Hopefully this hasn't been asked a million times... I did a few searches and only found these libraries occasionally compared. At any rate, can any of you suggest which of these two I should I get? Specifically, I was debating the EW/QL gold edition or the VSL complete first edition... I would assume VSL is higher quality, more versatile, and just plain better... but I compared available mp3's and I tended to like the EW/QL ones more. The strings on VSL sounded thin/fake in the high registers to me. Do you think it's just because the EW/QL mp3s were better made/produced or the tunes chosen where better picked? I used VSL Pro at college a little and liked it, though. At any rate, I hope I'm not asking something that's been asked many times before. Feel free to point out other threads if that is the case. Thanks in advance!

I use EWQLSO Silver, and since Gold is just an improvement on that, I have nothing but praise for it.

I've recently looked into this as well though for VSL Opus.

My conclusions are:

SOUND:
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EWQL Gold - sounds more hollywood, movie dramatic.
VSL Opus - more classic orchestral sound

USABILITY:
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EWQL Gold - comes in it's own Kompakt engine - basically VST plug and play.

VSL Opus - Giga format, need to set everything up, seems more fiddly.

I have decided to go with EWQL Gold.

I have also explored the option of Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO), since there's no demo version available I can't be bothered with it. I've seen Edirol Orchestra and that is not too bad , so I guess GPO is probably around the same, if not better sounding in the string sections for which Garritan is famous for.

I have seen EWQL Gold in action and love how it sounds and how it performs, and you have the option of upgrading too inclusive is the price of the version you have...