Since lately all EWQL orchestras (and products) have become PLAY engine based, the quality between Silver and Gold is the same, Silver has just less articulations. In the Kompakt days, Silver had no samples recorded chromatically as opposed to Gold (and was less RAM demanding at the same time). So now, the only diference between Silver Complete and Gold Complete is the price and the articulation list.

SD2 is one library to consider, but also I'd look at ProjectSAM True Strike 1 (orchestral) and True Strike 2 (cinematic). Those percussion libraries are top notch in means of sound (personally I think it is the only percussion library that has the "truth" behind the recorded samples, I guess that is why they call it True Strike :) ), though SD2 seems little more versatile.

EWQL Symphonic Choirs allows you to have the choir singing words with Wordbuilder but you can also use the "ooh", "aah" at their own.

Is VOTA worth the money? I don't know, never really used that, but it seems to have more powerful forte fortissimo than the SC.


Also - ProjectSAM Symphobia has some pretty and expressive sounding strings, but I guess it is too pricey.

The only thing with EWQL I would be cautious about (especially when you get to gold/platinum) is that you need previous versions in order for it to work.

For example, you couldn't just cough up the bazillion dollars for platinum without choking on another bazillion for gold.

I'm not sure I understood that. Do you mean that to get, say, Gold, first I'd have to pay ~$200 for Silver and then I'd buy the ~$450 Gold for a total of ~$650?

I don't understand that either. You buy a version of Symphonic Orchestra and after registering it you are ready to go. No need to purchase the other versions.
You can upgrade to higher version later if you wish and can afford it.


Cheers,
Michal

Sorry, I suppose I should have been more clear.

As far as I understand it, the libraries build off one another. So, if you wanted to, you couldn't just buy Platinum and use that as a stand-alone library, you would need to have Silver -> Gold prior to your purchase of Platinum.

That being said, my memory is pretty hazy, so I would highly encourage you to do some reading about it at the company's website.

Sorry for any confusion! :P

Nope, on the contrary - you can buy just Platinum version and use it, without the need of purchase the previous versions.

Ah, thanks mirrored - that does make more sense. :P

Hey! Just want to give you some additional info:

EWQL has awesome products at a good price. As mentioned above, wait for a discount deal. (If you don't, you'll feel screwed afterwards, believe me...)

For the strings: If you are looking for epic sounds, go for the EWQL Symphonic Orchestra. That should be in your price category. Alternatively, you should look into Kontakt, it has part of the Vienna library in it, which also sounds really good. Articulation-wise, this is comparable to the EWQL Silver edition of Symphonic Orchestra. However, the EWQL strings are more "bombastic" (Hans Zimmer-ish) and the Vienna library would do better for "real" classical music.

->If you've got the money, and want full blown epic-ness, I suggest you go with Symphobia by Project SAM.

For percussion you should definitely go for Stormdrum (also by EWQL) or buy True Strike, also by Project SAM.

Hope this helps you a little bit! Cheers.