I was perusing the promotional videos of this new library a little while ago, and I really really feel sick to my stomach! I mean what's next? PROJECT JOHN WILLIAMS for Kontakt? Am I going to use this library? Are you? Have we become so musically paraplegic? Are we the composers of today so technically inept? Press this button to get "Indiana Jones Main Titles from (1':34''-1':48'')"? Press the other button - you proud professional composer you... - to get "E.T. Adventures on Earth (0':00"-0'-10")", and don't forget to get paid and put your name on the credits?....
Jerry Goldsmith, Bruce Broughton, John Barry, Maurice Jarre, Elliott Goldenthal, James Horner (who at least knows how to pinch himself, he doesn't need programmers!), and even John Williams (among others), they all had to work at times under inhumanly tight deadlines, so there goes that miserable potential excuse... And the other miserable potential excuse that we don't have enough budget for orchestrators holds as much water as one wants. Those of you who think it does, why don't you consider the difference between detailed musical sketches (if ever you've seen them), and pressing button A while twisting knob B (EQ, for our "sensitive" ears... We're perfectionists...). Even the excuse that these days the composer (except at the top) has to be his own engineer and producer is only half valid, because a composer worth his salt will still compose every note of his symphonic score if no orchestrator is engaged (that's how things are done in this league newbies - DJs, pop composers who are used to composing on drum tracks, grooves, etc. - no disrespect meant, just a different league).
The difference is, the aforementioned composers could do it with pen and paper!... Has the industry really allowed for so many incompetent drones to infest its continually putrefying waters? Where is this going? Where does it end? The line between tools that make our life easier (like the VSL, Sibelius, NOTION, etc.), and devices that do our work for us - correction! devices that do more than our work for us (the former assumes that we actually could do the work ourselves if pressed) - is not as thin as some people would have you believe. To me it's as thick as people are. How will we continue to "boast" that we are c o m p o s e r s and get any respect, when soon directors and producers of some musical background (beginner dilettantes) will be able to write "their own" music to their films...
No wonder I keep reading worshipful reviews on so many bad or mediocre soundtracks on the internet. A lot of people just don't have the first idea what quality is all about... You have both my wrath and my pity. You will NEVER know on how much you are missing out...
P.S.: Note to the developers: I know you're making money guys, and I admire your proficiency in electronics PLUS music! Can't you put your talents into software that will facilitate the work of actual musicians please? Don't drive the stake through the heart of an already endangered species...