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.

Can't remember which version of Play I'm using - but it's not the latest incarnation!
All I can say is it works flawlessly inside Sonar running EWQLSO Platinum.
 
I have a 135 track template which has 7 or 8 instances of Play, drum maps for keyswitching articulations and apart from the load time (about 8 minutes - I could really benefit from getting it on an SSD) it's operated completely without issue.

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.

Great! That's the kind of feedback I was looking for. Looks like the credit card is about to take another hit.

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.

 Those EW deals are hard to pass up but if you haven't I would suggest investing in Kontakt.  If you have Kontakt check out Kirk Hunter's Diamond for $150.
 

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 use it for woodwinds only because it was the cheapest I could get at the time. No problems, easy to use, runs fine.

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.

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.