RecordingArts wrote:
I wondered if you guys think FabFour delivers as promised? Will Paul and Ringo come over and lay down some bass and drums ? : )
Delivers as promised. Hmm. For lack of a better answer, I'll have to say yes when considering what was promised.
Now-- does it deliver as expected? Different story. The sounds are certainly nice for what they are. They are indeed very Beatley. I wish there were more articulations for a start. The most elaborate guitars will have some single note samples and there may be a keyswitch or two for note bend up, note bend down, a single major triad or a single minor triad. Some guitars have shorter notes or longer ones, but these tend to be more song related than instrument related. By that, I mean that if a particular Beatle song might have had a guitar doing a certain kind of bend in one spot, then that's the one and only bend they sampled. But if you wanted to use that particular guitar sound on your own song, you are bound to the particular bend they chose for that guitar.
These are not universal guitars, necessarily, and making a convincing guitar part will require some delicate CC# massaging. I don't have a guitar-to-MIDI controller, but I understand that there are some coveted control assignments which still have not been implemented. While listening to the Gypsy demo, the same kind of ear fatigue kicked in with the guitars very quickly. I haven't tried MOR, but I suspect that the diversity of instruments comes at the expense of a variety of articulations. Too many notes just sound too much the same.
There's no fret or pick noise to speak of, and although there is an envelope control in five stages I've yet to experiment with MIDI control over these in "real" time. To my thinking, this is the key to breaking up the monotony from note to note-- but it's an awful lot of work to compensate for a lack of strum samples and other articulations.
There are only three bass patches-- only one of them is a Hofner. Georges Gretsch and John's Gibson acoustic J-160E are sorely underrepresented or non-existent, but there are a few other nice sounding acoustic guitars, both 6- and 12-string.
Guitar sounds abound, but the bass and drums and percussion are much more universal. These don't necessarily have to be used in a Beatle context, and I'll likely get more mileage out of them. But you've got backwards flutes for Strawberry Fields-- nice, but how many times can you use it? The Lady Madonna piano is a little less like Lady Madonna and more like the Obla-di, Obla-da piano, but again we're talking a specialized honky tonk piano that isn't exactly work-a-day. Sitar is nice and very usable. Hand claps, girls screaming, yeah-yeah-yeah-- lots of fun.
Most of the sounds were taken from middle and late recording styles, so if you want an early Beatles combo it may be hard to accomplish.
As far as Mac/DP friendliness, I have to give the 64-bit Beta fairly high marks. Loading up the entire library at once was stunning to see with all 8 GB of installed RAM in use at once.
I bought FabFour to experiment with PLAY more than anything else. My serious work is done with other libraries, but I wanted to keep tabs on when SO and SC would make the transition to it's 64-bit PLAY version originally announced last January.
If you buy FabFour, definitely get it on sale. But I can't call it a must-have because it's such a specialized library. One may tire of it quickly.
RecordingArts wrote:
Is there anything else at EastWest that you guys love?
I know you have Miro, but EWQLSO is comparatively remarkable sonically speaking. Once it goes to PLAY, it's a safe bet that they'll jack the price to make up for two years of discounts. If you're going for a substantial discount the heftier libraries are well worth it. It was the only way I could have gotten EWQLSO Plat XP, for example.
I've not heard the EWQL Pianos or Galaxy Pianos-- Galaxy was done in 5.1, fwiw-- the demo sounds pretty good (hammer felts sound worn at times, not bad, tho). The demo for Bosendorfer 290 is nice-- but Ivory has kept me from going nuts on piano VIs.
Colossus has had my attention for some time for that video game tech semi-ethnic rock stuff. I guess they used a good deal of this library in Goliath. One of these might offer you quite a variety of sounds in the Yes-Genesis genre, if you like that stuff.
That's about all of EW I can speak to.
RecordingArts wrote:
I'm pretty good on basic orchestral sounds with MSI, Philharmonik and Symphonic Choirs (Well, it's good enough for Rock and Roll anyway : )
I guess much depends on whether you want to diversify or take what you have up another notch.
How are you set for guitar strings or extra hard drives?
