question about EWQLSO Gold

[hummingbird]

Hi - I already have EWQLSO Silver & just recently got EWQLSO Silver XP Pro. Now I'm looking at a EWQLSO Gold Bundle that's on sale for $500.I'm confused by this...PURCHASE OF THIS PRODUCT AFTER JANUARY 18 AND BEFORE OCTOBER 30, 2007 QUALIFIES FOR A FREE* UPGRADE TO THE EASTWEST PLAY ADVANCED SAMPLE ENGINE UPON RELEASE. THIS UPGRADE INCLUDES UNIVERSAL BINARY (INTEL MAC) AND MICROSOFT VISTA (32 and 64-bit) COMPATIBILITY.PLEASE NOTE: IF CUSTOMERS WISH TO KEEP THEIR KOMPAKT/KONTAKT VERSIONS ACTIVE - AND - UPGRADE TO "PLAY" A $49.95 PLAY UPGRADE FEE WILL APPLY (UPGRADE IS ONLY AVAILABLE FROM EASTWEST).I'm used to the Kompakt player, of course. And I have Windows XP home. Do I need this upgrade? Or is it okay to stay with Kompakt.thanksV

[lboogie77]

Hey Vikki,If I understand the lingo correctly, Basically what they are saying is. 1) If you buy the software in the time frame specified you get a free upgrade to "Play" when it comes out.2) If you upgrade to "play", you will lose your kompakt version (the one ewqlso works in now) 3) If you want to upgrade and keep your kompakt, they are going to charge you 50 bucks. According to site that is the cost of owning the additional license. Being the "Play" license and the original license.The new "Play" software is supposed to make composing easier. Rather than sort thru a bunch of articulations and keyswitches, etc.. You just pick the sound you want and turn off any articulations you don't need. It also supports 64 bit OS, which is huge b/c most of us are stuck with a 2 - 3 gigs of ram limit in 32 bit OS's. Imagine a machine running 8 gigs of ram... ... Well, I digress... Basically, if want the upgrade you lose your kompakt, You want to keep kompakt and run "Play" pay $50.As for needing it. That depends on what you plan on doing in the future. Do you plan on going vista 32/64? Do you need all the articulations at your finger tips? If so, go for it. I cant wait for it to come out personally... Gold is really cool and will be a big upgrade to Silver. You will have tons of fun with this...Hope this helps. 77

[matto]

Hey Vikki, here's the deal:The Kompakt Player that comes with Silver/Gold and a lot of EW libraries is no longer being updated by Native Instruments, who created that player. That's not a big deal NOW cause it works well, but it means that eventually, when you switch to a newer computer with a 64bit operationg system (such as an Intel Mac or Windows Vista), you won't be able to take that player with you.There are two routes to go at that point: Upgrade your Kompakt player to full Kontakt and use the Samples inside that program (which is a very powerful sampler in it's own right), or upgrade to EW's new Play engine, which they custom developed for their sounds. Or...for the ultimate in flexibility, you might want to do both.If you buy Gold before the end of this month, the upgrade to Play will be free (once the Gold content is released in that format, which will probably be at some point in 2008) . Otherwise it will cost you $50.Once you do upgrade to Play, the Kompakt Player license will expire unless you keep it active by paying another $50. As far as what I saw on EW's forum, it actually won't stop working, you just won't be able to re-activate it in case of a system crash or when you move to a new computer (and for clarification the Kompakt Player license is also what would enable you to use the Samples inside Kontakt, should you choose to upgrade to that as well). It is anticipated that, when Silver/Gold/Platinum is released for Play, those samples will be taking advantage of some new advanced features available in the Play engine which the Kompakt player doesn't offer. They may be an incentive to upgrade to Play eventually.Personally, I own Kontakt already and will soon upgrade to Kontat 3. So I will probably want to keep my Kompakt/Kontakt license active. However I will probably upgrade to Play as well at some point in the future if the added features warrant it. I'll have to pay for the upgrades of course.As for Gold, you won't regret buying it, it's a very considerable step up from Silver. The only thing you'll need to prepare for is a bit more of a CPU/RAM hit since Gold's samples are bigger, and they have the release trails which are gonna increase polyphony count on an individual instrument.mattoEdit:...I see 77 beat me to it

[davewalton]

The one big difference between Silver and Gold (XP) is the number of articulations which is almost daunting. Plus Gold is recorded with natural reverb, although I find that I still need a little added reverb, especially in the horn sections which sound dryer than the other sections for some reason.I have Silver and Gold XP and I've thought about getting the XP pack for Silver just to have an addition set of dry articulations. Kind of a poor man's Platinum version.

