MIRO or EWQLSO

[anon]

What would you say the main differences between these two are, what does Miro offer that EWQLSO doesn't, I'm not being funny, I really am trying to decide what to get, with EWQLSO I Won't need a Dongle, But then Miro may have somthing that EWQLSO doesn't, that make using a Dongle worth it,The Demo's of the two sound very diferent, Miro sounds warm and lush, EWQLSO sounds powerful and in your face, I like both these atributes, can Miro sound very strong and in your face? or is it a gentler animal?

I have been listening to the Demo's of both repeatedly and I still just don't know, is there anyone that has both and could give an opinion, EWQLSO is cheaper than Miro, and even the gold version is going for a steal, but then IK has offered this great crossgade deal, so they all seem to be good value,

What do you think?

[sirbellog]

I would be more comfortable to reply to this in the more general "instruments" forum.
nevertheless : I do own both libraries,
and as far as I'm concerned,
Gold gets my vote :
- streaming engine,
- more articulations,
- keyswitch programs,
- better programming,
- more "modern", detailed sound.
---
I am a bit disapointed with Philharmonik so far :
- I'm not a very strong orchestrator, but it's way much easier for me to produce "synthy" sound with it than with Gold.
- To my ears, there are, here and there, discrepancies in the sound, which seem to betray the different samples transition, (my explanation for this would be that some samples are too stretched and/or not xfaded enough for a smooth transition).
- I do not really get the point of having the "stretch" engine, I cannot see which advantage this brings, but my ears find the "stretched" programs's sound artificial, unnatural.
- Also I'm used to keyswitching a lot, and to getting brighter sound by modwheel for brass and the like, so the way Philharmonik is handled is (for me once again) not so straightforward.
---
But wait for other opinions, some people rave about the warm, "lyrical" and "romantic" sound of Vitous samples, so it may be a matter of taste.

[loogoo]

It is completely a matter of taste, and this has been debated endlessly on these forums and there's rarely a consensus of opinion. It really depends on what kind of music you want to make and what instruments and articulations you'll need "out of the box".

Do you need solo strings? If you need solo viola or double bass, then Gold doesn't have them (unless you get the Pro upgrade). Philharmonik has solo versions of all strings.

Philharmonik has piano, organ and choir samples. Gold does not but again, you can get piano if you get the Pro upgrade. Silver has piano, organ and choirs but it is more limited than either Gold or Philharmonik in other areas.

Do you need sul ponte articulations for strings? Philharmonik has them - Gold does not (except in the Pro upgrade).

So you see, there are things in Philharmonik that you don't get with Gold and vice versa. I agree with several of sirbellog's points above but there are certain things I can do with Philharmonik that I can't currently do with Gold. Now, I have Gold Pro on order and we'll see how that changes things.

The real bottom line, however, is that there is no one library that's going to be everything to everyone and you have to either choose for yourself or get them all - that seems to be what I'm trying to do!

[dougsyo]

There were several discussions about this in "Samples" the last month or two - take a look at some of those threads.

Doug

[Squids]

I have both and they compliment each other well. Different sound entirely. But, also there are many features that are different from each other and in my opinion both are desirable. If you go to www.philharmonik.com and download some of the new video presentations that I made for Philharmonik you can see what I am talking about. Check out the one about Stretch in particular which is very useful and unique.

[anon]

When you say Different sound entirely, in what way are they diferent would you say? I am thinking of maybe getting the Miro, and also the silver edition, because with the great deal on Miro and the half price deal for silver I can get both for less than the real price of Miro, then I get more sonic ground covered, and I just can't choose between them.

[zai]

Go get both, you won't be disappointed. But say if you have Kontakt 2 as well...then I'd recommend you go check out EWQSL first...but that's only if. Also, if you have SampleTank 2, you might want to check out Miroslav first....

I like the sound quality of Miroslav, they do "sound" a little different than EWQSL...a matter of personal taste. EWQSL to me sounds more "distanced"...maybe it's their mic positioning when they were recording the samples.

