Being honest, I have only tried a few, the backing vocals one, Ra and Silk, and not really blown away, but i am the same with Engine and the UVi stuff. I think part of this is because I have come into creating different styles and composing as a guitarist, and I played with Kontakt first and got on with it, it seems more intuitive in most cases.

Dont get me wrong, there is definitely some of the stuff that have been released since the gong that has made me go wow, but I do wonder if it’s just me or others that feel the same because they are not keyboard players / synth people, and we know one thing and aren’t capable of adapting and getting to grips with a different sampler and are missing out??

What I will say however is there does seem to be a noticeable difference in quality in libraries from the past, what, 5 years. Older ones seem to stand up within a composition and are perfectly acceptable, but newer ones, they just have that extra level which means you can use as a solo instrument for a section and it sounds like it should. Might just be my ears of course!

 

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Last edited: Oct 16, 2024

I put them all in my archive for a rainy day

 

Personally i'm a bit exhausted about all these sample engine libraries. It's too much. Remember the days you had your first hardware synth and explored all it's capabilities, how sounds got created, what to combine to get that special sound you like and so on - and now in a really short time you get bombed with "presets" that are done. I don't mean they are bad, but i loose interest in all that predefined, prerendered, pre-effected, pre-mastered sounds. I might still download some of them to explore them a bit, but i can't choose a fav out of them.

 

I love all of them cause my Kontakt is malfunctioning, I have no choice and I am super grateful :D

 

Hollywood backup swingers
Voices of the empire, opera, soul, passion can be useful if you have enough space keep them.
Stormdrum 2
Goliath
Waiting for Hollywood choirs and orchestra + orchestrator then collection complete.
The rest of ew libraries are covered very well by kontakt stuff imo, don't need to download 200 gbs for a legato guitar/violin, an ethnic instrument or a synthesized hybrid sound.

 

Hollywood pop brass,Dark side,Backing singers, Gypsey forme so far.Its all down to your taste.Very happy to have the opportunity th choose things I lack in Kontakt.Thanks to those who make it possible

 

Goliath for sure, had it for a long time legit and it features on many of my productions. I find play play really clunky but Goliath is great for pop. Most of the other EW stuff seems too niche to justify the file sizes for me.

 

Dark Side, which was mentioned by Stanny5. I was waiting for it since 2010. Great tool for industrial-oriented stuff(EBM, Techno), ambient, metal and even noise.

 

The older libraries are not really bad, but lag behind the times and the sounds are partly old-fashioned or you have heard them a thousand times. Up to 25 years is just a looooong time in music. If I'm short of HD space I really wouldn't buy a new disk to store them.
But it's definitely great to be able to test the libs.

The newer libraries of the Hollywood (Diamond/)Opus series are really good and in combination with the Orchestrator also very practical to use. But you need Opus, Play is not enough. And they are very very large, up to 400 gigabytes each.
In my opinion they are best suited for people who score movies.

 

Anyone that complains that its old and unusable cant produce, its as simple as that.

Im was waiting for Gypsy and still waiting for the Play Choir (either Symphonic or the Hollywood one).

So i guess i have to wait for the choir one to be released, i did check the background one to see how the new word-builder works and i for one am happy it finally is cracked.

 

My choice too

 

Ok, out of the already available libraries, I personally like Ra, Gypsy, Goliath and Dark Side the most.
As a legit user, my favourite libs are the Opus libraries, especially the Hollywood Choir.
Only downside of it is the word builder, which can be a bit fiddly, but it's ok.
But don't expect wonders of the Opus libraries.
They sound good imo, but you can achieve almost the same with Kontakt libraries.
For some users that aren't familiar with Orchestration, the Orchestrator that comes with the Opus software could be interesting, as it has some presets in it for Scoring.

 

I'm personally just gonna use the Hollywood Opus as my daily and the rest will just be for a rainy day. The vocal libraries are very good.

 

They are all really good for building torrent ratios.

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2022

kek
lucky

 

We hope so... They started with the small libraries instead, I don't know why, maybe they want to keep the best for the end...

 

Any opinions perhaps?
How would this pack
https://www.strezov-sampling.com/products/view/choir-essentials.html
hold up to
https://www.soundsonline.com/hollywood-choirs
(which seems amazing, but too pricey, even on sale)