Part 2 - Review on EW Composer Cloud Subscription

In the last entry I wrote about some of the fine print, what libraries we have acces to, and the overall experience I've been having with this subscription of East West Composer Cloud.

I purchased the subscription on the 25th of July and finished downloading all of the content the 30th in the morning, so it took five days to download the content of seven libraries, Goliath (84 gigs), and Sturmdrum 3, (60 gigs) were the largest of the seven, I also downloaded Gypsy, Silk, Ra, Hollywood Strings and Hollywood Brass.

I also mentioned that the iLock licenses were somehow deposited on the wrong account, to run these libraries of samples one must have an account with iLock (free) and an iLock (not free) so get ready to spend another 50 dollars for the ilock2 as it doesn't run on an iLock 1 a quick email to iLock and I received a quick response that EW had to retrieve the licenses and deposit them on the right account, so I wrote EW support and after one day they quickly deposited the licenses on the right account.

The next step was to go to ilock's website to download their license manager ( a quick download ) then transfer those licenses to my iLock2 which by the way I ordered through Amazon and I never got but they sent me a replacement immediately, once I dragged and dropped the licenses from the ilock's license manager to the iLock2 I was ready to play! Or was I?

It is a bit frustrating, and I had to have a lot of patience cause being in my laptop I had installed the large libraries on a portable USB drive so I have to have that plugged in into a USB port to run the libraries then the iLock oops! I only had 2 USB ports so where am I gonna plug the keyboard controller? Gotta go to Walmart to get a USB hub one more trip and another $15 dollars not counting time and gas hahaha. But I gotta tell you for the strings it was worth the wait! My quick first impression of the libraries follows:

The conditions, very late at night and at a very low volume and I didn't use PLAY as a plugin within Logic Pro I used it as a stand alone program.

Hollywood Strings

Amazing! A bit confusing with the articulations and all but if you spend the time the results can be fabulous. The PDFs manual is huge so I'll be doing some reading and probably seek out some video tutorials. This is a very inspiring library.

Hollywood Brass

I was not that impressed with this one I thought must of the samples were loud harsh and annoying I have a lot of horn plugins MOJO Vr2, Vintage Horns and one of my favorites, NI Session Horns and I like the samples better in the trombones mainly, however I don't know how they all react together maybe there is a reason they are sampled like that. I didn't spend too much time with this one it didn't really inspire me and it makes me wish I had picked "Voices of passion" instead. Maybe I can switch it.

Gypsy

I was looking forward this library I've wanted it for a long time, and I have mix feelings about it, all the samples are awesome, the guitars are amazing specially with the right reverbs however I was disappointed with the articulations 3 guitars are available and only one, the still guitar has nice articulations the other guitars, Flamenco and Classical do not share the same articulations like slides note bends etc. they do come with some sampled chords that sound very realistic but playability is a bit awkward when you compare it with other plugins like NI Scarbee Funk Guitarist, never the less the guitars are great way better the the guitars on the Kronos but maybe not as good as the guitars in the Motif the truth of the matter is that I would, probably most likely just grab a real guitar hahaha.

The Gypsy violin is INCREDIBLE!!! This instrument takes the cake the articulations are awesome and a real inspiration to play. So al in all, good guitars, great violin, a good trombone, lots of Gypsy percussions and guitar box slaps flamenco dancer shoes taps castanets great library all together.

Goliath

Is great! lots to work here with, but again not super super impressed however I do realized that this libraries were realesed long time ago and I do have a lot of keyboards so my pallets of sounds is very big but if you needed a library that had everything or most of everything on it, this would be it. Great everything! It contains a lot if not all of the sounds from Sturmdrum 1 and RA some of the strings from Synohonic Orchestra Gold etc. etc. it truly is a Swiss Army knife of samples.

Silk

This is amazing very inspiring and it comes with a lot of performances exsamples (pun intended) on some of the instruments. these sounds are Asian and the instruments are true I look forward to writing some very weird stuff with this one.

RA

Like Gypsy I've always wanted this one, the instruments are great all of them. A lot of these instruments and I think all of them are included in Goliath. Something I would have like the info about, anyway but since "Play" is kind of clumsy to navigate I rather have all this instruments in one place. This is another very inspiring sampled library lots of weird instruments and percussions very ethnic and the best bag pipes samples I've ever played if you want sounds from all over the world this is it. These is your Swiss Army knife of ethnic samples and instruments.

Sturmdrum 3

First let me say that Sturmdrum 1 is part of Goliath I don't know if the entire library but at least some of it and some of the performances.

Sturmdrum 3 is a collection of all kinds of drums and percussions and performances across the keyboard with a lot of variations incredibly cinematic and inspiring, I did not spend to much time with it or with the other libraries and since daylight was approaching and it was already 7:00 am I had to quit. I will say that I'm looking forward exploring more of Sturmdrum 3.

All this libraries are great some not a substitution for stuff I use on my keyboards or some of my other plugins however some are unequalled I couldn't even begin to program or sample strings like Hollywood strings or the Gypsy violin, all and all for the price of the subscription this is a bargain, if however I had paid $400 for each library I would be a bit disappointed with some of them and truly I would have never spent that money specially since I already did with EWQL Symphonic Gold, Symphonic Choirs and Ministry of Rock

If you want to hear Ministry of Rock google, iTunes or Spotify Eddie Garrido and the song " The devil is a liar" or Symphonic Gold use in a pop ballad called "Your love has showed me" I still have to find use for the choirs outside of a church project without sounding like "Enigma"

The album "Let's Pretend" it's all done with plugins all orchestral sounds from EWQL Gold, Omnisphere, Stylus RMX, and UVI pianos. Pay attention to the orchestral sounds in the song " I wanna love you out loud" and the song "Say"

So, if you want to spend $50 $30 or $15 dollars in a subscription to a plethora of great sounds, you have a lot of patience and want to put the time it takes to make a Orchestra sound real in the box this is defenetly something for you.