Go for both if you have the money.

Zai

[Squids]

When you say Different sound entirely, in what way are they diferent would you say? I am thinking of maybe getting the Miro, and also the silver edition, because with the great deal on Miro and the half price deal for silver I can get both for less than the real price of Miro, then I get more sonic ground covered, and I just can't choose between them.

Well, I think the emotion in Philharmonik is very special and has more feeling to me than the EWQL. I have the Gold Edition. But, what I like about the EWQL is that is has a great sound of its own from an engineering standpoint. They did a very good job. Plus the mic technique they used is very interesting. If I had to narrow it down in sound, I'd say that Miroslav is more lush and EWQL is more aggressive. It really IS a good combination to have both though.

I think most composers will tell you that it is highly common to have more than one orchestral product on hand. That said, it is sometimes nice to have a main "go to" piece. For me that is Philharmonik, probably because it is so fast as well. The unique features of the engines and other programming conveniences we did also make it really fast for me to get what I want. For instance, I was doing this sort of Indian string arrangement the other day that sounded something like Led Zeppelin would do. Like the song Friends from Zep III? It is hard to get that gliding legato string sound from a sampler. But, with stretch and some careful midi programming I was able to pull it off pretty well in Miroslav Philharmonik! It's a workhorse. I use it all the time. It's very "beautiful" sounding and fits into the mix very well. That's an aspect that you can only tell in context. But, I think it is very usable plug-in.

That's just my opinion though and I am obviously biased toward my own product, even though I can appreciate a good product no matter where it comes from and I have a lot of respect for this and also the choir from them (which I don't have, but want). But, there are others to listen to who have them. Talk to DevonB who may have some thoughts on the subject. Either way, I bet most people will tell you to get both!

[Caleb]

Don't forget to look at Kirk Hunter Studios too.

For some reason I've never been tempted by EWQL. I'm not even sure why really - maybe the built-in verb or something.

If I were to look at extending I'd probably look at Kirk Hunter first though.

Where's DevonB, he'd be able to summarise the choices quite well. I wonder if he has Kirk Hunter's new stuff yet.

Caleb

[Rico]

I also own EWQLSO Gold and looking for complementing it for one reason or another, and I can't afford the Pro upgrade so...

One question that always appear is how many velocity layers the samples contain, and how well dynamic velocity crossfading works (i.e. expression, crescendo or whatever You call it). How is this supported by the SampleTank engine? Also, while the demos sound good, isn't SampleTank based on compressed samples? That might imply a loss of quality compared to other libraries, though I'm not the one to say it's the case...

The playability of Miroslav seems to be really good though!

I have also been looking at the MOTU Symphonic Instrument and Peter Ss' Complete package. MOTU feels like it is closer to EWQL in sound, and also not as "professional" as the others with 1 velocity layer and filters doing the rest and the legato seems to be a bit bad. On the other hand it (IMHO) has some great sounding demos and seems to have runs and stuff not included in EWQLSO Gold.

Peter S' library feels more like Miroslav in sound, and contains a lot of nice stuff like the Smart Violins, Orchestral Colors and such - a little like loop-based orchestral music-making.

And most of them are around the same price (Miro a bit above even for an ST2 user like myself)

So all-in-all I'm not really sure which way to go here. Any further input would be lovely!

Regards,
Rico

[Caleb]

Rico, I think from the perspective of MOTU, I have heard that some PC users are adversely affected by the PACE protection. I've also heard that the same problem doesn't seem to exist for PACE on MAC. That could be a factor in your decision making.

I know I as a PC user avoid PACE like the plague because I don't want to take the risk, but on the other hand there must be quite a few PC systems that it works on effectively or they wouldn't still have it as a protection method on that platform. I haven't heard of any PC MOTU riots yet - although maybe I'm not reading the right news or something.

Sorry - that's not library advice per se as I don't think I'm qualified to give real advice in the orchestral library area, but just another consideration that could be added.

