Nikki,
I picked up the Gold Edition on a group buy - really silly price - but it wouldn't tempt me to upgrade it to Gold Pro, or go for the Platinum Edition. It's personal preference to a degree, but for me the fact that EW have recorded in a massive hall seriously detracts from the library's usefulness.
The hall not only takes up a huge amount of disk space, but places a heavy burden on processing power (and RAM), and also it's just too BIG! The middle (stage mic) recordings are awash with reverb and there is nothing you can do about it, neither can you place instruments in a different 'location' - Example: I've just been asked to mock-up a Salvation Army band playing at a dockside as part of a documentary, but there's no way I can use this library for it! Not only that but you are paying for three sets of exactly the same instrument articulations, which with decent convolution reverbs around makes little economic sense.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a BAD library, but it's limited in it's applications - I reckon you'll be left with an ugly mess if you decide to run the strings through some distortion for one of your rock epics! I also feel their attention to detail in programming, organisation and recording is no match for the VSL team, who's consistent, pristine recordings leave you in absolute control.
I'll continue to save up for the VSL Symphonic Cube (which is just around the corner, right guys?) [:D]
Colin
I picked up the Gold Edition on a group buy - really silly price - but it wouldn't tempt me to upgrade it to Gold Pro, or go for the Platinum Edition. It's personal preference to a degree, but for me the fact that EW have recorded in a massive hall seriously detracts from the library's usefulness.
The hall not only takes up a huge amount of disk space, but places a heavy burden on processing power (and RAM), and also it's just too BIG! The middle (stage mic) recordings are awash with reverb and there is nothing you can do about it, neither can you place instruments in a different 'location' - Example: I've just been asked to mock-up a Salvation Army band playing at a dockside as part of a documentary, but there's no way I can use this library for it! Not only that but you are paying for three sets of exactly the same instrument articulations, which with decent convolution reverbs around makes little economic sense.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a BAD library, but it's limited in it's applications - I reckon you'll be left with an ugly mess if you decide to run the strings through some distortion for one of your rock epics! I also feel their attention to detail in programming, organisation and recording is no match for the VSL team, who's consistent, pristine recordings leave you in absolute control.
I'll continue to save up for the VSL Symphonic Cube (which is just around the corner, right guys?) [:D]
Colin