A question about composercloud

VST & Plugins
1

I came across this by checking out an article on this site http://www.soundsonline.com/composercloud
Is it worth it for someone like me who wants to make classical/ambient/soundtrack/score like music? Do any of you have experience with this subscription?

I am unemployed and I do not really have the money to buy such packs. They cost 200€ easily for only one pack (brass, strings and so on) I just can not buy that too be honest…

So this package seems good for me, but does it include good brass, orchestra, strings, piano vst’s?

Another question I have is: I see two different packs. Is the cheaper pack also good (mic placement is different) or should I take a subscription on the more expensive subscription? Is it worth the extra 30 dollar?
50 dollar a month is a lot for me, but if I get a lot better stuff then the cheaper package, then I am willing to do that, I will think about that then at least.

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2

This is a great question I’m also intregued by. There are so many people who rate and don’t rate Composer cloud. But to me a lot of people are going off what the beta version was. People right now who I talk to say there are some very good things under the hood. So if quite like to know if it is worth getting, which are the patches to grab and which are the ones to avoid…

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3

50 dollars per month is 600 dollars per year. You could own 3 or 4 decent libraries (or more if you keep an eye on sales, plus Black Friday etc). I always think it’s better to own outright than to bind yourself to a subscription.
Have you seen the 49 dollar BBC symphony library offered by Spitfire Music? It could be right up your street for classical, without any monthly burden.

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4

Yes I actually took the offer on that for recieving it for free in two weeks via email.
If I did a survey I could get it for free, so I did that.

I took the plunge in this subscription by taking the month per month thing for 30-35€ (taxes) and will check it out. Since its not an annual sub I can cancell it within that month without a problem. Will let you all know what I think of it

Ofcourse this does not have the, what they call “good” or “better” mic placement on some packs, but I did not want to immidiatly pick a anual sub since then I am locked in for a year…

I also worry about the system requirements, I saw one pack of strings and it needed 7200rpm or faster hard drive, I think my 4tb drive is only 5400 rpm. I have another 1 tb drive that is 7200 but since the packs are pretty big, I would rather install them on my 4tb drives. We shall see how that turns out.

And yes, you are absolutely right, owning them is the way to go, but I am unemployed and in a finance thingy that does my finances. So I get an income from state, minimum and the finance thingy gives me 50€ a week from that (I still live with my mother so I do not need to buy food or anything) and the rest gets used for bills (internet and so on) and to save a bit each month.

I just can not pay 200€ at once for 1 pack…

I normally do volunteeringwork, three days a week, which gives me another 1€ an hour. Yes 1€… so if I go all days every week, I have an extra 90€ a month. Thing is now with corona, I cant go, I live with my mother and she is 72 years old, she is in the danger zone and I am not gonna risk it…

So yeah, these subscription or, on this moment, the best thing I can do I think. Once I get a job there, if I get one, then I can think about different options, for now, this is the way to go for me…

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5

Ok so I downloaded and installed the hollywood brass one only to have ableton crash when loading the second trumpet sample. I figure this has to do with the HDD…

So now I am downloading another, Goliath, unto a HDD that has 7200 RPM. Will see how that works.

I do have an SSD but its only 110 gb big so yeah, not much gonna fit unto that…

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Well, by putting it on the 7200RPM HDD it seemed to work, only downloaded two packs, Goliath and Symphonic Orchestra or something like that.
I dont know. It seems that the instruments in Roland Cloud sounded better. I dont know to be honest what to think of it. It also takes time to load up a new instrument each time, and you can not even hear what it will sound like untill it is loaded.

Goliath was a big nono for me, the sounds of the piano were really bad in my opinion but it had some good orchestra sounds. In the end you will need to download everything and pick things out of each pack I think.

Roland Cloud offers instruments that have good instruments in each plugin, the SRX (I think its called that) plugins I use also only cost 80€ each to buy a lifetime key. I completely forgot about that.

So yeah, I think I am gonna end the subscription and just go on with Roland Cloud. It costs less a month and I seem to be more content of it to be honest.

Maybe I will use these plugins from this service another time, but to be honest, it feels like a chore selecting sounds only to hear that there seems to be some kind of filter on them which make them not really clear in my opinion. You can possibly fix that by tweaking the sound a bit, but since I do not have any knowledge about that and Roland Cloud offers good sounds right out of the box it gives me mixed feelings

Yes I only had a little time with only two of the MANY instruments it has. Yes I know. But those two did not really made me think: hey this is better then what I have, I am gonna download all other plugins I need. No, it made me think about Roland Cloud and how easy it was. So yeah. I am a bit dissapointed I guess. I am sure with the right knowledge you can do great things with these plugins, but I simply do not like the interface and how the thing works. I just do not like it. Yes some of the sounds are amazing but I have mixed feelings.

I think I will follow the advice given here, and stay with Roland and save up money to buy a lifetime key for the plugins I need from them. Since the ones I used are 80€ each it is not that bad.

But maybe I am just out of inspiration or maybe I am just used to how easy selecting instruments with Roland Cloud was. I dont know. Maybe I will try more tomorrow.

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7

There’s a lot of opinions about composer cloud out there. Here is what I think.
I prefer to own my libraries BUT I subscribe to it on some projects and when it is finished I mixdown to audio and unsubscribe for a while. I think it’s a lot of good stuff in there.
It’s a bigger problem if your computer can handle it or not. Play engine is known for this.
I have a laptop with 16 gb ram and I have to freeze tracks when I do orchestral stuff. For me that works.

IF you go for it and don’t have much SSD this is what I would do:
Download the Hollywood orchestra patches. There you have strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, harp pretty much what you need for orchestral music. Than get either one of there pianos Or Spitfire Labs soft piano which is free.

Remember to look into Spitfire Labs series they are great stuff that’s free.

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8

Thank you so much for this advice, I will look into it, I did not know they had free stuff. Will check it out.

I did not have a problem with the goliath one, but my specs are good, I7 processor 4.0 ghz, 16 gb ram. Only the HDD is not a SSD but when I put it on the 7200RPM HDD it seemed to work but I did not have many tracks yet so that might be a thing too. I maybe gave up to quickly, I do not know. There were some good sounds in there, I will not argue that, but how you have to select them and the loading of each sample made it uneasy to work with. It would be better if you could at least hear a preview of the sound before you had to load it up. Will try more with it today since its a fresh day. Sometimes I am unable to make more then one song on a day, sometimes I ran out of it all and I can not compose for weeks anymore. Maybe thats just what happend yesterday, or maybe I was just tired, I dont know.

Another thing I thought about was the Zenology thing (or something like that) in Roland Cloud, which you can acces for 2.99 dollar a month, so with taxes that is still less then 5€ a month for me. You then can also buy liftetime keys for various packs which are included and they only are 20€ for a pack. I saw that these sounds are actually sounds from the srx plugin series.

So I am thinking of maybe just using that plugin, since it will only cost me 5€ a month…

So many things to think about to be honest, but I will try composer cloud maybe again.

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