Think twice before purchasing Eastwest PLAY

[tmhuud]

I hate to hear from full-time pro composers I know saying their dual G5 can't get more than three voices of polyphony out of QLSO Play. It seems like the "Designed for" systems are the only things that can actually run these PLAY libraries in the course of normal usage. It is dishonest to say the software runs on any computer with more than 1gb of RAM if it can't actually play back anything without glitches or crashing.

As a longtime EW customer who has spent over $3,000 on their products I feel like I am allowed to criticize their newest release as they have not only lost my business for their PLAY products but my recommendations as well. If I saw better evidence of customer service and support for these products I might feel differently, but that is clearly not the case (customers being banned, insulted, ignored, etc.)

That's interesting. I have found that my experience with East West to be just the opposite. Most of the PROS that I know in my circles all have more powerful machines (mac pros) and are having little trouble running the software. You certainly are entitled to your opinion however. My assistant stays in touch with the recent activity over at the East West forums and he had mentioned that they are treating their customers very fairly regarding gathering information and taking constructive crticisms in improving PLAY in terms of form AND function. I took a moment to look at some of the threads and I had to agree with him. I thought that the owner(s) were being very fair in asking what people thought of how PLAY looked and how PLAY performed (right down to the font level)

After seeing what East West was willing to take into consideration, I was hard pressed to think of ANY other software developer who was willing to go that far to listen to its purchasers. (and no I am NOT an endorser of east west nor am I paid by them - I'm just a guy that buys there stuff and uses it along with countless other programs all day and often into the nights)

My 2 pennies.

[dubaifox]

The pic that you posted, however, seems to be less random than the one I posted. All threads "resolved"? But I just visited the said forum and the forum does not look like this.

Yeah...what is up with that.

I check every day and have NEVER seen it look like that.

[Richard400]

Its hilarious to see all these EastWest apologists try to convince everyone that Play works fine and EastWest is kind and responsive.

The laughs I'm getting at this goes some way to make up for the money I wasted buying several Play products.

The comedy routine seems to wobble between "Forget what everybody says, Play really does work!" and the old classic put-down line: "Pros are using it everyday without a problem."

For the record, I have contacted EW support on three occasions and NEVER received a reply (and this was after no response on their forum). One of these support requests was before I bought the Play products. I should learned from that.

I know better now. They'll never get another cent from me.

[scope4live]

The " PRO's " don't buy their software as they already have success w/ Kontackt, Giga and VSL products, and therefore accept free copies.
Us lowly amatuers buy our products, and one would think that courting us would be wise.
I admire all developers who strive for better products, but being an amatuer with unforgiving clients and agents cannot afford to spend time re learning a new application, but only continue with prior successful methods.
But when I take a break from " WORKING ", I shall definately come back here to where all of the " PRO'S " post their success stories in between their box office hits, and enjoy hearing their excellent demos, and stories of how the deadlines could not be met on their single DAW, recently upgraded to 64bit, w/o mentioned products.

More RAM, More CPU's, Faster & Larger HDD's, 64bit " PRO " O.S.'s......
Why use one working 32bit DAW, when you can have two at twice the price. Amatuers prefer redundancy and hardware.

If I even heard one " PRO " here mention a Bricasti Model 7, I might pay attention to their comments, even AES/EBU would get a nod.

I am beginning to think that this loosely used term " PRO " is a term associated with musical PROstitute...Nothing More.

[nikolas]

Before this goes down any further, let's sit back and remember that, indeed, there ARE people who are using PLAY successfully, and there IS a thread with specs on people who DO use PLAY successfully.

Let's not just bash a company!

The idea is to work things out, no? Between EW and their, apparently bad, relationship with many customers, between youselves and PLAY, between what you paid, what you expected to get and what you got.

[dubaifox]

there ARE people who are using PLAY successfully, and there IS a thread with specs on people who DO use PLAY successfully.

Yeah....about that.

That thread has been up for over a month, and on the Mac side, there are only a total of 15 posts in the thread, and of that only a few Cubase and Logic users saying they are getting OK results.

Not a very ringing endorsement in my opinion, at least for someone who has been trying to get information about Pro Tools and RTAS support. Do a search for my name if you want to see the axe I have been grinding over there for the past few months.

[kitekrazy]

The " PRO's " don't buy their software as they already have success w/ Kontackt, Giga and VSL products, and therefore accept free copies.
Us lowly amatuers buy our products, and one would think that courting us would be wise.
I admire all developers who strive for better products, but being an amatuer with unforgiving clients and agents cannot afford to spend time re learning a new application, but only continue with prior successful methods.
But when I take a break from " WORKING ", I shall definately come back here to where all of the " PRO'S " post their success stories in between their box office hits, and enjoy hearing their excellent demos, and stories of how the deadlines could not be met on their single DAW, recently upgraded to 64bit, w/o mentioned products.

More RAM, More CPU's, Faster & Larger HDD's, 64bit " PRO " O.S.'s......
Why use one working 32bit DAW, when you can have two at twice the price. Amatuers prefer redundancy and hardware.

If I even heard one " PRO " here mention a Bricasti Model 7, I might pay attention to their comments, even AES/EBU would get a nod.

I am beginning to think that this loosely used term " PRO " is a term associated with musical PROstitute...Nothing More.

That's a refreshing statement.

[robin123]

I decided not to purchase any EW product since they went the dongle route, I'm glad I didnt upgrade to play for existing products I license or I would've lost the efficiency offered by the kontakt version of same products.

But one thing is sure, they just ignore those customers who have any issue with their software until they find the fix. It happened when I initially purchased their kontakt based products and there was a rendering issue, they didn't respond to any of my queries regarding the fix and even deleted my post on their forum when I posted.

[davecos]

I decided not to purchase any EW product since they went the dongle route, I'm glad I didnt upgrade to play for existing products I license or I would've lost the efficiency offered by the kontakt version of same products.

Hey if the Kontakt versions are working for you, don't fix what ain't broke. I bought Platinum at a point when there was a free upgrade to PLAY so it was a no brainer for me to upgrade. Same went for Silver Pro XP. If buying PLAY would have meant a huge outlay of additional funds, I too would have stuck with bringing in the samples into Kontakt 3. But as it stands, I like PLAY more and prefer to use it.

[peter269]

The " PRO's " don't buy their software as they already have success w/ Kontackt, Giga and VSL products, and therefore accept free copies.
Us lowly amatuers buy our products, and one would think that courting us would be wise.
I admire all developers who strive for better products, but being an amatuer with unforgiving clients and agents cannot afford to spend time re learning a new application, but only continue with prior successful methods.
But when I take a break from " WORKING ", I shall definately come back here to where all of the " PRO'S " post their success stories in between their box office hits, and enjoy hearing their excellent demos, and stories of how the deadlines could not be met on their single DAW, recently upgraded to 64bit, w/o mentioned products.

More RAM, More CPU's, Faster & Larger HDD's, 64bit " PRO " O.S.'s......
Why use one working 32bit DAW, when you can have two at twice the price. Amatuers prefer redundancy and hardware.

If I even heard one " PRO " here mention a Bricasti Model 7, I might pay attention to their comments, even AES/EBU would get a nod.

I am beginning to think that this loosely used term " PRO " is a term associated with musical PROstitute...Nothing More.

I'm sorry but you are totally off base. Pros don't get free software, they buy it. When they get free software it's as an endorsement deal or they're beta testing the product.