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...

There's some to-and-fro on VI Control about these legato patches.
http://vi-control.net/com...y-with-it.50612/page-6

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.

I have only had a quick audition of the sounds. I thought it sounded great, if there are issues they did not jump out at me.

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

Just 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.

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 still very much like their stuff, having bought them during a Black Friday or End of Year sale for not more than $40 per library. If you compare that to present competitors, you'll see a huge difference in price.
Edith adds: he got the $399 educational version of a CCC bundle minus a $100 Black Friday coupon.

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 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.
 
Since I'm pretty big on testing I took a Bach Solo Cello midi file and fed it into the HW Solo Cello.  I'm pretty sure I'm not picking the right articulations since it didn't sound all that good really.  I did the same file with the older Symphonic Solo Cello and it sounded much better.  Though both clearly needed some MIDI work to get to a "best" level.  I think it's going to be hard to compare these kinds of libraries, since the MIDI to drive them is so very specific.