Is EW composer cloud worth getting, or should I just save my money?

Hey folks, some great discussions on here recently. Really enjoyed getting back into the swing of things with the community.

I’ve been thinking of getting the Composer cloud to fill out my libraries a bit as there’s a few of the patches I quite like, For you pro composers who are also making your living from selling music what are your experiences with the instruments… often some composers have said in the past that EW are starting to be left behind, but I’ve seen in the past year that they’ve been updating the player and samples. Is this still true??

I have never relied on the composer cloud, and the main reason for that is I really can’t “click” with the subscription model idea.

I always feel as if I’m on some sort of a trial or a challenge to keep up and make something using the instrument from the subscription list, just because I’m “wasting” purchased time if I’m not using it.

I’d rather own an instrument forever and just use it whenever I feel like using it. It is definitely a more expensive but less stressful option.

One additional negative side of the subscription model instruments is that you will not be able to load your project in its original form if you ever decide to unsubscribe from that platform, because your instruments will be “expired”.

Without trying to be a complete naysayer, I do admit it’s nice to have such a vast library of instruments at your disposal for a rather low monthly price.

If you’re in the learning phase of sorts, I’d say give it a shot for a month, I think that paying $30 for a month just to test out the environment and instruments is worth it. You might even be able to compose a few tracks with their instruments. Make sure you bounce your tracks to stems so you have them preserved in audio format for any potential releases down the line.

If you end up liking it, you’ll know what to do :slight_smile:

4 Likes

These were some of my initial concerns Mitzi. Thanks for the input and perspective. I. Not a learner as I’ve been doing this for a long time, though I’m of the mind set we’re always learning in one way or another! I guess you would have to put me in the part time composer category as I top up my wage with subs each quater. Getting to the full timer position gradually. My issue atm is I’m using a few libraries that are pre mixed such as woods and my choir libraries are somewhat diminished at this point. Which is why I’m considering this until I’m in a position to buy other libraries.

Hi Geoffrey,
Yes and no. It depends on what you already have and your budget. I use them very rarely in my workflow.

On my end, I really dislike the strings, winds, brass, and choir that comes with it, I don’t find them realistic at all. They far better libraries out there from developers such as CineSamples, Orchestral Tools and Performance Samples.

On the other hand, the percussion and ethnic instruments can, sometimes, be very useful when you need them and did save me when I needed to write a quick cue for a samurai scene.

My conclusion is: If you already have other equivalent libraries, save your money :slight_smile:

Cheers!

2 Likes

My input is this…I get the student rate at $20.00/month. I can compose, and mix and master an instrumental in less than a month. So once I finish the piece, I can put my subscription on hold. The other cool part about EW is, you can install what you need, use it for your piece, mix, master, bounce, and then un-install what you installed to save hard drive space. But look…whether you’re using EW, Kontact, Vienna, or whatever…it’s not the plug ins, it’s YOU. You can make fantastic music regardless of what you use, IF you use the tools right. Someone who REALLY knows what they’re doing can take the stock plug ins, that comes with Logic, and compose a bad a** piece. And someone can have ALL of the most expensive plug ins, and their sound comes out to be garbage. When a person REALLY learns their DAW, and they learn how to REALLY compose (regardless of the genre), it won’t matter what plug ins you use.

2 Likes

The pros:

• you pay much less, compared to other libraries which you otherwise buy for hundreds of $
• you have all the libraries at once
• you pay as long as you really use them or need

The cons:

• you need to download / uninstall all the files, which takes too much time from the server
• what happens if you need something from the server but you don’t have internet or the connection is super slow…we are talking about tons of GBs!!!
• you never “own” the product, you just borrow it (for some people it’s super important)
• if you need to recall something “years” ago, you never know if this will really work (do they still exist?)
• people often forget about subscriptions and pay without knowing really…
• (not sure if this is still the case, however, years ago the EW player and Kontakt Player were causing problems when using both in a session.)
• Ask yourself the question, whether you really need “all” of this … does it make you a better composer?

