Symphonic Instrument decent, but not great

[thanatopsis]

I was a bit disappointed when I started playing around with MSI. Obviously the person who made the demos is a lot more skilled than I am, and my best efforts will probably be worse than the worst of the demo songs. There is nothing misleading about the solo instrument demos, though. I'm just not that skilled.
Listening to the demos again, I can hear the noise in the various string samples, and stuff like that.
I was mostly disappointed by the lack of multi samples in many of the instruments, as well as the lack of variations. For example, there are only two male choir sounds, both of which have very few samples each.
There are some really jarring differences between many of the multi samples. The piano has a few velocity layers, but some of the louder layers seem quieter than the softer layers, just more twangy. The violins have the same problem. Different note ranges sound like they are being played a totally different way.
I think somebody else mentioned the horrible transitions between samples.
Still, for $300 it is a nice piece of software. The interface is simple and, as MOTU says, not as powerful as Mach5. But it does what I want it to do. Making layers and splits is a bit tedious, but doable.
Overall there are a lot of sounds and I don't think it is fair to compare it to $1000+ collections.
I was hoping for more variety in the choir samples. Most are quite cheesy and only really good over a 2-3 note range. Again, it isn't fair to compare it to a 5-disc $500 vocal sample collection.
A friend of mine got a Roland Sound Canvas some 10-15 years ago to listen to orchestrations done in Finale and Encore. She thought it was awesome for $500. It helped her immensely to be able to hear how stuff sounded. A few years later another friend said, "Why does every instrument sound like an organ?"
I'm sure the same will be said of MSI in the future. But for half the price of that Sound Canvas, it sounds far better.
It is good enough for scratch pad work, good enough for some pop recordings, and some of the samples are even good enough for serious low-budget film scoring and the likes.
I am not familiar with many other sample collections, so I can't compare. I got some cheesy violin collection 5 years ago for $35 that I have been using for string sounds. MSI violins are about the same quality. But it also has many other instruments.
If you are only planning on using strings or horns or whatever, you might be better off buying a cheap sample collection of just those instruments. MSI is nice for the versatility while still being affordable.
Many of the sounds are about at the level of really good Sound Font files.
The 200MB grand piano at
http://www.sf2midi.com/index.php?page=sdet&id=6514
sounds about as good (but different) as the two in MSI. There are also some good free or cheap horns and strings.
QuickTime instruments can play Sound Fonts for free, and $15 programs like SoundFont Synth can do a bit more as an AU.