which sound library

should i get. What is the best out there or at least the best bang for your buck. By default im just going to get GPO but before i do, any suggestions?

Depends how much you want to spend.

For orchestral stuff I use EWQLSO Gold and would recommend it:

EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold Edition :: Classical/Orchestral :: Virtual Instruments :: Sounds Online

i second that.

get the gold xp pro aswel, i sure can't work without it.

No budget no real reason for reply.

VSL goes up to 12,000$ but it's worth it imho... Platinum is around 1000$ right now, which is a great deal if you ask me. GPO has had a steady audience and a steady price for many years now and things will change rapiddly as Gary will put the ARIA engine around. Already the strings are around the corner, so much that he withdrew the solo stirngs (the stradivarious and the godrfiller for those who don't know) from the market. Exciting times ahead!

i second that.

get the gold xp pro aswel, i sure can't work without it.

very good suggestions. I think i should like this better than gpo. I have seen my friend looking at this a while back and only realized once i have seen it that it was the same thing that he bought only a month ago though he sadly found out his computer is not up to the requirements and requires some upgrades to ram.

If you are looking for advice you need to share a bit more information...

I have been able to run Gold with 1.25 GB of RAM (now I have 2 and it's pretty much fine) and a single core at 2.8 GHz (2 hard disks)

Yep,

2GB Ram, 2.6GhZ Pentium 4, Internal hard drive for running the software, external USB hard drive for all my samples (the second hard drive is essential in my experience).

Oh, and obviously a good sequencer or somerthing like Sibelius 5 is needed as well.

All a big investment but well worth it. Once you've got it all running if you want more samples it's just a matter of buying them and sticking them on that second hard drive.

Robert Henson - Composer creating original compositions --- www.roberthenson.net ---

Hope that helps

imho, all east west lib's need a minimum of 2 gig ram. if you don't have this there'll be a need to "freeze" vsti's or "bounce" midi tracks.

this is annoying, trust me.

i now have 3 gigs of ram, and at max. i can run 2 full east west gold pro xp's, one symphonic choir (one to three patches max.), one fully loaded stormdrum and one NI akoustic piano. i can't wait to have 4 gigs or ram (my system can only take 4 gigs of ram max. :(). working with 'big' computers is always a must when doing mock-ups, period.

i think VSL will be a no-no for "beginners", there's too much options/parameters involved. east west sounds good, no matter what you do with it. the sounds are indeed ridiculously fat and hollywood-y (and it does have amazing impact), but most of the time you'll get your point across.

buying anything east west is a no-brainer.

I have the computer power though i may need to purchase a 2nd external hard drive.( i updated with good deals on Black Friday!) And i have sib 5. I was just wondering which library had the best quality sounds for my price range which is no more than $500 at this time.

I have the computer power though i may need to purchase a 2nd external hard drive.( i updated with good deals on Black Friday!) And i have sib 5. I was just wondering which library had the best quality sounds for my price range which is no more than $500 at this time.

EWQLSO Gold Bundle :: Classical/Orchestral :: Virtual Instruments :: Sounds Online

$595, save up for the last 100 bucks and you've got yourself a winner (or just go for Gold alone: EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold Edition :: Classical/Orchestral :: Virtual Instruments :: Sounds Online which is $355).

..and second hdd? gold is about 12gb and gold pro xp is about 16gb, so check your 'free' space.

..and second hdd? gold is about 12gb and gold pro xp is about 16gb, so check your 'free' space.

Well, try that if you like MrTrent but you'd be very lucky if you get results from bunging everything on one HD!

I, and many others, have found one hard drive for everything doesn't work. A second hard drive for samples is highly recommended. It'll even tell you this in the EWQLSO manual!!

I had terrible problems with clicks and glitches and even lock ups until I bought a second hard drive (USB external, get firewire if your computer can cope) for my samples. At a stroke it solved all the problems I was having. It also at least doubled the loading time of each instrument! Best buy I made for my system.

BTW, not that I'm trying to drive you away from here or anything as it's a good forum, but the northernsounds forum is somewhere much more geared towards answering your tech questions:

northernsounds.com - Home

don't get me wrong, i ofcourse have more than on hdd's (mainly because of protools, which is a scallop with disk allocation) but i haven't really heard about making samples load faster but putting on a different hdd (especially usb2, which is indeed inferior to firewire).

i run ewqlso from my main DAW drive which also has cubase, protools and various other sample libraries installed. there's plenty of space left (200gb+) and it runs like a gem and have never bumped into errors or whatever.

i'm really wondering what is it about putting sample lib's on a different HDD that makes it run better (not saying it isn't, i obviously haven't tried it), since their performances (of sample lib's) mainly got to do with ram memory.