Even the most successful composers don’t have everything in their template, as they can’t process it…so how should you then? How much of a benefit will it be?

I guess you know ProjecSAMs Orchestral Essentials, right? It’s super old, nothing fancy. But for certain things, it works really well. I used it in a major production recently and no one said: “Dude, what is wrong with you, how dare you, using this old unfancy stuff!”
My point is: Maybe you already have the libraries to work with, which are totally fine. If not, save some money for AlbionOne, Orchestral Tools, or even the BBC Orchestra, whatever…all of them will do the job in most genres. With every patch they have, you can compose a new piece. So much to explore really. The truth is, you use maybe 10% of whatever you have installed on your drive. Best example is Native Instruments Bundle…I have it for years and there are things I see for the first time literally…

For me, they look like Waves right now, trying to get super attention, lowering the prices drastically…imagine Apple doing this? What would you think? The same with Soundtoys…it’s kind of weird.

Cheers :slight_smile:

3 Likes

@dadzilla I would like to chime in here to say: I totally agree with the part where you say that someone can have the best VST and the track will sound bad if they don’t know what their doing.

Where i wish to bring a nuance is that you still need to have good source material when it comes to the quality of the virtual instruments. I’ve used Logic for 10+ years (v.8, 9 and 10).

The built in instruments sounded great to my ears back then, but with time, experience, and after using other libraries, and can safely say that most of the sounds that come with it (except for the synths and some percs) are very badly programmed and don’t come close to meeting today’s industry quality standards.

The bar is higher than ever when it comes to production quality (i’m not the writing here). Having good sounding libraries is equally as important as the music writing itself.

My two cents :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I think this is my real question. Are the EW Libraries at “that” standard? Which I think has now been answered. I’m currently using very high quality libraries so I wasn’t sure if they’d stack up to the standard that I have in other areas of the orchestral pallet. I think I’ll save a few pennies and grab the orchestral tools woods libraries and maybe a choir from Spitfire audio, or cinesamples. Thank you to everyone for the feedback, I think it’s really useful and will hopefully help others on the site too.

I’ve often herd that EW are slightly dated in comparison these days, so This has confirmed it. I won’t waste my precious pennies on a bad subscription.

3 Likes

Medhat Hanbali, I concur. I have East West, and when I compare their orchestral sounds with Logics stock sounds, there’s no comparison. Plus I did some extensive probing on the internet, and I have come across other instructors, and platforms, that echo this point. A while ago, just playing around, I was trying to put together a dub step instrumental. Well, by accident, I ended up composing something that sounds orchestral, and everybody tells me it sounds like something that would be in a medieval movie (for the life of me, I can’t figure out how I went from dub step to orchestral). I did it all in Logic. I think it’s okay (I like it). But where I’m going with this is, after I acquired East West, and listened to my instrumental, and substituted the logic instruments with East West, the sound is much bigger.

3 Likes

That’s great! So I’m guessing that EW is at this moment helping your creativity in different genres and compositional areas. Fab!

1 Like

That’s so cool Kirk! I love genre-crossing…I was myself merging and creating hybrid styles a lot a few years ago. Rock, orchestral, EDM etc.

The dowside with East West and all these third party plugins and libraries is that they eat CPU and RAM for breakfast lol.

2 Likes

Mikael, you are so right. What I do is I use external hard drives store all of my data, files, folders, etc. The down side to that is (and this has actually happened), the external hard drive will seize up, and then I can’t access my data. Then I have to take to a “Geeks-on-Call” and they can fix the hard drive. And that costs. But that’s part of what this is all about, and these are obstacles composers go through. It’s part of the journey.

1 Like

Yeah I hate tech issues so much, it is the “arch enemy” of us creative people. And the more we add on, the more we sadly invite these potential problems to happen. Which is why I love just sitting by my piano in my living room sometimes, because it gets rid of all that technology. A standalone instrument, whatever it may be also has that instant inspiration factor.