As a last comment in this posting, at the time of this writing I'm not use to the Play interface I find it difficult to navigate and a bit clumsy compared to Omnisphere, but I feel the same way about Kontakt, I just think Spectrasonics has manage to make their navigation clear and easy in Omnisphere, Stylus RMX and Trillian the " Play Engine" is good, but clumsy to use and tedious to navigate in my test, but I'm sure I'll get use to it and as I said I feel the same way about Kontakt.

Anyway I'll post again as I gain more experience with this awesome plugin And I'll probably write a review on the "PLAY" engine .

Happy Producing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review on EW Composer Cloud 1

Review on east west / sounds online composers cloud subscription

Sounds online composers cloud is a subscription based platform the first of its kind and the only one in existence that I know for music samples libraries.

If you are familiar with EW/QL products I don't have to tell you that the sounds are excellent and if this is your first time at it well... You're in for a good experience but outside of the sound quality of the libraries what they have done is a subscription model so that you have access to ALL the libraries or 7 libraries if you are a student, (they also have student pricing). If you already a client of EW if you are an owner of one of the libraries you can have the first year subscription for 30 dollars for the first year then it bumps up to 50 dollars that gives you access to ALL Libraries if you are a student you get the Student Pricing and for 15 per month you get access to your choice of 7 libraries that's 7 libraries for $180 that is awesome!!! Considering that I bought one library for $400

This review is not on the sounds which are the best in the market, nor the sample player called " the play engine" this review is about my experience as I joined the service.

First of all all the bad or should I say the stuff I wish was different

1. When you read the fine print on the contract the subscription is for a year and there is a penalty if you cancel which is 50% of the remainder of your contract sorta like a phone company contract. They do have monthly plans but, they're more expensive.

2. Again, in the not so fine print they say "Access to ALL libraries" that is not entirely true you have access to the "Gold libraries" that are awesome but they also have Diamond Libraries" which we don't have access to so in my book that is not ALL Libraries

3. This libraries need to be downloaded and we're talking about these Libraries are huge anywhere from 12 to 80 Gigs per library!!! So be prepered to be downloading for 3 or 4 days

They do have a a 1 TB HD available for 99 with all the Gold libraries installed but again for 99 plus shipping that for me it came out to $115 or 131 over night. I think that it should be free since what your paying for is the licenses to use their libraries. If their contract model is like a phone company they should at least give you the phone!!!

4. And last but not least it only works with an iLock you have a choice to license you're computer or license an iLock , which if you want to work in more then one system of course you want the licenses on the iLock, I already had an iLock but the subscription say it requires the iLock 2 so there goes another 50 dollars and I'm having a bit of an issue between ilocks now cause the licenses for my other plugins UVI EWQL and digidesign are installed on my iLock 1

On my iLock account but for some reason the licenses of the subscription were deposited on a different iLock account and I had no way of choosing accounts so at the time of this writing I had email iLock to see if they can merge the accounts so I can have all my licenses on one iLock since well... a MacBook Pro only has 2 USB ports this glitch might not happen to you and it may be an iLock issue cause it happen to me with UVI also a while back so just a bit of a hassle in my experience.

At the time of this writing I'm still downloading the libraries being a student and to test the waters I subscribe to the 15 dollar yearly plan for seven libraries I paid my $14.99 and I got a confirmation in my inbox right of way and I downloaded the play engine and their program "called installation center" it asks you to verify your iLock accounts password and a list of libraries comes up with all the goodies and download buttons for the libraries you have access to.

We'll be prepared to wait and have patience cause I subscribed on the 25th of July and its the 27th and I'm still downloading I've downloaded 5 so far I have two left but one of the libraries left is 60 gigs and the other 84 gigs!!! so it'll probably be 2 more days hahaha. The sounds are worth the wait I should say that I am in the mountains probably in a DSL connection and my download speed is 1 meg per second if I was at home my download. Speed would be 10 Meg's per second at least, EW does say that to download a library in any connection you should do it at night and go to bed. Also I'm downloading to an external usb HD because I want the libraries to be portable, I don't know if that makes a difference on download speed if it does it might be not significant, the good side of this is that I'm still waiting for my ILock 2 so I couldn't run the libraries without it.

At the bottom it says time left for download and speed

It seems like I said a lot of negative things about it but I cannot stress enough how good these libraries are, and to have access to 7 or All libraries for a monthly fee is amazing!!! Buying the libraries out right would be around 12 thousand dollars when all is said and done and no keyboard in the market Yamaha, Korg or Roland can sound like these samples do. At least not the factory sounds. Will I take my laptop to use live? maybe not cause I don't like the hustle I rather use my trusty Motif and Kronos but to record in my studio and for other studio work EWQL, UVI and Spectrasonics is the way to go.

So far I'm super exited to play Hollywood Strings and Gypsy I would let you know how it goes.

Happy producing!