Perhaps the biggest sample library flop ever. (EWQL Voices of Passion)

Member Name: MaestroRage

Product:	EWQL Voices of Passion
Date:	09/08/08 (523 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You don't have to use it.

Disadvantages: No idea what phrases are being sung, very little control over the singers notes.

This library gave me huge heart ache. I am talking from the standpoint of an aspiring game composer who likes to be able to tell every instrument exactly what they should be playing. The website gives you the impression that out of the 5 singers included in this library you will be able to tell them everything and anything, alongside some melodic phrases that the singers perform from their cultural standpoint.

WRONG!

Only 1.5 of the singers can sing what you tell them. The 0.5 is the American singer who can sing what you tell her however her voice will change during the note, so if you tell her to change notes before she's finished her hour long "uuuooooaoaaaaaeeeeemmmmmaaaahhh" it sounds incredibly synthy and quite horrible. Not all her notes will morph while she sings but most of them will have some kind of "passionate" touch to them which again makes you wait for the whole thing to finish, or risk making it sound like pure crap.

The only singer who can do what you tell her fully and completely is the Wales singer. Who has vowel articulation. mm, ooh, aah, ee, etc. But even as such without proper hardware, like a midi keyboard with the mod wheel this entire library is useless. The fast passages makes her voice also sounds incredibly synthy and fake.

And then of course there is the other 3 singers. Syria, Bulgeria, and Indian. Don't even get me started on this "collection" of presets. Thats all it is. Random phrases sung by the singer. You don't even know what they're singing, and again like the American singer unless you wait for them to finish, changing notes halfway makes it sound very fake. 6.5 out of the 7.1 gigs is just these phrases. No control, no idea what they're singing, just singing. I for one don't like the idea of putting random phrases which probably mean nothing when put together. Have some Indian listener pm me the next day

"Why did you make her sing "I'm in love, a murderous bastard, snowing on the mountains!? YOU IDIOT >:(!"

The fact that there is no manual telling you what they're singing and their REFUSAL to even supply an online document somewhere with these details is infuriating and just plain stupid.

I lost a LOT of respect for East West after this product. I simply could not believe they would try to sell such a huge collection of uncontrollable loops for so much money. I mean even Magix Music Maker comes with more loops, with more flexibility, AND it's so much cheaper. To boot it off half the stuff they wrote on the product description was not true. At all.

The Velocity layers for this product is very very limited. In the persuit of "passionate" sounding voices they took one recording, and applied it as their entire spectrum of velocities. There was no loud "ah!" for strength and a pushing feeling, no gentle relaxed "ah" for sleepy, subtle tones. No, you get just one "ah" for all your needs. One and one alone.

There is nothing more I can say about this product without getting vulgar, it's a waste of time, waste of money, waste of energy, just don't get it. The ONLY reason it got a 1 at all was for the Wales singer, who is capable of doing what you tell her, again provided you have the right equipment or even that sounds synthy.

Extra notes:
Velocity layers
Velocity layers are layers designated for notes on an instrument, to perform differently as volume levels are changed. Most high end libraries will have up to 4 velocity layers per note on several of their instruments for added realism.

Lets take it lke this, imagine that you pick an instrument, like the violin. And you want at a certain segment to play really loudly. What would you do in real life? You would take the bow and press down on the string, applying more pressure to generate more sound. As a result what happens to the texture of the note? It gets more course, rawer and more aggressive. VSTi producers recognize this change and will have recorded the loud note, so when you click it and say loud, the library will find the sample which will correspond to your demands by finding the one which is course and raw. If you then went into a quiet segment, and set the volume to very low, again we consider what you'd do in real life. You'd slide the bow gently over the strings, and as a result the sound is very gentle and smooth.

Recording this as well the producers let the library find the soft texture and play it. Understanding now? It's like in flash/photoshop where you have layers, but you can only see one at a time. Depending on your volume level the library will find the texture appropriate for it. This is generally why libraries can get very large. If it takes up to 40 megabytes for one instrument, with 4 velocity layers it will take up to 160 megabytes, assuming of course they haven't lowered the quality in one set which is really never the case.

Summary: One of the worst libraries i've ever had to deal with. Pure waste of money.

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