense for you, pass.  Anyone with a bunch of EW products isn't going to find value in the current Composer Cloud. 

All I can say is compare EW's latest offering to say Embertone's Blakus Cello and there is no contest. I already said it's not that it sounds all that bad just not all that good either. Why spend major money on the EW cello (unless you are already on their cloud service) when you can spend far less on something that sounds better and you have more control over?

You might want to hold your breath for Virharmonic's "Soul Capture" series cello, which is up for release this quarter... The first phase of their four phased introduction of the Bohemian Violin has... let's just say... blown everyone away, out of the water, into orgasmic ecstasy... and it's just a baby... but wildly heralded as the most playable instrument anyone has touched todate...
 
I for one will be waiting... tina won't compare; ew won't either... we're entering into a new age of playability and Vir has aptly named this new series.
 
many of us VICs have been captured...captivated... entranced... and enchanted ...
 
I guess I like it 

Xmas eve... all night long... many of us were playing it... I was tweeting Daniel James madly... dude!  in 20 minutes he was playing it too... it is what all of us did all night long... 
 
Amicus, while you missed the intro, each phase of it's 4 stage introduction (each quarter new maga stuff is being added) the price will be going up with each addition.  However if you buy in at any point all the rest of the phases are gifted to you...
 
I've chatted with Ondrej, the performer/Vir dude... great people, very involved with the community over at VIC, receptive and interacting with ideas and suggestions... and it is a unique moment in history.  
 
Get it!

Well, a couple days ago I sent my comment about some of the samples in the Solo Cello to EW Customer support, and they replied to me today confirming that they are also hearing what I'm hearing, and that the matter has been sent along to their devs. They didn't outright say there is a problem, per se, but that there may be "bow noise" or something else in the sample, and they'll look into the matter, and if the sample needs to be released a patch will be "sent out ASAP" (the reps specific words).
 
Figured folks might want to know. For what it's worth, I've always had positive experience with EW customer support. I gather not everyone has, judging by some comments I've read (both on the Cakewalk forums and other places), but I only have good things to say about their response time and helpfulness.
 
And, after messing around with some of the other patches in the Solo Cello, I like it better than I did when I first heard it. There's definitely some useful stuff here...
 

Their support will always try to help initially, I've never heard of them ignoring people, which is a common CS issue with companies. The problem is when you have a tough issue that they can't easily figure out. That's when they push back and declare it must be your fault and get unhelpful. They aren't real good at acknowledging that their software has issues. If they find sample issues they'll fix it by patching around it (stretching samples up or down, removing one form a round robin, etc) no problem. They are good at sampling. However if you hit issues with their software, you often hit a brick wall. That's not to say you will, the issues are not universal, but because of that they seem unwilling to try and solve them and 100% convinced it is your system, even if you can present good proof it isn't.
 
Likewise there are things they don't know how to fix, and so just declare working as is. Fast bounce (offline bounce) is one of those. On some systems, it glitches out since they aren't doing it right. They say that nothing can be done, you just have to use realtime bounce that fast bounce is inherently problematic. That's BS of course, a properly designed plugin works better in offline mode, because it can take as much time as needed, going slower than realtime if the situation calls for it. However their programmers can't figure out how to make that work it seems, so if you have issues with fast bounce (you may not if you have fast drives) they say "Only realtime bounce is supported".
 
Hence I always just tell people to be cautious with EW. It isn't that their stuff is crap, it's not the samples are amazing. It isn't that they'll ignore you, they won't. It is that you may run in to a tricky problem on your setup and you are then hosed, it isn't going to get fixed.

I will be interesting if there is an update coming. There was definitely a fair bit of noise at VI-Control over this. I still default to my trusted MP1 solo cello
 

Thank you for the update Fleer. I've been trying to decide with the impending expiration of the intro offer. EWQL added a solo violin demo. The demo is a bit busy, but the solo violin does sound excellent.