Virtual instruments to the MAX!!! Too good to be true?

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cclarry
That's been out for quite while Bob...

First I heard about it. The fact that one can pay as you go on a month to month basis seems to good to be true. I would have thought there would have been more chatter about it...
 

I do not usually look here in this particular forum. I just had come across it via a posting from EastWest on my Facebook page.
 
If he has been available since last September, I never came across it.
 
Anyone here using this plan? Any comments?
I certainly would drop $30 on a months worth of access to all those VIs. Personally, I would have no need to have an annual membership.

I'm all chattered out on this subject.
 
I did it for about four months. Since I already own all the modules I've really wanted form EW I found the rest not to my needs. YMMV. 

cclarry

But if you don't own them, it's a great plan....

Agreed.

thepianist65
Although installing and managing the whole shebang available in Composer Cloud takes a looooooong time, initially.
Good luck!

How true. Their site is slooooooooooooooooooow. I have 75/75 and it still took at least two weeks (of a few hours each week night and all day on the weekends) IIRC.

I had it for about 6 months or so. It was nice to be able to fully try out a bunch of their other libraries, but I found that I only really used the libraries I already owned, and didn't see the point of carrying on with the subscription. The other libraries were sort of "meh" -- not bad, but not great either, and I already had decent alternatives among my non-EastWest libraries.  
 
I don't mind the EastWest stuff, and I own 8 of their libraries. But they can be tricky to use, and are something of a PIA to install. Only three of the Hollywood Orchestra libraries (strings, brass and woodwinds) see significant use in my music (and they are being eclipsed by some of my more recent purchases, including Albion One). 
 
But I agree its a great package for some folks. Just not for me.

Great stuff but I'd rather own the licenses.  They have sales often.  Very resource hungry.  Hard to beat the Hollywood libraries.  I'm moving in the direction of VSL. They have great software.

Hollywood Strings is a great library, and where the most realistic sounding articulations and passages are needed, it is the library I turn to. For broader brushstrokes and more general string arrangements, I tend to use my other libraries, like Albion One, Da Capo, Grosso, or even the Kontakt VSL strings (which are dated but quite useable under the right cirumstances).
 
Same with brass -- Hollywood Brass' legato patches are really great, especially for solo trumpet and horn passages. For passages that need brass instruments in broad groups, I tend to use Albion One, Da Capo and sometimes even Garritan Personal Orchestra 5.
 
The most serious issue I have with EastWest is with Play, which is the most unstable of the VST sample players that I use. I have no concerns with other engines at all -- Kontakt is like a rock, and I can run a million instances of it without any issue; Engine 2 is fine; and the Aria player with Garritan is perfectly stable. EastWest Play generally works, and I can load multiple instances of it without too many issues...usually. But in the rare moments when Sonar craps out on me, it almost invariably happens when I'm loading a patch into Play.

Choirs is great, I forgot to mention that one. I also have Symphonic Orchestra Silver, and its got some very useful stuff in it.
 
I do own QL Pianos, but I rarely ever use it -- it's a bit of a system hog, and there is something about the programming of the velocity layers that I just can't get a feel for. Frankly, I own more piano VSTs than I know what to do with, and there's many others I'd turn to first.