Edirol HQO

[Scott Buckley]

Hey peeps,

Here is a little product which goes quite often unnoticed, or it gets judged too harshly against other products by people who are faithful to their GPOs, their Gigs, or their EWQLs.

It is no other than the Edirol High Quality Orchestra. Sure the name is crap, but that is no premise to begin judging what this product can do. Sure, there will be people who read this who agree that it can do some quality stuff, but I have a feeling that the majority will roll their eyes. Look, see!

Im making this attempt to make budget composers and pros alike familiar with this product, and its capabilities as another low-cost (it retails for AUD$795), and low-on-space solution (Its actually a synthesiser, not a sample library) to create great sounding orchestral scores. I have been a user of this product for nearly 3 years, and have found it something quite capable of producing amazing material.

The demos on the edirol site suck, and dont show what this thing can do. Below are a few chosen samples I have created using this baby (yes, perhaps this IS a vehicle for self-promotion...):

Concerning Hobbits - http://www.mp3.com.au/track.asp?id=73748
Norghan Battle Waltz - http://www.mp3.com.au/track.asp?id=67616
Centaurs Lament - http://www.mp3.com.au/track.asp?id=66481
Who Wants to Live Forever - http://www.mp3.com.au/track.asp?id=74022
Star Wars Demo (Shhh...)http://www.mp3.com.au/track.asp?id=63216

Each have a kind of a different style, which shows a few good points of the HQO and what it can do, although the flute in Centaurs Lament is a little on the sad side....could have been tweaked a little more, but hey.

The Edirol has its good and bad points, some bads being that some solo instruments are a little unrealistic, including violins, and some brass, but ensemble instruments are quite amazing...the slow violin section especially is quite amazing, and gives a great realistic timbre to your string sections.

The onboard reverb (and chorus) is of quite an amazing quality as well, and fits with the synth perfectly, which can vary your sound from a grandiose cathedral sound, to a room better suited for chamber groups. Neato.

Anyway, anyone use this as well? What are your opinions? Please share!

-s

[R. Glenn]

Nice work Scott.

I personally agree with your point completely. As far as orchestral renderings go in terms of realistic sound, I've heard stuff made with VSL that IMHO doesn't even come close to what you've posted here.

Programs like this one (Edirol HQ Orchestra) or Reason 2 (which can actually produce some very nice orchestral renderings) are often not considered "serious" by many. In fact, some will laugh when presented with the notion of making orchestral music with Reason 2 (it comes with a 500 MB orchestral library).

Also, old samples like the Roland strings or EMU soundfonts can sound great in the right hands.

Peeps tend to underestimate the potential of many cheaper or "low-end" programs, thinking that the high-end sample libraries will make anything the make sound good. However, a high-end library also requires a high-level understanding of the crucial basics...or you'll still be getting very low-end results.

Bottom line: It's not the tool, it's how you use it...and I think your above demos pretty much proves that point Scott. Thank's for sharing.

Cheers

Rodney

[bouche]

Hey Scott,

I also use the Edirol HQ, and as Scott has proved, you 'can' get some amazing sounds from it - especially as it's just a 100MB of samples (they must be samples cunningly looped!). However you have to exploit it's strengths. eg the slow violins, the horns, spicatto strings and tremolo..... so it can be very restrictive on your composition style. some of the instruments sound great around middle C but 1 octave up and they sound terrible! also it isn't much good for fast string runs.

Here's a couple of tracks i'm working on with it:

http://www.filmisthetruth.co.uk/music/wonder_awe.mp3
http://www.filmisthetruth.co.uk/music/sad_raux.mp3
http://www.filmisthetruth.co.uk/musi..._rough2-01.mp3

And here's an example of how it can sound rubbish, however long you spend tweaking it!!!! the woodwind just don't have the attack sftz i need!

http://www.filmisthetruth.co.uk/musi...tes_rough1.mp3

i need more choice (more than 2 cymbal crashes!!) and more quality... so am considering buying EWQL silver to run along side the edirol, but not sure.... any thoughts??

[Edward]

I've used this VST extensively for several projects. I love the simplicity of it.
I have more recently switched to VSL Pro Edition but I find myself still using this as sort of a music notepad to get basic ideas down.

