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For the aspiring composer, this is your starting block
Date of Review: Aug 8, 2008
The Bottom Line: This is where you start if you're starting into the industry, with a low budget.
Size: 32 gigs (including Expansion)
Has: Key Switches, Velocity Layers
East West Symphonic Orchestra Gold (EWSOG) is the staple for several composers out there. The quality of the samples are truly quite spectacular and the strength of this library is held within it's strings. A lot of attention was paid to their styles of play and you get a lot of orchestral effects for each section (French Horn rips, Flute trills, etc). Keyswitches is another powerful function of this library. Most if not all libraries produced by EW have Key Switches but I felt it was in Gold that they really started to let you see it's power.
Key Switches
Key Switches are keys on the midi keyboard which allow a composer to go from one style of play to another quickly to add realism and flexibility to your song. They are often color coded differently from available notes an instrument can perform for easy detection. For example say you have the Solo Violin KS (Key Switch) patch up. You start off with regular style of play and decide that at a certain part of the song you'd really like the violin to come in slowly, longer attack of sorts. You simply click the appropriate KS and all the notes will have this property. You can switch between these styles at will and hear your violin part add much more layers of realism.
Another example is with the flutes. Say you want long sustained notes, and then you want the flute to play trill *going up and down a semi note really fast*, there is a Key Switch you can press on the keyboard which will change the notes available to you into trill notes. You can switch back when you are done the part.
As mentioned earlier the strings are powerful in EWSOG, however there are lacking elements too. For example the brass in particular are fairly weak and stale. You can do a lot more with them and though there are some fine gems in the mix like the solo Tuba, which I use often, it is overall uninspiring. Products like Project SAM's Brass section far surpasses this libraries brass and understandably so, for EWSOG is like the middle man for all sections. It provides very acceptable quality on all regards, however it doesn't have the power to beat most specialized libraries.
Another somewhat lacking part is the flutes. I didn't like their texture. The flutes felt too airy, the oboe's nasal quality somewhat diminished, you'd be hard pressed to use them as is. Applying reverb and other effects you CAN get a pretty epic sound out of them, and the solo flute does contain a good deal of power in it, but overall I find myself wandering away from them.
Also note that installing this library will take you well over half an hour as there are 8 DVD's to worry about, and it takes a while per DVD to copy to your hard drive.
Instruments it has:
Strings:
Violins Section
Violas Section
Cello Section
Double Bass Section
Large String Section : A mix up of the above sections in various forms. Like 70 piece sustained orchestra, 50 piece fast legeto orchestra etc
Solo Violin
Solo Viola
Solo Cello
Solo Double Bass
Harp
Wood Winds:
Flute Section
Oboe Section
English Horn (a very similar instrument to Oboe)
Solo Flute
Solo Oboe
Brass:
Trumpet Section
Trombone Section
French Horn Section
Tuba Section
Euphonium
Solo Tuba
Solo Trumpet
Solo Trombone
Percussion:
Tom Tom's
Wagner Bass Drum *deep thudding*
Snares
Timpani
Sticks --> For some reason there is also a Piano patch here... (steinway piano)
The library has only one mic positioning for it's instruments *with a couple extra thrown in percussion*, so you don't get a great deal of variety in terms of natural sounding reverb rather then the artificial stuff. Some may not care about this, and in truth it's never proved a big problem for me either, but for the elitists who want everything as absolutely realistic as possible, you're looking to buy EW Symphonic Orchestra Platinum Plus, which has all 3 mic positions Far, Stage, and Close.
Mic Positioning (s, f, c) [Stage, Far, Close]
Mic Positioning refers to where the mic was during the recording of the sampling. Why is this important you ask? Well as good as reverb technology is, there's simply no substitute for the real thing. Different Mic Positioning allows different sounds for the composer for different reasons. For example, say you want to make a song with thumping drums. For this you would use the "s", or "f" mics. Mic positioning is explained below from closest to furthest.
c - close. The mic is right in the face of the instrument. Generally very dry samples with no or little reverb ideal for industrial or other means where the composer can add effects themselves without worry of having to cut or trim out unwanted reverb or muffled noise.
s - stage. The mic is sitting where an audience would be. The instrument in question of course, is on the stage. Ideal for creating pieces in which the composer wishes to sound as realistic as possible in terms of a performance.
f - far. The mic is a good deal further away. We're talking very back. The instruments have a natural reverb, slightly muffled due to distance, textures somewhat dulled. Ideal for ambient compositions in which you apply your own form of reverb. I find far instruments are great for molding. They do however tend to sound heavily reverbed if you put too many of them together affecting aesthetic qualities.
There are also mic positioning on different levels in terms of height, however these mic positioning are not often deployed. A B C D they are often referred to. There's no meaning behind the letters, only where they are positioned. For example, say you had a bass drum, Mic A would be positioned at the bottom of the drum, absorbing all the thick thump. B would be positioned on the lower edge of the drum, C is positioned in the middle. You get the idea. The reason behind this is to capture different nuances. For perfectionists, it is sometimes difficult to hear the difference and in all honesty in the hustle and bustle of a full song these differences are drowned out, so don't start making choices on "well this library has 30 different mic positionings!!!" In fact this is a bad thing, the more mic positionings, the more space taken up for one instrument, and less substance you have to work with in total. I'd rather 5 different percussion, then 1 percussion recorded in 5 different locations.
Like Symphonic Choirs EW Gold is a rather large library (32 gigs). It's weight is evident on your RAM when certain patches are used. It's also got a lot of variety in styles and articulation which many jump onto without first considering if they really really need it. Consider a person who buys a sports car in the core of downtown. Several hundreds of horse power and he's only going to need to go at a crawl at best. Though this anology is somewhat unclear the point is consider if you're really going to need all the several styles of play. I've used this library for over 2 years and i'm still used about 60% of it, and I should tell you, 15% was simply out of obligation (well it's there, so I guess I should try using it :/).
For the composer who wants only the bulk of the orchestra without the fine points in between cheaper and more useful alternatives like Mirosov's Philharmonic Orchestra comes to mind. It's 8 gigs of concentrated orchestra. It has much fewer effects and special styles of play, but it delivers hellish powerful blows in regards to the most used styles. I've never used that library though research into it was something that had me wondering if I had known what I did now, which library I would have chosen.
EXTRA NOTES:
It is HIGHLY recommended you buy a secondary internal hard drive for your samples, and that you don't mix them with your OS drive. This is to ensure the fastest streaming possible to achieve the best sound possible.
This harddrive should not be below 7200 rpm, SATA.
2 Gigs of ram is the minimum to use this library effectively. It says 1 gig on their site but that limits you to simple projects with up to about 12 instrument patches, and trust me, 12 is not that much.
