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MaestroRage
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Selcuk Bor @MaestroRage

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East West Symphonic Orchestra GOLD + PRO XP

Posted by MaestroRage - February 6th, 2008


East West Symphonic Orchestra Gold - $599 (w/ PRO Expansion)
Size: 32 gigs (including Expansion)
Rating: 3.8/5
Has: Key Switches(8), Velocity Layers(8)

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.

What are [Key Switches]?

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.

Instruments it has: (Roughly, for a full list you can go here!
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) section
Bassoon section
Clarinett section
Solo Flute
Solo Oboe
Solo Alto Flute
Solo Clarinett
Solo Bassoon
Solo English Horn

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)

Recap
Strengths:
- Great Strings, very dynamic and flexible
- Moving percussion
- Many velocity layers for the strings and a good amount for brass

Weaknesses
- Key Switches don't usually allow both sustained and staccato mixes, so you'd have to upload 2 sets of instruments to your Kompakt player, eating up a good deal of RAM
- Woodwinds and Brass are somewhat uninspiring

Once again, for a full comparison list as well as detailed look into the instruments you can look at the pdf held over at Soundonline.com, or click here for the file itself.

East West Symphonic Orchestra GOLD + PRO XP


Comments

Wow, for the $600 you pay for it, I would have expected a full woodwind section. Not even a clarinet or bassoon. So, what do you do there? Other than that it looks great. Although I'd have to get a new hard drive to handle something like this, I think mine is currently 40gigs >.>

It's great to see all this information from a buyer's perspective, I'd like to think about buying something to this effect in the future.

there is actually bassoon. I was remembering this off the top of my head, these are not entirely finished yet :D!

Good eye though.