Caleb

[Rico]

Thanks for the info - worth considering anyway, especially since "my supplier" seems to have run out of MOTU SI for the moment

Regards,
Rico

[nexussynth]

I have Gold, Miro, GPO and SAM and I find myself agreeing with squids that Miro is my new 'go-to' library. I seem to be able to get what I need faster than Gold. I would also agree with someone's recommendation to get Kontakt 2 AND Gold if not just for the 16 channels. Gold Pro seems great too.

The MOTU sounds very nice and gives you alot for the money too, and GPO also gets by fine with only one dynamic layer.

But..the thing that really continues to impress me is how well all the instruments in Miro blend when playing in ensemble. Even Gold doesn't layer as nice:) And the percussion don't sound like they are at the front of the orchestra! So many libraries seem to suffer from this. Even Gold with it's built-in hall sound and release trails has percussion that while exceptionally strong, stiil don't sound like they are blending properly. The Miro percussion at first are not as impressive but when you actually use them in a piece they blend beautifully.

I now like to start a composition with Miro and then substitute instruments with Gold or GPO or SAM if needed. Quite often I don't need to substitute! This is a nice surprise I didn't expect as a user of the original Vitous version of this library. SR made these samples shine.

I'll add my opinon: Buy BOTH (if you possibly can.)

(P.S.: I think the MOTU or the new EMU Modern symphonic (with Kirk Hunter samples I hear) might be very good choice with Miro. I would buy Miro first though, then the others. )

[Sequent]

I just got Miro today, so I'll post up my thoughts if I can get the damn thing to install!!!

I have EWQLSO Gold (with Gold Pro on its way any day now), as well as the Vienna Symphonic bits that were provided with K2.

Listening to the demos at the Philharmonik site... my impression is that Miro is going to have a nice, intimate feeling to it. I also think it might blend nicely with synths in a regular song setting. We'll see...

I'm looking forward to seeing how it blends with EWQLSO. It might be a nice contrast to the big sound with the bigger reverb than Miro's. So, I'm thinking the two together might make a good team.

I'm also impressed by the nice selection of instruments, as well as the nylon guitar - which is something that I don't really have a decent sample of.

I'll post back my own impressions once I've had a chance to play with it a bit. Oops... this is the Esoundz forum... just realized that... so I deleted reference to other places. Sorry!

[DevonB]

Where's DevonB, he'd be able to summarise the choices quite well. I wonder if he has Kirk Hunter's new stuff yet.

Caleb

No, I don't have Kirk's new stuff yet. Kind of tempted, but then again, I'm upgrading my 200 gig drive because A) it's dying and B) I'm out of space yet again. I have all the bases covered well right now, so anything more is just rounding out the choices.

Miro is VERY quick to use. I had a decent little 1 minute orch piece going in about 15 minutes with minimal tracks of Combi patches I built myself (which again, only took a few minutes).

Miro though is not the be all/end all of libraries, but no library is. I believe it's priced right, and is a good library for its range.

Miro is more intimate. The portato and staccato samples don't have as much 'oomph' and 'sizzle' as some of the high end libraries I own (VSL, Garritan, Project SAM, Sonic Implants, etc). That can work either way, because now I have something that isn't as punchy too. I also wish Miro had release samples and more multi samples instead of relying on amp envelopes for dynamics (correct me if I'm wrong Squids. I only had a chance to work through about half the library so far). But, there is a price you pay for that level of detail, and that is CPU power, hard drive space, and lots of ram to pull that off, as well as in the cost of the library to boot. It also depends if you can actually 'hear' that level of detail. I can, but not everyone else can though, and often the subtlties get buried in the mix.

In short, no one library will give you everything you'd ever want. Is Miro perfect? No. Is any library perfect? No. Do I have EWQL to compare it against? I wish.

Expect a full review sometime in the near future of Miro. I have many more comments and observations, but I'm not going to write a full review here, I'll save that for the real deal. BTW - the choirs are nice and compete quite well against Symphony Of Voices.

Always nice to have more choices, and with symphonic libraries, you can never have too much.

Devon