East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Choirs is without question one of the most extensive and sophisticated choir sample libraries on the market. In order to put such a mammoth to the test, I felt that that it was important to be more critical of the software from a professional perspective, and that I must be able to demonstrate how accessible, thorough, and powerful this software could be for the end-user. To meet these goals and truly put EWQL Symphonic Choirs to the test, I intend to see if I can use it to rework an entire choral piece, performed entirely from the sampled voices from this library in place of a real choir. Due to the nature of the review, I intend to provide CDM readers with something different: an episodic review. With that, I give you Episode 1: The Arrival.
9 DVDs – are you serious!?
EWQL Symphonic Choirs arrived at work one sunny, summer afternoon. The packaging was nice – standard software size, with the usual EastWest design aesthetic. â€Å“Hmmm…this box is pretty heavy,â€Â? I thought to myself. I cracked open the seal, and emptied the contents. A couple of user-guides, some registration papers, and a thick, posterboard disc envelope. I mean really thick.
â€Å“How big is this thing?â€Â? I checked the back of the box. 38 gigabytes. 9 DVDs. Let me type that again, in case you missed it. 38 gigabytes. 9 DVDs. â€Å“I wonder how long this will take to install,â€Â? I mused to my co-workers. â€Å“I’ve got a Pioneer DVR108 in my G5 – it should have no problems flying through this installation, right? It reads at 16x…â€Â? I took the package home that night and decided to wait until the weekend to do the installation.
Saturday morning arrived and I decided I would go ahead with the install and start plowing through the user guide. I put the first disc into the drive, opened up Omniweb to grab any software updates from the SoundsOnline website, and cracked open the manual. The installation dialog box slowly ticked upwards:
5 minutes remaining, 7 minutes remaining, 11 minutes remaining, 15 minutes remaining.
I was clearly in for a long wait. â€Å“So…I’ve got 9 DVDs here…I’m thinking I don’t want to sit in front of my Mac for two-plus hours today to wait for this to install. Boy I wish dual-layer discs were in-fashion…â€Â?
And so it was, that I spread out the installation of EWQL Symphonic Choirs over the course of two days. Yes – it took me a weekend to finally get this app up and running on a Dual 1.8Ghz PowerMac G5 with relatively fast drives. I spaced the install out such that I would stick a disc in, resume the install, and walk away to run errands, clean the apartment, play some Ghost Recon, or catch up on e-mail. This is not an installation for the impatient. Now, if you’ve got the time and willingness, you could probably get this thing installed in a couple of hours. But honestly I’ve always been rather fussy about how I spend my time, so this seemed like the best way to do it. After all was said and done, I was up and running by late Sunday afternoon and had skimmed the manual enough to know that not only was the install process rather lengthy – this was not a simple plug-and-play application. I’d had it easy with EWQL RA and Stormdrum – just pick a patch and start jamming! Not so with Choirs. If I was going to get ANY useful results from this library, I was going to have to devote some serious time and study to its use and application.
So back to the manual I go – this time from start to finish.
…to be continued…
You got me on pins and needles here.
LOL – Thanks, bliss. I realize the suspense must be killing you – but as deep as this library is, a rushed review simply wont do! I hope you can last until episode two!
Seriously Latta, I would love to see if you could recreate the intro to DM & Jemini's Ghetto Pop Life with the wordbuilder app. That has to be the single greatest use of a choir in the 00's
ATA
First of all, Brent, your writing is refreshingly NON TECHIE BORING DRY like some user reviews are. I'm already snickering at your honesty. You sound like the REST of us when trying out new toys.
KEEP BEING HONEST! We know that you won't bash a company; just let us know how "user friendly or not" these things are. Having used some hardware harmony processors in the past, (cheesy-really have to work at getting around all that) I was THRILLED at the thought of having something NEW with software.
Blessings to you and keep at it!
MJ
[…] Did I say ’start to finish’? After reading through the first few chapters of the manual, it was clear that setup for Choirs would not be a simple affair. It was also clear that reading through the entire manual wouldn’t necessarily give me any better grasp on using the app as a whole. So instead, I decided to take a stepped approach: read a few chapters, get the hang of those techniques, then read a few more. […]
[…] TBF: One of the most important things to me is instant access to my music, which is why I had to custom build a 9-PC renderfarm for my composition. Orchestration is particularly demanding and I never liked bouncing much. The way I built my render farm is pretty simple actually. I have 2 PCs for strings, 2 PCs for brass, 1 PC for woodwinds, 1 PC for percussion, 1 PC for choirs, 1 PC for ethnic instruments and my main computer. I use a variety of commercial and custom sample libraries. My favorite orchestral library is East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Library (particularly the XP edition). The guys also released an amazing choir library, which allows you to type in any text and have the choir sing it. (Ed: See our episodic review of EWQL Symphonic Choirs.) They also have a fantastic percussion library called Stormdrum and soon coming out with Stormdrum 2, which is going to be even wilder. I also enjoy many of the open-source VST instruments and effects, but my main source for basic effects is my trustworthy UAD. […]
hey not sound crazy but i cant find my dvd library
for my symphonic choirs for some odd reason i made a copy of my program so i have it but not my library, but is there a way to download the discs back over that you know of, a website or such. Im willing to try any thing to get them back. Maybe get them from you…..anything
If you have a legitimate license for the software then I'm sure contacting East West would be the most prudent way of getting another copy of the DVD library. http://www.soundsonline.com
how do I open wordbuilder? I can't seem to locate it on my comp.
i need the usser manual please
[…] Ultra Analog Synth for the Bass. All the guitars are played on the Keystation 49e using a VST from EWQL. I layered up the drums as usual, I think I used somewhere between 5-6 different kick’s and […]
My question is….where do I put the library at? I need help with that… thanks