VSL or EWQL?

Which one is better?

Vienna Symphonic Library

or

EWQLSO Gold

Why? (Prices, Quality, Reliability)

Thanks

Hem.. which VSL library exactly? Opus 1 and 2? Cube? Performance tools???

Which Gold, regular or (unleaded) xp pro?

Why do you need the info? To buy? For a debate going ot a flame war maybe (these things tend to happen in comparisons...)

EW is a tool which works out of the box! With the reverb ready, with panning ready and so on. Plenty of articulations and the sound is very close to the known "Hollywood" sound we're used in films. The problem is that unless you have Platinum (3 mic positions), you can't very easily escape that grant sound. Platinum offers much much more and it is indeed a very good library. Perfect for surround sound systems as well! It's rather small (Gold, at 18 Gb and xp pro at 21 GB) which will fit into any hard disk and won't create much troubles, if you use DFD correctly! But you may get bored with the sound pretty fast, as you cannot play with reverb...

VSL is perfect for more "classical" and closer to "realistic" results. The one things that it has is the legato, which is uncompromisingly better than any other library! Offers huge articulations and is a pro tool (as well as Gold, and especially platinum btw...). You will be spoiled with the excellent articulations, but it does take some more tweaking than EW, and also you will need a reverb (most users go for IR1 or Altiverb... pretty expensive both... :(). On thing to keep in mind is that if you do go for the full thing then you will need free hard disk space of 550 GB! That's 2 hard disks, the least! Think about that as well...

Film,game music? EW will cover you no doubt!

Classical, more adapted music? VSL!

You can find prices on their websites, so I won't be making any comparisons...

thanks azerty, I'm planning to buy. And uh..so you are saying, Platinum is better than gold right?

Yes I'm planning on game/film music.

OMG YES! It's tons better! (miles better maybe is a better term)

With Platinum you get 24-bit instead of 16-bit, you get 3 mic positions instead of 1 and you get more velocity layers in most cases.

Furthermore there is a current sale to end in 31st of December 2006. You should aim for both the regular and the xp pro, though... XP pro has some articulations which are really useful... But of course again you will reach 130-140 GB of hard disk, and you could use a slave computer for that... :-/

Thanks azerty, you have been very helpful with offering your opinion and knowledge over these libraries. If I may add my opinion now:

I actually think EWQL Platinum is higher quality than VSL. The reason I say this is because I have a few VSL libraries, and they aren't anything amazing. Even the VSL demos aren't anything compared to the EWQL Platinum demos. I would purchase EWQL Platinum over VSL but don't take my word for it, listen to the demos to hear for yourself.

Well,

first EW:

Perfectly out of the Box use BUT you can mix it very well with extern reverbs to make it more realistic, the articulations are well in the gold sometime i just miss standarts like viola pizzis and tremolos... so you must cheat!

Price is a WOW, for that Price you'll become a very well orchestra!

In the right hands it beats even VSL!

VSL:

Very well sounds but difficult to handle and needs a long time to become the right sounds of it. In the Opus 1 i muss Crossfades in the Brass and Woods... very bad without them.

I personally prefere EWQLSO Gold Edition.

Also, James, realize that EWQLSO ranges from $500-$2,000+

Then note that VSL (full) is about $10,000.

Then note that GPO is $200, and is pretty damn good for the price. If you're thinking about getting EWQLSO Silver, just get GPO. You get about the same quality sounds for less... and with tweaking, you can make them sound much better. I'm investing in Gold once school gets out, and thats what I'd reccomend for EWQLSO (I'm guessing that platinum is out of the range, but hell, if you have a few grand to drop...).

Bottom line - both EWQL and VSL are awesome libraries, but VSL is probably a (large) bit more than what you're looking for. I say EWQL Gold or GPO.

Guys, sorry for replying this late, but kinda daydreaming these days.

1. So again, back to the topic, whats the price between EWQLSO Platinum and Gold Pro Xp.

2. Also, whats the differences between Gold PRo Xp and Gold regular?

Thanks guys.

1. EWQLSO Platinum = ~$1600US. Add the Pro XP package and you're looking at around $3000US.

2. Look HERE

James, I'd assume that you're aware that to run platinum properly you need at least 2 computers. And I don't mean two crappy ones, I mean two pretty beastly machines.

Even to run Gold Pro XP properly you need some serious hardware going on unless you want to be bouncing MIDI tracks all over the place and other such annoying stuff.

I'm going to hope that if you're even considering buying these, it's AFTER you've used GPO for a while and are familiar with sound libraries, how they operate, what they are and how to properly control them. You should be familiar with MIDI programming and not even bother wasting the money on platinum unless you plan to use it with an actual sequencer like Sonar or Cubase or Logic or the like.

I'm going to hope that if you're even considering buying these, it's AFTER you've used GPO for a while and are familiar with sound libraries, how they operate, what they are and how to properly control them. You should be familiar with MIDI programming and not even bother wasting the money on platinum unless you plan to use it with an actual sequencer like Sonar or Cubase or Logic or the like.

I second that.

i got the gold and i must say its fabulous, though im gonna upgrade to platinum soon as its much much better. I'm starting to do more and more "proffesional" works so i feel the need for the platinum and its xp ! EWQL libraries are generally great sounding e.g the Ra or stormdrum , stormdrum 2 is coming out! ( NAMM 07) ! yumyum, time to heavily invest in all these great sounding samples as i progress musically and in work =).

So Tera... just curious, are you a professional? :)

no im not a proffesional, but im workin to be one :blush:.

Cool, looking forward to hear some of your compositions in the future. :D