Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Gold Edition Virtual Instrument Review

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(More customer reviews)The other reviewers have not reviewed the product but the licensing policies with are similar for most music software manufacturers. East West is not the only company that uses iLoks, Elicencers, or other dongle based protection, so I don't really see the point in vilifying them for this. But I do agree that if was true that the dongle license was non-transferrable (at the original price) that was a bit unreasonable. One reviewer mentions the Silver Edition which is a teaser and only comes with 1-2 DVD's whereas Gold comes with at least 5 I believe. Regardless, these are VERY high quality products by some of the best producers in the business and now VERY reasonably priced for what you get.


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The GOLD EDITION of the ?critically acclaimed? EASTWEST/QUANTUM LEAP SYMPHONIC ORCHESTRA includes 16-bit stereo samples from the PLATINUM EDITION (which is multi-channel), at a much lower cost, and was recorded where orchestral instruments sound their most natural - in a ?state of the art? Concert Hall.Listen to the pure beauty of the Symphonic Orchestra and 125 million dollar Concert Hall that were recorded with the HIGHEST-QUALITY custom built recording equipment, by audio legend - Prof. Keith O. Johnson - recipient of two GRAMMYS, plus eight additional GRAMMY nominations for his 90 plus Classical Recordings.The GOLD EDITION is a MAC/PC Plug-In (compatible with most music software), and has been designed to be extremely EASY TO USE - providing professional composers with the HIGHEST-QUALITY instruments available, to create their compositions. To achieve this level of quality, all of the instruments and sections were chromatically sampled, with multiple dynamics, with extremely dynamic and expressive articulations. All players were recorded in position. If you upgrade to the PLATINUM EDITION later, your compositions will be FULLY COMPATIBLE, providing a known upgrade path to ?the best sounding orchestral sample library ever? - no other product offers this! OVERVIEWThe GOLD EDITION includes all sections of a Symphonic Orchestra - Strings, Woodwinds, Brass, and Orchestral Percussion.The GOLD EDITION includes the vast majority of instruments and articulati...

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Music Maker 15 Review

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(More customer reviews)I am in music production since nearly 20 years and I used all kind of software for Atari, PC or Mac. Of course it depends on the specific tasks, what kind of software better fits or maybe not.
For midi arrangements and band recording I would always chose a specific solution as Cubase/Protools or Samplitude.
But when it comes down to the basic, when there is a need for a simple ideas generator with unlimited opportunities, I really want to recommend Music Maker. This product is ten time worth every cent and it is only limited by your own creativity. The product can do things, I needed a 100.000 $ studio 10 years ago. It is not a surprise that this is possible today, but the price is a surprise.
- you have a multu track recorder
- you have about 3 GB of sounds from all styles + you can use any other soundfile or any mp3 file
- you have about 5 really professional plug-in synthesizer (alone worth the money)
- you have a good set-up of effects
- you have plugins like autotunes that do the same but are more simple to use
- you can use external plugins like synths or effects via directX
- you can draw effect curves on every track (e.g. filters)
- you have a powerful mastering suite with parametric eq and multiband compressor
These are just a few things. I believe even if you have no idea of making music, a simple start is possible. Of c ourse it is just my opinion and I can just recommend to try it out.


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Magix Music Studio 12 Deluxe Review

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(More customer reviews)I was very excited to receive this program had used a later version of it. My laptop is about three months old and the software wasn't able to load. It said something about not having administrative rights as if the software had been used before. The I realized that I didn't have to put a product key in when I initially loaded it. Hmmmm...I am going to say this product was used even though I thought I was buying it new.

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Sibelius 6 Professional Review

