MOTU Symphonic Instrument vs. Garritan PO

[avillaronga]

Hello everyone,I am wondering if I can get forum members' opinions on MOTU Symphonic instrument and Garritan Personal Orchestra. If you use either or, better yet, both of them, could you give me a brief list of pros and cons. I want to upgrade my orchestral sounds a bit and I was ready to buy MOTU's when I noticed on the "What's on your studio" thread that a lot of people are using Garritan PO. Also, if anyone knows if either of those would be an improvement over what I currently have: Prosonus Orchestral Collection and ProSamples Vol. 11 - Classic Orchestra imported into a NN-XT sampler. Mainly I am looking for better woodwinds (I have given up on trying to find good brass on a sampler that cost under $1000). Only the bassoon and flute are useable onthe ProSamples collection, I find that only the strings and percussion sound authentic on the Prosonus one. Would either MOTU or Garritan have better woodwinds? Thanks,Antonio

[avillaronga]

Thanks songwriter. I had looked at the Quantum Leap stuff but I can't remember why I didn't like it (maybe it required to upgrade to Tiger and I'm not ready to do that yet). I'm looking at authentic orchestral sounds for orchestral instrumentals, I have done a few but I think I'm hitting the wall with the samples that I currently have. I was looking in the price range of the two products mentioned (MOTU SI is $249 I think, and I believe GPO is selling for about $199 these days) but I could look into anything below or around $500, unless everyone tells me I'm crazy and I should just invest on the full Vienna collection but looking at what everyone listed on the other thread, it seems that people are doing OK with orchestral collections from around the $300-$500 range.Thanks,Antonio

[mazz]

Many people on the forum are using EWQLO Gold with great results. IMO it's worth upgrading to Tiger for. You could spend your budget on two or three libraries such as GPO and MOTU and get good results but you'd have to try to match the ambience of the different libraries with a reverb, which can get pretty challenging, not counting the cost of a great reverb (Altiverb maybe?) and the CPU power to run it. With EWQLO the ambience is built in to the samples, which may or may not be to your taste, but the sound is much more homogenous out of the box. Depending on how fast you work or need to work due to project deadlines, an out of the box approach may be more cost effective in the long run. I chose EW because of the ambience samples and it's worked out well for me, particularly with tight timelines, mixing is much easier, in my experience.Another country heard from.Mazz

[edteja]

I use GPO and, while I like it and think it is everything it claims to be, from what I understand from comparing notes with various folks, EWQL is better out of the box. If you don't want to spend a lot of time with various aspects of articulations, EWQL is probably worth the extra. I would probably opt for EWQL if I were buying now.

[avillaronga]

Thanks Traveling Ed, Mazz, and songwriter for the input. I just found EWQL Gold Bundle being sold at half price ($455) so I think we have a winner. ThanksAntonio