Apparently there's a sale on EastWest's Symphonic Orchestra

[burningmagma]

Currently, there's a sale on EastWest's Symphonic Orchestra, being at 199 USD instead of the usual 499 USD. It ends so on September 15. How often do sales like this happen? Is it worth the purchase? Are there better orchestral libraries than this? Let me know.

[Troisnyx]

@LD-W

[LD-W]

Worth putting a warning-* over this for a number of reasons:

• it's unclear if you're going to get the OPUS Player with it on a new purchase, or the old PLAY engine. I would not recommend touching this if you'd get stuck with using the old PLAY engine, as quite frankly it's a terrible engine. OPUS is a much better engine/player, but since Symphonic Orchestra is a very old product, you'll have to contact EW support to get clarification if you get OPUS included or not.
• If you like the 'Eastwest' sound and you're able to save up some extra money, Hollywood Orchestra OPUS Edition is overall a far better product
• How the library sounds overall is pretty dated. Not necesarially bad at all, just the case that you're going to have to put noticably more work into how you're handling notation, expression/dynamics and careful EQ edits to get the most out of what you've purchased compared to some other options out there, albeit some of those recommendations will be more expensive than the current EW sale.

It may look very tempting at $199, but I'd advocate that you at least run the 1-month creative cloud trial so you can demo it unrestricted and see if you like the sound of it or not. If you don't (or EW Support confirm that you don't get OPUS with it if purchasing the lib on it's own), then there's some other good budget options to keep an eye out on:

VSL VI Special Edition Volume 1: 191 EUR (45% off all VI Volumes until September 4th)

Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra Core (not on sale right now, but has been known to go for 50% off. Seen for as cheap as around £200GBP/$250USD range, so it's worth keeping an eye on future sales)

Audio Imperia Nucleus 'The Orchestral Core' (not on sale right now, but a big seasonal sale should drop it down to around the 250-300$ USD range)

One other thing before purchasing anything: it's definitely worth having a look through my list here and picking up as many quality freebies as possible to save on as much money as possible, o to help cover areas in which your arsenal is currently lacking in:

FREE Audio Resources List For Composers - 2022/2023