[mazz]

Kontakt is a good investment because lots of libraries are compatible with it and it appears to be pushing in to the future while Native Instruments retires the Kontakt Player line.I have a Play library currently (Gypsy). Play works OK with my system but it still has some buggy behavior with Digital Performer (on my Mac G5). The ultimate vision for Play is to have all of the Play capable libraries available via one interface and also to be able to control instances of Play on different computers from one master computer running Play as well. East West have bit off a big chunk by going to their proprietary system and by the time all of their libraries get ported over, it'll probably be an awesome system. I'm not holding my breath, though. I'd rather they get it right before they put out their orchestra libraries on it. Gypsy is pretty cool but it's not my main library and I don't rely on it every day like I do my Platinum EWQLSO library, so I'm cool if they get it bug-free before they release it. Of course, that means I'll have to stay with Kontakt and upgrade yet another piece of software. Whine Whine Whine..... Go for the Gold as it is today, you can't go wrong. You'll love the way your music sounds with the upgraded (compared to Silver) samples.Mazz

[zircon]

mazz brings up a VERY important point. The "Play" engine is buggy. I have heard reports of it all over KVRAudio. Likewise, Kontakt 3 isn't hashed out either. I would invest in K3 3-6 months from now, but until then, it's really going to be shaky. Skip on Play for now - you'll have to spend extra money on a dongle anyway...

[hummingbird]

Thanks everyone. Looks like I should just invest in the Gold bundle & forget about the Play thing for now. I can upgrade in the future if necessary. I too don't like buying new versions of things... I've seen the bad stuff that can happen when the bugs aren't worked out. Seems like $500 is a good price for the Gold Bundle. I'd love to get EZ Drummer at the same time... but with the Rally coming up, not sure if I can swing it all.H

[nickbatzdorf]

If you're planning on buying it, the upgrade to PLAY will definitely be worth doing. The big thing about PLAY is that you can load a whole orchestra on one 64-bit machine, as opposed to a stack of machines with the Kontakt Player version. Yeah it's a little buggy now, but they'll get it together. And they just released a new version today; I haven't installed it yet, but I'm sure it's better.

[hummingbird]

Quote:If you're planning on buying it, the upgrade to PLAY will definitely be worth doing. The big thing about PLAY is that you can load a whole orchestra on one 64-bit machine, as opposed to a stack of machines with the Kontakt Player version. Yeah it's a little buggy now, but they'll get it together. And they just released a new version today; I haven't installed it yet, but I'm sure it's better.do I have a 64-bit machine? I'm not sure what that is. Is that the "64" after the AMD Athlon?I have a custom built audio computer....Processor Type -- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4200+ Processor Speed -- 2.2GHz RAM -- 2GB PC4200 DDR2 SDRAM Hard Drives -- 80/170/320GB Serial ATA (7200RPM)Optical Drives -- 16X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer (DVD/CD reader/burner) Graphics Card -- nVidia GeForce 6150LE Cache 512KB L2 (or bigger) Fax/Modem 56K V.90 Network Card 10/100 Ethernet System Bus 2000MHzOperating System: Windows XP Home

[zircon]

No, you do not have one. You would need XP 64 bit or Vista 64 bit. As of now, XP64 is not entirely supported by all hardware and applications, and neither is Vista 64 (perhaps even less so). Additionally, repeated tests have shown Vista to be consistently slower and more inefficient than XP; eg. you will run LESS plugins before maxing out the SAME processor in the SAME sequencer. It's really pathetic. Stick to XP-32 as long as possible. Additionally, your sequencer should be 64bit as well. There are very few of those in the market; Sonar is one (at least, v6 and v7).I actually think you might want to invest in QLSO Silver bundle (which is <$200 at this point, I believe) and then pick up the full version of Kontakt 2 at a discount. You can upgrade to K3 at a lower price later, which I recommend once they fix the bugs. Kontakt 2 is still sold in some places as blowout stock. I say Silver bundle over Gold because many of the extra articulations of Gold/Gold Pro XP are more esoteric and won't be useful to you unless you're really doing intricate film scoring or classical music. Case in point... a good friend of mine has done some major video game trailer work, as well as several feature films, and is doing even more scores as we speak, but Silver bundle works just fine for him. Unless you can pick up K2 with Gold, I think K2+Silver would serve you better.Lastly, even with 2GB of RAM and a 32 bit system, you can easily load dozens of patches from QLSO in Kontakt 2 with minimal difficulty. That's why I don't really buy into PLAY being a necessity right now. For example, I use large DFD buffers (eg. more RAM used, so I can have greater polyphony in real time) yet in a project I'm working on right now, I have 18 instruments from QLSO loaded across two Kontakt 2 instances. Total RAM used? 915mb. If I really wanted to tweak it I could reduce that to 600-700mb. This means you can *easily* accommodate well over 30 instruments with no problems.