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Which (East West) sampling package is going to give me the best bang for the buck without taking too many bucks out of my pocket? I currently run Sonar as a base program and will stay with it because I have a PC. I write all genres of music and want to do more instrumental stuff. My primary instrument is guitar and my musical partner's is piano so we need a well rounded package that will give us a good edge out there in the film and tv world, but we don't want to spend a thousand dollars on a program. What are your suggestions on an efficient yet moderately priced program and where is the best place to buy it?ThanksJofo37

It depends on what sort of sounds you're looking for. East West produces hundreds of products. I assume you were probably referring to their Orchestra ("East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra") which comes in three editions, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. This particular package, as far as orchestral libraries go, is indeed a great value. You can get Silver and Silver XP Pro (the expansion pack for it) for $195.Generally, their website (www.soundsonline.com) is a great place to shop for products they have produced that are starting to age. They tend to overcharge for their new releases, and only lower the price to a reasonable amount during one of their sales. 3rd party retailers like audiomidi.com, sweetwater.com, and scitscat.com may all have better prices depending on the product.East West "Colossus" is perhaps your best bet if you simply need a whole lot of sounds of all kinds;http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Colossus/It's not cheap, at just over $500. However, you get a ton of high-quality instruments with it, from orchestral stuff, to drums, pianos, bass, guitar (acoustic & electric), ethnic sounds, synths, etc. It is generally considered to be one of the best all-on-one sample libraries in the film/TV world.

I use Kontact 2 quite a bit. The program comes with a fairly extensive library, including about 15 gigs of Vienna Symphony samples.Also, I've added RA and East West Gold to my collection and can open all of the files in Kontact 2 which allows alot more control of the sounds. Chuck

Thanks All for your input we think we are interested in the Colossus program for the price and the varity of samples it seems like Colossus will give us the ability to do multible genres of music. any further inspiration from anyone would be greatly appriciated.Thanks alot for your time and thoughtsJafo37