I can only speak from personal experience; a second hard drive made a huge difference to how my system ran whilst composing. Here's a more technical summary I found from someone who knows what he's talking about:

what sometimes happens is that you media software and running applications will try to access system resources as well as media data on the same drive. Your sequencer software usually doesn't have any patience what so ever for waiting for other system tasks to be completed before it gets the audio data it needs. This is good because it gives you more accurate timing in your music. but sometimes system resources must be accessed in certain intervals of time or your system may crash, so this becomes a conflict.

You harddrive can only deliver data 'so' fast, and when your seq software fights with windows over the direct access to the hardisk it commonly results in a CPU usage spike - meaning a slight hick-up of your music or the timing, or it may also translate into cracks and pops in the sound. The larger your arremgement is, the more likely this is to happen if you use everything on the same harddrive.

Having your audio data on a completely different harddrive than what your system is on provides both the system and your seq software virtually free access to the material each of them needs badly and no fighting will need to occur.

Second Hard Drive - northernsounds.com

This is exactly what I had, clicks, pops, CPU spikes, instrument drop outs. Getting a second hard drive got rid of all of these instantly.

i see.

very rarely, when composing in huge projects, cubase hickups when the playback key is pressed, but after that, all is well. this happened to me, porobably 2 or 3 times in a time span of 1 year and i'd say it has more to do with RAM than hdd access since i don't see how services or other applications than your sequencer would interfere since the sequencer is all i run (next to an almost stripped down XP). this might be a processor issue, and since i run dual core, there's no issue for me :D.

then again, if it works for you, use it.

Could be a processor issue I guess. I'm only using a 2.6ghz P4. You're obviously lucky enough (or have a powerful enough engine) to be able to keep your samples and sequencer together. I've not been able to do this.

You're right, if it works, use it. :)

I think i will save up. I have roughly 70 Gs free .

just for the record, what is ARIA? Other than those songs I sing...

just for the record, what is ARIA? Other than those songs I sing...

eh?

...and things will change rapiddly as Gary will put the ARIA engine around.

That

aria ENGINE . A sample engine (a sampler pretty much) and player for Garys libraries and sounds. The new steinway piano by Garritan will come out with this engine.

aria ENGINE . A sample engine (a sampler pretty much) and player for Garys libraries and sounds. The new steinway piano by Garritan will come out with this engine.

Sounds promising! I will have a look at it when it comes out. And Garritan's going to have a Steinway piano? That's awesome!

The Steinway piano is "almost" out. It's around 40 GB if I remember correctly and there are 3 different versions (and prices). ARIA is also 64-bit, which means plenty of things, but mainly that you can beyond the 3 GB limit of the 32-bit (windows xp, for example, and tiger, etc). Leopard and Vista as well as xp64 are the OS which can go further atm, although most sequencers are not yet up to par. Cubase 4 is NOT YET 64-bit, and I believe that Logic 8 is 64-bit, but rather buggy (Marius? Confirmation on this?)

Steinway appears to sound MAGNIFICENT! (but then again EW is coming with 200 GB pianos (4 pianos), which also must sound FANTASTIC!)

And I'm quite happy with pianoteq, myself, at least for now... :)

Well, I've always preferred EW's pianos to Garritan's to be honest, but then I prefer ArtVista's to either of them. In any case, the fact is that piano libraries are getting to be ridiculously over-sized at this point and it's all just a marketing stunt. There is absolutely no reason that a piano library should be 200GB in size -- if it were properly and carefully programmed and sampled intelligently it could be less than half that. But that's a separate issue; I, personally, cannot wait to hear Garritan's new piano.

As for Logic, yes it's 64-bit and yes, I've heard that it can be buggy as such, but I've not had any negative experiences with it so far, so it's hard for me to really confirm that. Having said that, I've not been using it that long so I can't really deny it either, but it's definitely a very stable piece of software from what I've seen so far, so I'm not sure what would have caused those instability complaints.

:thumbsup:

See the thing is this for me:

Garritan pianos: 40,000 MB

EW pianos: 60,000 Mb each

Pianoteq: 15 MB

:D How on earth can ANYONE compete with than? And with pianoteqs sound (although it's no longer unique with the sympathetique resonances etc)

:D How on earth can ANYONE compete with than?

Real Steinway piano: 0 MB, perfect sound! :P