what a Top Secret Exclusiv Offer cheers
IK Miroslav Philharmonik CE No-Brainer Deal: Just $15!
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- KVRAF
- 1895 posts since 13 Oct, 2002
My brain says "Nay" too. With shipping, taxes and duty it's too much for my current needs and budget, but I don't regret the CE deal because it gives me a very portable orchestra and it's a good smattering of "Miroslavishness" for the buck 
You know, 11 years ago MVO was selling for over $4000 and CE was like $750!
In British Pounds here (BTW, don't forget that review is 11 years old...). From that perspective, this is an excellent opportunity if you've been craving that sound for all these years and more so if you don't already have another orchestral library.
You know, 11 years ago MVO was selling for over $4000 and CE was like $750!
In British Pounds here (BTW, don't forget that review is 11 years old...). From that perspective, this is an excellent opportunity if you've been craving that sound for all these years and more so if you don't already have another orchestral library.-
- KVRAF
- 10134 posts since 16 Dec, 2002
exactly...and now you can get it for $84 plus extra packs 
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- KVRist
- 117 posts since 5 Jan, 2011
Ok, this is really getting worse. I purchased the upgrade under the condition it was electronic delivery. At least that was what I thought. Maybe I made a mistake, but I wrote them twice to find out wheter I could cancel, or at least what the shipping costs would be and got no answer at all. So I paid the 79$ Dollar and have no clue how I can get the upgrade nor if can cancel the order. Probably i'll have to let paypal take care of this...
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- KVRAF
- 1895 posts since 13 Oct, 2002
FYI: interestingly the current esoundz specials are ALL downloads, including the 7gig Miroslav Philarmonik orchestra. So if you don't live in the US, it makes more sense to forget about the AudioMidi special and just get the download and the bonus banks from the esoundz deal.
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- KVRAF
- 1667 posts since 2 Apr, 2006 from Studio City, California
Audiomidi shipped my order last Friday and I received it on Monday. They were supposed to call me when the product came in so I could have someone run over and pick it up but, it auto shipped. At first I was a little irritated but since it came on Monday and there was no shipping charge, I'm completely satisfied.
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- KVRAF
- 1895 posts since 13 Oct, 2002
So I decided to buy into the esoundz group buy and got the full version of MPO too, and I thought I'd give people a heads up here. I have no vested interest in doing this: I'm just answering some questions I had for myself that others have probably asked themselves, as well as sharing some of my feelings about this lib. So keep in mind that this is my own biased opinion. 
I've compared the full to the CE version and basically with the full version you get more of everything: more playing gestures, more ensembles and many unlooped sample sets which often sound better than the looped ones in CE. So the full includes all the CE samples and adds proportionally more. However, the AudioMIDI CE deal was an excellent one and gives you a good cross-section of the MPO sound, and is IMO more than enough for a casual user.
In terms of overall quality, this library is somewhere between GPO and EWQLSO in terms of scope, and I support the opinions of many about its warm and lyrical nature. In comparison, I find many sounds in GPO bland, and while EWQLSO is clearly a much broader library, some of the sounds in MPO are surprisingly more compelling. It's almost as if MPO was crafted by a musician while EWQLSO was crafted by an engineer. While some of the "warmth" factor can be explained by technical reasons, it's clear that painstaking care was taken in the capture of these samples both in the consistency of the sample to sample recording but also in the playing of the instruments. For this reason some will find that many MPO instruments have too much of their own character; in general I like its inherent musicality but sometimes vibratos can be excessive and lead-ins aren't ideal, making these patches less useful in certain contexts.
The strength of this library is definitely the strings and some of the solo instruments. There's a lot more ensemble string variations in the full version. As usual for a cheaper library, Brass is ok but not great and one glaring omission is FF sustained trumpets. The additional instruments like pianos, Harps, Guitars, Pipe Organs, etc are nice and usable in many contexts but none are spectacular. The choir is definitely dated, and many of the percussion instruments are very usable too although many of them lack the clarity, sparkle and depth of more recently libraries. That's true in general about MPO but again it's also part of its warmth and charm.
As others have noted, the greatest weakness of this library is the lack of any form of key switching. I can imagine cobbling together something in Bidule to do this with multiple MPO instances, but it's not like that out of the box. The other sore spot for me is the size of the GUI. I'd love to see the sound "tree" much more expanded as I constantly have to scroll to see what's revealed, and the setup and editing controls would be clearer and better organized within their own GUIs, or larger areas of the main. Another GUI issue is that the "Instrument" column is too narrow to accommodate the complete name of a good number of the patches, forcing you to use the "Unload" button just to read the complete name. Clearly, the GUI is already dated too.
Bottom line: for $115 all-in (including the AudioMidi loss and no shipping...) and the additional bank from esoundz, I have no regrets. It's a welcome addition to my libraries.
I've compared the full to the CE version and basically with the full version you get more of everything: more playing gestures, more ensembles and many unlooped sample sets which often sound better than the looped ones in CE. So the full includes all the CE samples and adds proportionally more. However, the AudioMIDI CE deal was an excellent one and gives you a good cross-section of the MPO sound, and is IMO more than enough for a casual user.
In terms of overall quality, this library is somewhere between GPO and EWQLSO in terms of scope, and I support the opinions of many about its warm and lyrical nature. In comparison, I find many sounds in GPO bland, and while EWQLSO is clearly a much broader library, some of the sounds in MPO are surprisingly more compelling. It's almost as if MPO was crafted by a musician while EWQLSO was crafted by an engineer. While some of the "warmth" factor can be explained by technical reasons, it's clear that painstaking care was taken in the capture of these samples both in the consistency of the sample to sample recording but also in the playing of the instruments. For this reason some will find that many MPO instruments have too much of their own character; in general I like its inherent musicality but sometimes vibratos can be excessive and lead-ins aren't ideal, making these patches less useful in certain contexts.
The strength of this library is definitely the strings and some of the solo instruments. There's a lot more ensemble string variations in the full version. As usual for a cheaper library, Brass is ok but not great and one glaring omission is FF sustained trumpets. The additional instruments like pianos, Harps, Guitars, Pipe Organs, etc are nice and usable in many contexts but none are spectacular. The choir is definitely dated, and many of the percussion instruments are very usable too although many of them lack the clarity, sparkle and depth of more recently libraries. That's true in general about MPO but again it's also part of its warmth and charm.
As others have noted, the greatest weakness of this library is the lack of any form of key switching. I can imagine cobbling together something in Bidule to do this with multiple MPO instances, but it's not like that out of the box. The other sore spot for me is the size of the GUI. I'd love to see the sound "tree" much more expanded as I constantly have to scroll to see what's revealed, and the setup and editing controls would be clearer and better organized within their own GUIs, or larger areas of the main. Another GUI issue is that the "Instrument" column is too narrow to accommodate the complete name of a good number of the patches, forcing you to use the "Unload" button just to read the complete name. Clearly, the GUI is already dated too.
Bottom line: for $115 all-in (including the AudioMidi loss and no shipping...) and the additional bank from esoundz, I have no regrets. It's a welcome addition to my libraries.
Last edited by Breeze on Thu Apr 28, 2011 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRAF
- 1895 posts since 13 Oct, 2002
Forgot one thing: apparently esoundz will give you $15 of epointz if you contact Allen at esoundz with a proof of purchase of CE from the AudioMIDI deal. It's a nice gesture, but almost meaningless to me: you can't use epointz for more than 50% of a purchase and never on a special deal...