You can get some nice sounds out of it.

If your curious take a listen to these tracks. They range from short ques for games to a short film score. Prisoner and The Crypt use some Absynth, as well The Crypt and Noble King have a chior patch running in Kontakt.

http://www.dandlewood.com/prisonerfinal.mp3
http://www.dandlewood.com/herosfanfare.mp3
http://www.dandlewood.com/thethief.mp3
http://www.dandlewood.com/thecrypt.mp3
http://www.dandlewood.com/battlefield.mp3
http://www.dandlewood.com/nobleking.mp3
http://www.dandlewood.com/darkempire.mp3

[Scott Buckley]

Hey! Isnt it my good friend Chris? hehe....

Definately excellent work there mate. You can get some excellent timbres from the HQO!

i need more choice (more than 2 cymbal crashes!!) and more quality... so am considering buying EWQL silver to run along side the edirol, but not sure.... any thoughts??

Ive heard that the Silver is a great choice to use with the Edirol...apparently the samples and the reverbs match quite well, in comparison to, say GPO, which I think sounds a little different. But I cant actually commit to this, because Ive never heard them together.

I know a fella named Philip Chance who does though, who apparently comes to these forums....if yur out there Philip, enlighten us! Or anyone else for that matter. Ive been curious myself as to whether I should buy something like EWQL Silver or GPO....

-s

[O Boy]

Ya know, I looked into the Edirol a while back. From what I heard of the "official" posted demos, I wasn't really impressed. Now that I've listened to all of this stuff, I am!

In the interim, I've picked up both EWQLSO Silver & GPO. Which would be a better fit for Edirol users? I think it depends upon your knowledge & the way you work.

IMHO, GPO demands a thorough background in orchestration. If you can make a real deal orchestra sound good, clean and effective, you can make GPO sing. My orchestration chops are anemic, so I haven't been able to make GPO sound real well--yet.

Silver is a bit more set-and-forget. I have a track on my Broadjam site called 3am Train, all done very quickly with Silver. That should give you an idea of what can be done with it in a proverbial heartbeat. From my memory of how Silver sounds, and comparing it to what Edirol's stuff sounds like, it should make a good marriage. My only quibble is that there is no sustained viola patch in Silver. Oh well...

One advantage that Edirol users, and to a lesser extent Advanced Orchestra users, have is that both libraries take some work to make something sound really believable. The knowledge gleaned from that work can definitely be applied to Silver &/or GPO.

All the examples posted here sounded wonderful. All I can say is just keep writing & keep listening!
O.

[MalteRathke]

Hey,

you guys made some cool sounding stuff with Edirol (Scott: I listened to yours on MP3.COM.AU a while ago, til now I wasn't really aware that it was Edirol you used).

Did you extensively tweaked Edirols patches or is it mostly out of the box?

Malte

[Scott Buckley]

Did you extensively tweaked Edirols patches or is it mostly out of the box?

Malte

Out of the box Although sometimes its good to tweak sounds if yur not happy...I found that I was pretty happy with all the patches I ended up using.

-s

[bouche]

[QUOTE=Edward]I have more recently switched to VSL Pro Edition but I find myself still using this as sort of a music notepad to get basic ideas down.

so Edward are those tracks the Edirol or VSL or both? If so it sounds spectacular! really cleverly orchestrated

hey again Scott!
As for buying EWQL silver, thanks for the advice, i think i will now!
The GPO demos I've heard sound ok for classical chamber music, but anything bigger they sound rather pathetic! also sounds too much like hard work! I wonder if Silver will run on my PC (1Gb RAM) along side the edirol...??

with the Edirol I find the key is finding and using the good patches (tweak some of them if needed) and add some good reverb and lots of expression controllers.

[greatzed]

I've got the Edirol Orchestra as well and there are some great samples in there. The French Horn and cello sections are very nice, and (as mentioned in the first post) the slow violins section is beautiful. There are many duds in this library, however, namely the trumpets (awful!) and woodwinds.

I don't know if I'd pick this over GPO or EWQL, both sound better than Edirol in my opinion, and they both have more options.