Think twice before purchasing Eastwest PLAY

[Andrew Aversa]

Unfortunately, as long as people keep buying shoddy products, developers will keep making them.

[peter269]

Yikes! That's a lot of horse power! Do we get that much more from the Play engine than we were getting from the NI engine? I too own a lot of the older versions of East West software and can load up a ton of Gold Pro XP, Stormdrum patches etc and crank out some music on my humble P4 2.66 with 2 gigs of ram.

Darren

It looks like a lot of horsepower, but you have to realize that many of the new PC computers shipping have a motherboard capable of 8GB of RAM. Of that 8GB, Vista can use up to 2GB of RAM.

On the PC, part of the efficiency issue is Vista.

For example, besides composing, my wife is an excellent graphic artist. One routine she did on Photoshop took 30 minutes on Vista but less than 5 minutes on a PIV. Why? Vista and RAM vs. XP and RAM. On a 2GB system, XP uses about 250MB of RAM.

System integration is an issue. Each of the four main companies (EW, NI, SONiVOX, VSL) have their own system of streaming off the hard drive. If you put products from these different companies on the same hard drive, you have to expect some performance issues.

Price wise, the cost of a new 8GB PC system is about the same as a 2GB Pentium 4 system, $2995.

You are gaining more, you just have to keep in mind that the industry is transitioning to 64-bit, and like when we went from Windows 98 to XP, there was always a little pain on the way until the transition was complete. At this point, Cubase 4 isn't yet 64-bit except in beta, and neither is Kontakt 3.

[peter269]

Unfortunately, as long as people keep buying shoddy products, developers will keep making them.

I have a number of PLAY products and none of them are shoddy.

[muziksculp]

I'm wondering...are there any success stories with PLAY (Macs or PCs), (Plug-in, or Standalone) ? Are there any satisfied PLAY users ? It would be great to hear some positive PLAY feedback for a change.

Well.... so far, I have been holding back on purchasing any PLAY based libraries, mainly due to the many negative feedback posts, on various forums, then again, I'm not sure if the majority of PLAY users are very happy with PLAY, and possibly just a minority of users are having some issues.

Besides, I currently feel that there is no urgency in rushing to buy half-baked SW, especially, if that is the case with the latest version of PLAY, but, the simple fact is that it has been difficult to evaluate things as they stand with PLAY's usability, stability, efficiency,...etc. based on forum posts.

Waiting until March '09, is my current strategy, with Snow Leopard, and possibly the next version of LP8, which will hopefully be (64-bit) seem to be a good option for now. Maybe by then PLAY will be ready, and become very efficient, stable, and reliable, to use on demanding projects, on both Macs and PCs. (plug-in and standalone) in 64-bit mode.

Let's not forget that NI's Kontakt took a long time to be a popular SW sampler, hopefully PLAY will get there as it matures, I think it just needs more time.

[peter269]

I'm wondering...are there any success stories with PLAY (Macs or PCs), (Plug-in, or Standalone) ? Are there any satisfied PLAY users ? It would be great to hear some positive PLAY feedback for a change.

There are a lot of success stories, it's that working professionals don't usually have the time to post. I have a client I set up with DP6 and QLSO, one orchestral section per hard drive, and his most recent cue smoked!

Well.... so far, I have been holding back on purchasing any PLAY based libraries, mainly due to the many negative feedback posts, on various forums, then again, I'm not sure if the majority of PLAY users are very happy with PLAY, and possibly just a minority of users are having some issues.

Besides, I currently feel that there is no urgency in rushing to buy half-baked SW, especially, if that is the case with the latest version of PLAY, but, the simple fact is that it has been difficult to evaluate things as they stand with PLAY's usability, stability, efficiency,...etc. based on forum posts.

Your point is valid. The pros I know using these libraries, including myself, get good use out of them. What you can't get around for any program is that there are system integration issues that have to be worked out. For the client I mentioned, I spent two weeks spec'ing out the system on paper before I sent a final quote. One system was for QLSO (on the Mac) and the other was a dedicated Vienna Instruments system on the PC using Vienna Ensemble 3 so that he could stream audio/midi from the PC to the Mac.

