EastWest Symphony Orchestra question...

[epii10]

Hi All,

Does anyone here have experience with the EastWest symphony?

I'm thinking of buying the "EastWest Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra" (most likely the Gold or the Silver series as the Platinum is waaay too expensive). But I don't know if my computer will run it even though from their website I meet the minimum requirements.

I hear people complaining about latency and I don't want get it only to find out that it's unusable with my laptop.

Here are my computer specs:

I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop with:

* Pentium M Centrino 2.00GHz processor
* 2GB DDR ram
* I have an onboard multimedia soundcard that doesn't support ASIO drivers however, I will be using an M-Audio USB2.0 or firewire interface that does support ASIO, and of course I'll be using a controller)

QUESTION: Do I have enough power to run the EastWest symphony mainly for pop music background orchestration??? What about a full scale symphony orchestra? If that should prove too much could I then convert some of the midi tracks to audio to take the load off the CPU and also free up the ram and continue building the piece that way?

Thoughts anyone?

Would I be wasting my money?

TIA,
Rick

[K-Slash]

Hi,

I think that if you use it just for ensembles, not with the full orchestra, yes you'll have enough power.

Anyway, EastWest is going to release the "Play" (their home-made sample player) version of the orchestra pretty soon, so I think it would be worth the wait.

Why not ask on their official forums by the way ?

http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/

[zircon]

Yeah, you definitely have enough power, IMO. You wouldn't be able to load a full orchestra but you could probably load between 30 and 50 instruments, depending on DFD settings. Considering EWQLSO was released years ago, the requirements aren't that high.

I WOULDN'T, however, go for PLAY - it was developed much more recently and is thus more intensive!

[epii10]

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the help. I've read that composers for say, professional film scores, can use up to 4 seperate state-of-the-art computers to do orchestral scores for films.. so I've been a bit put apprehensious about it all.

[dougsyo]

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the help. I've read that composers for say, professional film scores, can use up to 4 seperate state-of-the-art computers to do orchestral scores for films.. so I've been a bit put apprehensious about it all.

Yea, you can do that ... take one computer running Cubase etc driving multiple MIDI (or MIDI-over-ethernet) slaves using Giga, Kontakt, etc all feeding into Pro-Tools, or some equally-complex setup.

Probably well beyond what 90% of KVR-ers will ever do, but anyway...

Doug

[Sepheritoh]

..... probably load between 30 and 50 instruments, depending on DFD settings. ..........

30 to 50 instruments?

Mmmm.then maybe I must be doing something wrong. I can load only up to 8 instruments with 2GB RAM and 2.8 mhz P4 before I have to freeze.

I.M.O EWQL SO is worth the buy. I love it all the way. It is a huge library and needs lots of RAM. 2GB do the job, but will not allow me to run a full orchestra.

[zircon]

Yeah, you're definitely doing something wrong. With any decent level of DFD on, a single patch is not going to take more than 15-30mb of RAM. Thus with 2GB of RAM you are going to be able to have quite a few instruments pretty easily. Realtime playback is another story, as DFD will limit your polyphony and strain your CPU, but even that considered you should definitely be able to hear a very accurate playback.

If you want to cut back the strain on your computer, kill the release tail groups and reduce release times.

[Sepheritoh]

Interesting, thank you.

I will have to play around some more. Currently, unless I add huge latency, DFD on my system keeps dropping so many samples that it is more of a frustration.

Thanks for the pointers there.

[Sequent]

I think you should be fine especially with Silver. I think that was a good point regarding Play, which would require more cpu power than the older system. I think the whole point of Play is also looking towards 64-bit systems and access to more memory so that the entire orchestra CAN run on just one computer. But that is more a consideration when running Plat and not Silver. Gold might be a nicer way to go btw, but you also have to consider your harddrive.

I don't know that I would really seriously expect to run sample-based instruments off an internal harddrive on a notebook system. Unless your Inspiron has a separate secondary internal drive. I was actually at the Dell site earlier today because I'm looking at picking up a couple Inspirons or a couple XPSs and I don't recall seeing any of them having a secondary drive. Too, even though I did see a 7200 rpm drive as an option, the majority of notebook drives (and I'm guessing yours?) are only running at 5400 rpm. If I'm correct, that also would be a factor when running lots of samples and might be the cause of your dfd problem.

I have successfully run samples off an internal notebook drive in the past, but I highly recommend getting a usb or a firewire external drive. Those aren't too terribly expensive these days and I think it would be a worthwhile investment.

Maybe for an external hd, usb2 should do just fine - and it will definitely be better than running off the notebook's internal drive.

In terms of the audio interface though, I think I would highly recommend a firewire solution over usb2. You'll get more channels and I think maybe have some better choice options. On the other hand, a usb2 one would be okay if you don't need many channels. It all depends on your needs.

Good luck!

[epii10]

Thank you everyone for your thoughtful input.. it is much appreciated.
And thank you Sequent for your very specific ideas, I will consider the external hard drive, they are indeed fairly inexpensive these days. I wish you all the best of luck in your composing. Make beautiful music everyone.. we need it.