As promised, although quite delayed, I’m taking a bit of time to share my thoughts on the individual EWQL sample libraries that I recently purchased. First up is EWQLSO Gold…

As mentioned in my previous post I prefer the EWQLSO UI to the other products’ – both the browser and the player windows. Although all of the products have the same controls (same function, different appearance) on their player window, I find the SO layout easier to navigate and much more legible.

Each articulation of each instrument is superbly recorded, and the key-switched articulations that make up a multi-articulation instrument blend nicely together for an impressive realism. I definitely get the impression that each articulation was played by the same player(s) in the same space.

Although there are more impressive demos available on the EWQL website, here is a happy little number that I put together for flute, harp, piano and cello. The flute track uses only two key-switched articulations (staccato and legato), the harp uses two sample files (pluck and glissando), the piano is the Bösendorfer 290 from the Goliath library, and the cello uses only two key-switched articulations (a marcato and a legato):

Incidentally, if you’re using SONAR as your DAW, there is a two-octave variance in note names between the two (what EWQL calls ‘C0′ is named ‘C2′ in SONAR, etc.). That bit of trivia had me tugging on my hair when I was first trying to sequence the key switches.

Even though some of the instruments can take up a bit of RAM, you can easily deactivate articulations that you aren’t going to use in a composition, and choose to keep the others in RAM or stream them from disk. I imagine that with only 2 GB of RAM on a 32-bit system it might be difficult to perform a large symphony piece in real-time, but when composing and having the ability to ‘freeze’ softsynth tracks in SONAR (and other DAWS, I suspect), I don’t expect either RAM or CPU hardships.

All-in-all, I am very pleased with EWQLSO Gold. I’ve seen other symphonic sample libraries that sell for a lot more (as in thousands of dollars), but I really can’t imagine another library sounding that much better. If I want to spend that kind of money, I’ll just compose with EWQLSO, and then go record with a live orchestra.