Friday, March 20, 2009

EastWest/Quantum Leap Orchestral - Viva la Update!

Everyone in the "know" already knows that EastWest/Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra is famous for the warmth and detail of its sounds. The story of how founders Doug Rogers and Nick Phoenix accomplish this by separately recording the natural hall ambiance of each instrument is now close to legendary! The tools they've created have put the "digital" baton in the hands of tens-of-thousand of would be conductors (without them having to shell out tens-of-thousand of dollars...well maybe). Oh the sweet satisfaction of having 11 Violins, a perfectly tuned cello and the sheer joy of having an English horn always available for that perfect cinematic texture, pure ecstasy. How do I know all this about Symphonic Orchestra users... it's simple....I'm one of THEM!

Now nothing is perfect and I've had to live through a few upgrades and a nearly traumatizing switch to the dual processor-intel-mac world (that was an interesting week!). But all and all I have been quite happy to share my time on this mortal coil with my East/West Symphonic Orchestral library. But now life has gotten a lot better! It first began to improve when I realized that I qualified for the free Play upgrade (woohoo!). I had been using Kontakt 3 to manage my library before that, this is no diss on Kontakt 3 but the fit of the glove was let's say...more O.J. than OK, anyhow about a week ago I opened a email from East/West Quantum Leap and there it was the next leap or should I say Quantum Leap... within was a link to the new Play update version 1.2.0. The list of it's fixes was impressive and were as follows:

* improved save times for instrument files on windows
* improved streaming engine
* voice limited expanded to 1024 for 64-bit version
* new micro tunings for QL Silk and QL Ra
* extended streaming setting dialog with reset engine functionality
* resolved mute bug issue
* fixed sustain pedal threshold
* improved fonts for Stormdrum 2 and Orchestra
* hard limit to 0dB on the audio output for standalone
* implemented poly aftertouch automation
* product libraries entries in the browser now can be changed/added/deleted
* fixed portamento and first silent note issue
* resolved FL Studio GUI issue
* fixed voice swapping issue
* improved installer

Looks good right... but who cares about how it looks. How does it sound and more importantly does it work? Well friends I'm here to report that I'm just about to finish my first commercially produced project with the new update installed and I can give it an unequivocal four star rating. Here's the bake, the work flow, CPU usage, general finickiness and yes I'll say...the "feel" is better. I don't know exactly why but the whole GUI is just that much more friendly. I use Play with logic 8 and I thought that the two programs might need couples therapy but now I'm sure that the romance has returned. And if that isn't enough I'll put it simply, I used to 'like' Play but now I've learned to "love"! Viva la Update!

4 comments:

Jake said...

Great list. Where does this all come from? What's your angle?

Kidkbord said...

How long have you used East West Quantumleap gear? I'm thinking of buying.

Karl said...

Why QL better than Vienna or is it?

Greg C said...

Were you using the old Ql Symphonic Orchestra with Kontakt 3?

 
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