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(More customer reviews)After about two years of poking around in Finale (most of that time spent looking at the considerable tool bar and going WTF), I started hearing about this Sibelius in numerous musician forums. I went to their website, downloaded the trial version, and was like "Where have you been all this time?" What grabbed me right off the bat was the comparative ease of using the numeric keypad to enter note values and accidentals, compared to Finale's eye-boggling buttons. Entering notes by mouse (or in my case, pen tablet) is a cinch thanks to the "preview notes" that appear under your cursor as you position them, and you can use regular keys A-G just as easily; top row numeric keys add instant intervals, arrow keys bump notes up and down in case you slipped, and of course you get audio reference for each note entered. Adding "lines" for slurs and crescendo/decrescendos, text for dynamic changes that affect playback, copying, pasting and adding staves, resizing bars to avoid collisions, and I'm sure many other actions I have yet to discover are all so intuitive and sensibly laid out that anyone with a marginal knowledge of notation can get working and be productive in very short order.
At this point I should mention: I've been an ear musician all my life, am just now getting around to using traditional notation, and Sibelius has made the process so accommodating I'm amazed at how quickly I've been cranking out projects in my first month of using it. One function I'm looking forward to conquering is the ability to scan in already printed music. This package includes a standalone app that scans and saves music pages as a PDF, and uses optical character recognition to convert it to note info that Sibelius can use. It's not a perfect science, some tweaking and cleaning up required (kind of like using Adobe Illustrator's AutoTrace), but if you're transcribing, say, piano music for expanded instrumental arrangement it can save you a lot of time in manual entry. Oh yes, and there's always Explode for separating chords into individual parts, and Implode for going the other way. Essentially we're talking one person doing the work of about 3-5... or, rather, the software doing it.
Another exciting feature (the deal breaker as far as Finale is concerned) is the utilization of ReWire, which can be used to slave apps like Logic or Reason (both of which I use); this integration takes production of your music to the next level. Even if you don't have any of those apps, Sibelius ships with six pages worth of sampled instruments (no time here to count each instrument, so I'm going by the reference manual) courtesy of Garritan Personal Orchestra and Big Band which, depending on your Mac/PC's processor/memory capacity, will color your music with all the richness you can imagine.
All this before you even get to printing and handing out copies to your musicians. As you add parts to your master score, Sibelius creates docs in the background for each individual instrument, giving you an instant copyist's assistant. On the production end, there is a mixer window you can use to fine tune the volume and overall sound of each and all "players". Something that may prove very useful, though I haven't tried it yet, is a module you can use to go online and publish and share your work should you choose to go the networking route. For those times when inspiration is hard to come by, there is an ideas library of motifs you can add to for later use. And the list goes on.
I couldn't recommend Sibelius enough for notation-oriented music hobbyists and professionals who want to get up and running quickly and easily. Again, I am moving from purely playing by ear to being more musically "literate", and thanks to this package, moving quickly enough that what I've come up with so far is very gratifying and exciting. I expect to be a lot more productive in the near future.
May it do the same for you.

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Finale PrintMusic 2011 Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased PrintMusic because I know Finale is a very good program but I don't need all the features in the full version. PrintMusic is quite powerful for the price. It is quite intuitive and I was up and running very easily. The scanning works very well and the playback sounds are a very nice touch. I highly recommend if you are looking for pro results without a pro price-tag.

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Finale PrintMusic is the fast, easy way to bring your music to life with professional results.
The fast, easy way to bring your music to life with professional results.

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Finale SongWriter 2010 Review

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(More customer reviews)They call it Finale Songwriter, and that's who it seems to be aimed at; I bought it to do charts for a friend who is a singer/songwriter, and I found it to be quite up to the task.
I got tired of updating the full Finale program, which I purchased back around 1995; the last update I bought was Finale 2001; updating every year was expensive, some $100 for each year's new update; and it was annoying, too, since each new version seemed like it had to be learned all over again; so I finally stopped getting updates and stayed with my 2001d version. Since I don't do much music charting, it was pointless to keep shelling out money for new updates.
Now, here we are in 2010; I'm using a newer Mac with OS X, and the few times I have to do notation, I have to run Classic Mode in order to use my ancient 2001d version of Finale, and already, the updates are requiring a later version of the OS than I have... so I checked out the various versions of Finale, and found this one; Songwriter 2010 is (I think) the last of the Finale programs that will still work with 10.4... and it's also the least expensive, so I thought I would check it out. There is a fully-functional 30-day trial version available to download, so I tried it out by charting a few of my friend's songs with it.
Even with Songwriter, there is a bit of a learning curve, since music notation is a bit of an involved, detailed process. But I found that all of the important functions are easily accessible, and once you get the hang of what menu they're under, it seems to flow pretty well. All the important functions are present; what seems to be missing is all the customizing capability of the full Finale, such as all the little variations of the Repeat signs. It has Simple Note Entry, which is just grabbing a note with the mouse and placing it on the staff; this can be streamlined quite a bit if you have a MIDI keyboard: you use the numeric keypad to select a note value, and play a note on the MIDI keyboard to place it on the staff. I was thrilled to discover that Songwriter also has the Hyperscribe feature, which starts up a metronome, and lets you play a part into the program in real time. All the important text functions and spacing and layout controls are available too, so you can get a chart looking just right. It is limited to 8 staves, but for ordinary song charting, I can't imagine needing more than 3 or 4.
In my opinion, Songwriter is more than adequate to most basic charting needs, and Finale has an upgrade policy if you should ever need more capability. Best of all, you can try the program for 30 days to determine if it will suit your needs.

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While Finale SongWriter makes it easy to create great sheet music at an affordable price, that's just the beginning. Finale SongWriter allows you to enter notes from a mouse, computer keyboard, or midi keyboard. You can add chord symbols, fretboard diagrams, and multiple verses of lyrics. Finale SongWriter can automatically add two and three voice harmony to your melodies and instantly add a drum part. The music you create sounds great through your computer's speakers thanks to Human Playback and 128 professional sounds. You can import and export MIDI files, create MP3 files, and save your work as a standard Finale file which can also be shared with users of Finale Notepad (a free download). If getting music on the printed page is part of your songwriting project, Finale SongWriter is the perfect collaborator.

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