2 Likes

hello
i have the EW cloud, and i think this is the last year i will not continue with it
the reasons are :

  • it sounds old fashion compare to the actual library like albion, orchestral essential, native instrument …
  • the player use a lot ressources and it is old fashionned but it works
  • a lot of library are useless
  • when your subscription reach the end, all your composition can’t load the ew library so you need to subscribe again just to make some change or something else
  • it takes 1Tb on the Hard drive if you want to download everything
  • it takes nearly 1 month to download everything if you have a low rate internet connection like me

yes you can subscribe if you want to start in a cheaper way, but you will be enrolled for 1 year and after that you must take a decision buy the lib you use or subscribe again and again and again

this is my opinion

First…what does “old fashioned” sound like? The sound that anybody gets from ANY library depends on things like, the structure of the track, instruments, ad libs, and most important…the mix…just to name a few. A person with a free orchestral library can compose a killer track if they know what they’re doing, and a person with an expensive library will make garbage tracks if they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s just like when people say which DAW is the best!!! The DAW doesn’t matter. It’s the person controlling the session that will make the track sugar, or sh… A person with $200 Jordan’s won’t make any impact if they don’t know how to play basketball.

Second…which libraries are useless? Use what you need, and don’t worry about what you don’t need.

Third…DON’T DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING!!! Use what you need.

I can’t speak on your subscription, your internet speed, or whatever. I have a monthly subscription, and if I need EW to compose a track, I’ll re-activate my subscription, and if I’m taking a break and doing other things, I’ll stop my subscription. On average, my subscription is in use about 4-6 moths a year.

4 Likes

you’re right,
but for some library you have to download it to test it, because the demo online is not really what you have in the library, there is some very great library in the EW cloud and i use them each time i can use it.

when i say “old fashionned” it is just because of the quality of some sounds not all the library but some presets or instruments are not very good

my problem is that i have chosen the annual subscription and in this case at the end of the subscription you cannot load your project, for the future i will take the monthly formula that allow user to subscibe when they want, it is better

2 Likes

I have read a lot of reviews on EW composer cloud some good some bad. My personal opinion is that it’s a very good alternativ to much else that’s out there, it’s always gonna be a matter of personal reference. Some libraries in there I use all the time, some I never touch. Boring answer I know. So if you force me to say either good or bad here it comes: I like much of there stuff so I say VERY GOOD.
If you scroll the web to see what’s been made with it, it would talk for it self.

2 Likes

I think the CC is a nice way to get an insight into all the libraries and check if you want to purchase one of them or not.
I think that’s a downside of most of the libraries: You usually don’t get demo versions to check if they are useful for you or not.

2 Likes

I bought some East West modules and really liked them, so when the Creative Cloud became available I started using the subscription to try out the rest of the modules. There are useful modules for all genres, and the samples are very high quality.

If you want to download all of the modules you’ll need an external hard drive, and my 3TB hard drive wasn’t that expensive. I use the East West library with Logic Pro X, and you can load up a lot of tracks if you run 16 channels of midi with each instance of Play. I have a large plugin library including Izotope, and everything runs fine along with the East West Play engine tracks.

I think the amount of options available are well worth the subscription price, and they continue to add new modules on a regular basis. I often use the Creative Cloud for full symphonic arrangements, and I have no complaints about the realism and amount of articulations available for each instrument.

The keyswitches allow you to change articulations on the fly, and I can trigger their drum simulator with an electronic drum kit for very realistic drum tracks. The Stormdrum modules are very popular for huge percussion sounds, and their reverb modules are also really nice. The choir module was pretty fun to play with although I haven’t had a chance to do a serious composition with it. Piano is one of my primary instruments, and the piano samples are really nice.

People have different preferences for sound libraries, but I can tell you that I use the East West library in most of my productions with great results. I’m an experienced engineer with some nice tools at my disposal, so I’m able to get the most out the East West samples. A good calibrated monitoring system is recommended so that you’re accurately hearing the details in these samples.

2 Likes

Thank you to everyone. I may invest soon! :slight_smile: