Jovian 

I've only read the first post of this thread, let me give you my personal feedback: If you are after realism VSL is what you need without any doubt. You will get all the articulations you want and a brilliant interface to manage them (playing or notating). Let's say you choose a Flute matrix, set the Keyswitches and MIDI CC the way you feel more confortable and play it (of course you need some VI playing technique) it will be the same as listening to a Flute player in your studio. 

Yes, the sounds are dry. This means you will be able to place them where you want (close or distant) and to get the feeling of small/medium/big ensembles (and venues) according to the music needs. Of course it means you will need some nice convolution reverbs and of course it will take time and experience to learn how to use them properly (in conjunction with faders and power panners) if you're after a good placement of the sections. This community and the Beat Kaufmann tutorials will help you to master these tecniques.

I purchased SE bundle 1 and Bundle 2 + the Vienna Suite less than 5 months ago. I never used VSL samples before and i swear i am extremely satisfied of the whole package. My advice: if you don't need the Harpsichord, the Pipe Organ and the Chamber Strings right now you can go for the SE Bundle 1, if you just want to check the outstanding quality of VSL and your music could be played with the basic articulations you can choose the SE Volume 1.

Regards

Just a question about hardware requirements: is having a seperate SSD essential for just SE Vol 1? What about an audio interface? I believe my internal hard disk is 7200rpm. I looked inside my computer case and there does seem to be a slot where an SSD is meant to go, but by the looks of it there isn't a spare SATA and Power Supply cable. 

Would it be all right to say, purchase it now and download it later when I have the required hardware, or is there a time limit to download it? 

The SEs are very ressource efficient. It should work with a 7200 rpm drive, but an SSD would be a very sensible and noticeable upgrade - I would definitely invest in one for any sample-related work. Do yourself that favor, sooner or later.

An audio interface is an absolute must, spare yourself the disheartening experience of working with samples through a standard audio card.

Something just occured to me: if I purchase SE Vol. 1 during the sale and then upgrade to Vol. 1 Bundle afterwards, would I have to make the difference from the discount I got from the sale and ultimately end up paying the same price if I had bought Vol. 1 after the sale anyway? Or, would the upgrade price be 'fixed' and still be exactly the same regardless of the price I paid for Vol. 1?

Hello, 

Once you have registered the SE Volume 1, the price you paid for it doesn´t matter for the upgrade. The best idea is of course to purchase the bundle right away, there are still some days left...

Best, 
Paul

I don't know, I don't really want to rush into anything. I've been thinking maybe I should wait until I get the recommended hardware first before making the purchase, even if that means missing the sale. 

I think you need to change your username to JovianTheTeaser

:)

For SE, an SSD is not necessary, a 7200 rpm hard drive will work fine.  SE 1, 1+, 2 and 2+ combined require far fewer resources than the full libraries, and fully loaded, will only take up about 8 gigs of RAM.

Generally, when running sample libraries, you do need multiple hard drives, keeping the sample libraries off the system drive, as doing so helps overall performance.  In a typical music computer setup (where a separate computer for running sample libraries is not used) one drive is used for the o/s and programs, one drive for sample libraries, and one drive for recording.

About the SSD drives: people tend to install their o/s on the SSD and use the hard disk as storage, but it sounds like people use it to run their sample libraries seperate from the drive they have their o/s on, or so that's what I gathered. Is that correct?

Both. The OS and applications sit on an SSD to accelerate startup and loading times. The samples sit on separate SSDs so that nothing gets in the way of streaming samples, which is of vital importance for the performance, and also to be able to keep the system clean and be able to reformat the system drive, set up a new OS, make a fresh install etc. without having to re-install hundreds of GB of sample data as well.

HDDs are often used as project and audio data storage because frequent/constant writing on SSDs reduces their life duration (although not nearly at such a drastic rate as people used to believe). Nontheless, SSDs should be treated as much read-only as possible.

Using an SSD for VSL libraries has many advantages, from the number of samples that can be streamed to being able to load smaller portions of the samples into RAM (with VI Pro only IIRC).  Using an SSD is particularly beneficial when using the full libraries of VSL.  However, for SE, the need is far less, and if your budget is tight, that is one place you can save some money.  If you were purchasing a full library rather than an SE library, then an SSD would be of significantly greater importance.