Last year on P4s, that would have taken 8 machines. I set him up with a complete orchestral template of QLSO and VI with TWO systems! So he's got a world class production studio sitting in a 10 x 10 space (including his keyboard and other stuff).

Waiting until March '09, is my current strategy, with Snow Leopard, and possibly the next version of LP8, which will hopefully be (64-bit) seem to be a good option for now. Maybe by then PLAY will be ready, and become very efficient, stable, and reliable, to use on demanding projects, on both Macs and PCs. (plug-in and standalone) in 64-bit mode.

My sense is that PLAY is ready and you can use it on very demanding projects today.

Normally, I don't stick out my neck like this, but I do feel the product is getting a bad rap in places. What you have to keep in mind, like it or not, is that you have to sit down and do the system integration and make sure it works. I spent weeks doing that for my own studio and I ended up planning it by Kontakt, EW, and Vienna. That took more time and organization than I wanted to put it, but in the end, I work pretty efficiently with minimum issues.

Most of the issues I really run into are with LP8 and how it handles setting up multitimbrally.

[peter269]

To comment from an earlier post, I find it a good thing that so many developers are having their own software instruments because then there's no question as to who is responsible for tech support.

[Andrew Aversa]

Peter, in the years that I have been actively following the world of VSTs and sample libraries, I have never seen so many complaints about a single VST. I simply cannot believe that they're unjustified. SO many people saying the performance is poor; that it's a resource/CPU hog, that it doesn't run on minimum or even recommend systems, that it runs poorly on even dual and quad core systems, that it causes errors with OTHER VSTs... the list doesn't end. It just astounds me.

I've actually come extremely close to purchasing a number of PLAY products on three or four occasions, and every time I'm ready to check out, I remember how many posts I've read from respectable composers who know their technology about how the software runs very poorly. Even the people that do get it to run properly admit how unoptimized it is. For something that has been out for over a year now, I think that's unacceptable.

Now, before I get attacked for any reason.. I'm a big fan of East West products in general. I've spent at least $3000 on them. I bought QLSO Gold and XP Pro for over $800, Stormdrum for $300, RA when it came out ($1000!) the Complete Composer's Bundle ($1,100) etc. I have talked to at least a hundred aspiring hobbyists who ask my advice on orchestral libraries.. I have always advised QLSO. But not anymore. Thanks to an overwhelming number of negative user reports, combined with a dongle system and less flexibility to edit patches (as opposed to Kontakt), EWQL has lost me as a customer of their new product line and I no longer recommend it. I still recommend their old releases if people can get them, though.

[quantum7]

As a "working professional" who spends 10 hours a day in the studio I also do not like wasting my time complaining either, but if someone doesn't, who will? After talking to sales reps at the local Guitar Center I have learned that complaints regarding PLAY are rampant. As I stated earlier, ALL 70 plus VSTi's work flawlessly on my DAW, with the exception of PLAY. Ya, my DAW is 2 years old and I only have a measly 4 gigs of RAM, but geez.

[muziksculp]

Hello Peter, and Thank You for the detailed reply to my post.

I'm glad to hear that there are many happy pro-users working with PLAY based libraries. I also agree that there are many variables related to computer systems, their specs, and the way they are integrated, that make a big difference in the level of satisfaction, and success in working with PLAY, and other sampler/players.

For now, I'm not in a big rush to use PLAY, but will go ahead and purchase some PLAY based libraries in the near future.

Lately, I have been working on putting together a powerful computer system to handle demanding sample libraries, mainly a Mac Pro 8 core/ 8 GB RAM, and a Quad-Core PC/ 16 GB RAM/Vista-64. I'm quite optimistic, that PLAY will improve via future updates, and hopefully many current users with issues, will eventually be happy with PLAY.

By the way, "macPro Video" has a very useful video tutorial on how to handle multi-timbral VIs such as Kontakt, Stylus RMX, and PLAY as plug-ins within LP8, mainly by utilizing transformer objects in the "Environment" to overcome the way LP8 deals with volume, and Pan automation, of multi-timbral VIs. It is in the September, and October releases of their latest Logic 303- TNT2 series of tutorials.

Cheers.

[quantum7]

I was also told by GC that PLAY sales have been slow, supposedly due to bad customer reviews, hence the 2 for 1 special that has now been extended by 1 month.