East West Composer Cloud

Support and feedback for Acoustica's Mixcraft audio mixing software.

Moderators: Acoustica Greg, Acoustica Eric, Acoustica Dan, rsaintjohn

Post Reply
bobbyathome
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat Apr 23, 2016 8:16 pm

East West Composer Cloud

Post by bobbyathome »

Using Mixcraft, I enter notes from sheet music with a mouse and keyboard in the piano roll window. I don't even have an external piano keyboard. I'm pretty happy with all the vsti that come with Mixcraft 7 Pro and the fx that can be added, but seriously envy the sounds I hear in East West, or Komplete, or the other sound libraries. East West offers a monthly plan for about $30. It includes use of all their instruments. I was wondering if anyone here takes advantage of this and whether or not you think this would be usable within Mixcraft. Would I be able to use their instruments just like the ones that are included with mixcraft? And would they sound as good as all the promo tracks I hear on their web sites?
User avatar
chibear
Posts: 1861
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2011 7:25 am
Location: Manitoba, Canada

Re: East West Composer Cloud

Post by chibear »

I bought the first EWQL Complete Composers Collection disk years ago and still use those libraries. Most of my orchestra template is heavy duty third party Kontakt libraries (far beyond what is offered in Komplete). Everything works reasonably well in Mixcraft, EWQL Play (use 4, not 5 at this point) being rock solid and Kontakt, being no more tempermental in Mixcraft than any other DAW. If you go to my YouTube channel (link in my signature), there several videos about using Kontakt and Play in Mixcraft.

A few sugestions and caveats:
1. These libraries become expensive very quickly. Your $30 Composers' Cloud does not give you access to the best version of their libraries, only those with basic features, which IMO is not worth the $. To get full features you need to pay more.

2. Use of these libraries means a big jump in resource usage over the Mixcraft instruments. I would suggest a quad core i7 with 16GB of RAM run by 64 bit Windows the minumum you should have before venturing into this area. My system is a 3930k hexacore i7 with 64 GB RAM. My orchstra template consumes 21GB of RAM, some of the individual instruments consuming more than 2GB per instance. My current project runs the 3930k up to 64%. Point being, a dual core laptop with 4GB RAM just won't do it.

2a More Resources: If you want to run Hollywood Strings diamond or even EWQL choirs with multiple mics, you need to stream the samples from an SSD seprate from your C drive or experience dropouts and/or artifacts.

3. All these instruments come with a learning curve, the more flexible and powerful the instrument, the steeper the curve.

4.All these insruments go on sale periodically, very often at major discounts, so the only reason to pay full price is if you have a professional deadline to meet and need the instrument and can deduct the cost on your income tax. I have yet to pay full price for any library. This is also where your Composers Cloud can come in handy as you can subscribe for a few months and audition the libraries, then cancel CC and purchase the libraries (on sale) you really want.

5. To produce orchestra sounds like the demos you need the knowledge of mixing and mastering and the proper use of the proper effects (probably more $) to get the sound you want.

Not to be wordy or discouraging, just so you can enter with eyes wide open and avoid expensive mistakes and disappointment.

If you go to my soundcloud page (in my sig), everything including and above the Morricone tribute was done with EWQL and Kontakt libraries, as were the 2 scored videos on my YouTube channel. For most of the Soundcloud entries I included info on library and fx used in the intro for the track.
Win 7 Pro, 3930K, Gigabyte Ga-X79-UP4, Corsair AX860i, 64GB gSkill 1600 RAM, 5 X 120 GB Intel 520 SSD, 1T & 2T WD caviar black, EVGA nVidea 560, Asus Xonar Essence STX EWQL CCC, Kirk Hunter, Chris Hein, Omnisphere
Soundcloud YouTube
bobbyathome
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat Apr 23, 2016 8:16 pm

Re: East West Composer Cloud

Post by bobbyathome »

Thank you chibear! My first foray into making music on a computer was in 1993. I wanted my Sierra games to sound better so I bought a Roland MT-32. That came with a music sequencer so I started playing around with it. I got busy with life and didn't do any music for a couple decades. But I always missed the magical feeling of making music. Last spring I took the leap and got Mixcraft Home. Two weeks later it was the full Mixcraft 7. A month ago, Mixcraft 7 Pro. I wasn't around for the whole vst/vsti revolution and am very amazed at the possibilities now. Your reply confirmed most of what I hoped, and I will go now to your soundcloud and youtube sites. I just wanted to hear it from an actual Mixcraft user that these libraries would work. So I appreciate your reply very much.
clavguy
Posts: 1105
Joined: Wed Sep 22, 2010 8:34 pm
Location: Pembroke, NH

Re: East West Composer Cloud

Post by clavguy »

Hey Bobby...
Check this out
East West is having a 60% off November sale

http://www.soundsonline.com/november-su ... per-111316

Cheers
Pierre
Image
bobbyathome
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat Apr 23, 2016 8:16 pm

Re: East West Composer Cloud

Post by bobbyathome »

Thanks clavguy. Kontact is half off right now too. That might be good to have.
Torton5
Posts: 114
Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2016 8:49 pm

Re: East West Composer Cloud

Post by Torton5 »

I don't use east west and wouldn't be cheeky enough to put their libraries on my computer, a lowly i5 with 8 gig of ram, an ssd and a hdd. I do use Komplete Ultimate 10 with Mixcraft though. It sounds just as good with Mixcraft as it does with my other DAWS. Using it with Mixcraft though means you have an easy to use DAW, with excellent sounds.

I don't have any issues but there are some caveats as you would expect with this setup. As explained above by chibear, you will need a powerful computer if you are going in this direction. Don't ignore this advice or you will be disappointed. On my computer, I only run 3-5 samples from kontakt at any one time, like drums, bass and a keyboard. I then burn to wav file before using another. I use the synths and massive etc and of course all the audio files, but this system has high headroom, I can use my other effects like convolution reverb etc chuck things around without issue.

I also use the Acoustica sounds for other things and sometimes when I have something, I will switch to a Kontakt sample and then burn to wav. However, sometimes mixing Acoustica sounds can result in something good as well.

If I had my samples on ssd then I would use more samples, If I had more ram 16-32, I could definitely load more samples. An i7 might help as well. With Kontakt, it loads sometimes part of the sample and then streams also from disc which is where some gaps in playback can sometimes occur if you are not using ssd's. You run your fingers up the piano and suddenly, there is a delay with one of the notes! With big ssd's, an i7 and 32 gig of ram, I would use all samples most of the time. Bottom line, if you want to do what you are thinking of, you will need an i7 or strong i5, ssd's and 16-32gig of ram, 32 in your case, then you can turn off streaming by Kontakt, you would have a great time.
James Klutho
Posts: 29
Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2014 6:35 am

Re: East West Composer Cloud

Post by James Klutho »

@chibear

I listened to your cover of Copland's Fanfare. You did a very nice job on that.

Jim
Post Reply