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!