EastWest Instruments - how are they in 2022? is the engine improved?

[wagtunes]

Okay, here you go guys. This is the 8th track from my upcoming CD "Journey To The Other Side". This isn't a straight orchestral piece but there is plenty of orchestral parts in it. All in all, 40 tracks of which 16 are EWQL tracks if you include the choir. One of my more ambitious works. I had to freeze everything in order to get this done.

Enjoy!

Growing Pains

When you're born life's a breeze
Spend most days on your hands and knees
But soon will come those growing pains

You grow up and go to school
Damn those kids can be so cruel
Oh well here comes those growing pains

You get knocked down time and time again
They say it gets better you just wonder when

Your first love you fall so fast
But as it goes first loves don't last
That's all part of those growing pains

Married life you have a child
They grow up to be so wild
They're gonna have those growing pains

No one on earth escapes hard times
So you save and save your nickels and dimes

And so it goes for everyone
Sometimes this life it ain't much fun
We all go through those growing pains

Instrumental Break

Repeat last Verse

Outro

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim/growing-pains

[wagtunes]

I'm sorry. Forgot to comment on the engine. A vast improvement over Play. It's night and day. Stuff loads almost instantly and it's so intuitive a child could use it. A huge to Soundsonline. I will never use the Play engine again.

Soundwise, I don't really hear a difference but I always thought the sound quality was excellent.

[Plugged45]

When you buy a new product that is compatible with Opus you will get a license for it.
Then you can use it with your other libraries that came with Play and are now compatible with Opus, which is a lot of them.

AFAIK Opus is compatible with any East West Play library. Only the super-old Kontakt stuff wouldn't be.

Currently you must purchase Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition to get the OPUS software. People who purchase any other EastWest product post-release will also get OPUS. All ComposerCloud members will automatically get OPUS.

Thanks for VERY USEFUL INFO!

[TS-12]

does PLAY work in VST3 on Apple M1 natively ?

[jezjez]

Late reply but i just tried it and no there's no Apple silicon support and i doubt there ever will be.
Apparently there will be a paid upgrade to Opus for those without it at a later date. I wasn't going to get it but the whole Hollywood orchestra opus can be upgraded to from any old Hollywood library for $199 so i did that and can use my old libraries in Opus now as well (I upgraded from the old Hollywood brass gold)

[jedilaw]

AFAIK Opus is compatible with any East West Play library. Only the super-old Kontakt stuff wouldn't be.

It is. When you use their install manager the older libraries can be added to Opus.

[aaron aardvark]

Sometimes I like Opus better under some circumstances, and sometimes I find the previous player more simple to use. Opus has more pleasing graphics. Here is a song of mine where I used EastWest Fantasy Voices for the female vocals: it is called "Saved The Day"; it is the song at the top of the link here:

https://www.soundclick.com/aaronaardvark

[Ah_Dziz]

I am pretty much their target audience, and I would go with any Kontakt library over anything from ew.... I've gotten a few products over the years from them, but only when it fills a niche that nobody else has covered. I still use ewqlso all the time but I have the Kontakt version (as well as the other stuff that came with the "composers bundle" back in the day). All that stuff is very decent. Personally I'd think of them as a good addition to any other products I use rather than a core part.

[tapper mike]

I have EWHO Opus edition. I find the individual instruments and the sectional groupings amazing. Love the articulations love the mic placement. I was impressed with the Orchestrator and then I discovered Sonuscore's TOC3 and The Score. Just recently upgraded to TOC4 and while the actually library has only been slightly expanded since the previous version the new sounds from "Forces of Fury" are stunningly aggressive and raw.

EWHO Orchestrator is weak sauce in quantity of presets and quality. All three engines (TOC3, TOC4 and The Score) blow EWHO Opus out of the water. I've thought about simply using TOC4 or The Score engine to record and then swap instruments afterwards with EWHO as one can but... I'm always quite satisfied with the results directly in the ensemble engines of TOC and The score. Maybe I'll experiment with single instruments for melody/counter melody from EWHO while accompanying in the SCORE or TOC4 So far convivence wins out and I'm using TOC for the melody lines.

[ShiftedSound]

Hollywood Orchestra Opus and Fantasy Orchestra are great. Hollywood Orchestra is kind of timeless, still sounds great even today, great all-in-one package for that price. Fantasy Orchestra is a neat companion for even more colors. Hollywood Choirs is a nice choir, not great for every purpose (for more super epic or playable choirs Oceania and Strezov choirs are better) but it has a very neutral, clean and balanced sound I feel. Not too much vibrato or baked in character, which is good if you don't want that. It also has the world builder which is a nice addition, but needs a lot of massaging many times to get it to work as you would like.

[TMaudio]

For clarity, they don't offer upgrade paths? I've Symphonic Orchestra, Hollywood Strings, Ra, Silk, VoP, Stormdrum 2, etc., I got all back in 2013 or so.
There is no upgrade for just the additional content as well as Opus player?

[aaron aardvark]

I am getting more used to the Opus. I get the impression it's the one to use if you layer EastWest sounds on one DAW track. My song uses EastWest "Voices of Passion" female vocals for this song of mine "Part of The Time", at the top of this link:

https://www.soundclick.com/aaronaardvark/?content=songs