East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Gold Serial Number
Carletta Azahar
During the recordings, the musicians took up their normal orchestral stage positions (violins and French horns stage right, violas centre stage, double basses and trombones stage left, and so on). The library's presets preserve these placements, so users can build up a full orchestral mix with ease. For further realism, the makers have attached release trails (aka 'release triggers') to the library's presets to show off the sound of the concert hall. These reverb-only samples, which sound only when keys are released, are cleverly programmed to match the level of their corresponding samples, and you can edit their volume, decay and pan settings, or even turn them off altogether!
Professional composers chasing deadlines don't have time to wade through countless Gigabytes of material to find the sound they need, so the producers' philosophy regarding performances has been to focus on what they consider the most useful and expressive articulations, with an unashamed bias towards Hollywood film scoring. As a result, there are no sampled licks, chords, mood pieces or full-orchestra tutti effects; instead, the library concentrates on providing users with a wide and expressive range of multisamples. The manual gives a clear and logical (though sometimes cryptic) list of all the variations in playing style, but says nothing about the instruments themselves. This is forgivable in a library geared to music production rather than musical education, but it would have been nice if somewhere amidst all the technical verbiage, someone had spent a few words explaining what some of the more obscure instruments are, or given some instrument pitch ranges for the benefit of less experienced composers.
The copy-protection scheme used is the one found in most Native Instruments software these days. This means that after installation you'll be able to use the software for a five-day grace period, during which time you need to register and authorise your product with Native Instruments using the registration tool provided. The authorisation process is of the challenge-and-response type, and you'll get two licences for each part of the library, meaning that you can install the library on two separate machines. This is great for people working on large arrangements who need to spread their orchestra across multiple machines.
Although the copy protection allows you to remove the authorisation from one computer to install on another, it's important to point out that once an authorisation is removed from a system it can never be installed on that particular system again, unless you reinstall your operating system.
It should come as no surprise to learn that you need decent computers to get the most out of this library. The minimum requirements to run Kompakt (as recommended by NI) are for a 500MHz Pentium III, Athlon or G3 processor with 256MB of RAM, running Windows XP, ME, 98 or Mac OS 9.2, 10.2.6 or higher. The better system, again recommended by NI, is for a 700MHz Pentium III, Athlon or G4 processor with 1GB of RAM, although my personal opinion is that most users will need substantially more RAM to run EWQLSO to its full potential. In the US, East West (in conjunction with music PC company Vision DAW) are offering full computer systems designed to run EWQLSO, and these machines feature a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor, 2GB of DDR433 memory, and a 36GB Raptor drive for the sample data. These type of specs are certainly more commonplace these days for dedicated digital-audio or sampling workstations, and give a better idea of the specification East West feel is appropriate for their library.
Instruments are chosen from a neatly organised pop-up menu and loaded into one of eight 'slots' in the instrument section of the interface. Each slot enables you to configure the MIDI channel on which the instrument responds, and the audio output that should be used, along with key-range and transpose settings. These settings make it possible to layer multiple instruments; by setting slots to respond on the same MIDI channel, you can also make use of the multiple microphone positions available in EWQLSO (alternatively, there are multi-instruments that load all three mic-position instruments in one go, but the disadvantage is that a multi-instrument always loads all eight slots, so multi-instruments are great for auditioning, but not when you have existing instruments loaded in the slots). If you set the close, stage and surround mics to different outputs within Kompakt, you can then assign these channels in your host's mixer to surround busses, and position the close mics to the front, the stage mics a little further back, and the surround mics to the rear. More than any other orchestral library, this gives you great flexibility to alter 'mic placement' in your virtual orchestra (for more on this, see the 'Behind You!' box towards the end of this article).
Since the sample data takes up just under 70GB of hard disk space, it stands to reason that you won't get too far playing these samples directly from memory. To this end, Kompakt supports disk streaming via the DFD (Direct From Disk) extension so that only the first part of each sample is loaded into memory, with the remainder being streamed from disk. There are a couple of presets for suggested DFD usage to help you get the optimum performance by balancing between memory and disk space, along with the ability to configure these settings manually with an Expert mode. There is, however, one catch: the DFD extension isn't supplied with the library, and must be downloaded separately after you register the product on Native Instruments' web site. This isn't a problem, so long as you have immediate Internet access.
One area where a sample-playback engine often falls down in comparison to loading a more conventional library into a fully fledged sampler is in the amount of editing the user can perform on the sample data. Kompakt offers a fairly flexible interface for performing the most typical modifications on instruments, such as setting the velocity curve, a glide mode, a filter and amplifier section with associated envelopes and an LFO. In addition to a note-based filter (where each note played is filtered differently, allowing for different velocities to adjust filter settings on the fly), there's also a master filter section if you want to filter the overall output of all the notes played for a given instrument, which is quite useful for taking the edge off strings and brass instruments.
On the downside, there's no way to really get into the nitty-gritty programming of the instruments in Kompakt, such as if you wanted to alter the velocity crossover points for sounds, and so on. And other more advanced elements of the programming, seen in the automatic up- and down-bow-switching, various key-switching instruments, or the modulation crossfading, are similarly hidden from your prying fingers. Most people probably won't miss not being able to delve this deep, but power-users do like to reprogram specific samples in this way on a regular basis. However, sample data can apparently be loaded into the latest version of Native Instruments fully-blown Kontakt sampler and tweaked as much as required.
The only real possible criticism of the Kompakt player is that you can only load eight instruments at a time, so you can't use all the channels on a single MIDI port. This isn't a problem if you're running the plug-in versions of the player, since you can run multiple instances, but it is annoying if you want to run the stand-alone version. Those interested in doing this would probably be better off using a simple plug-in host like Steinberg's V-Stack (now available for both Mac OS X and Windows) to run more channels with multiple instances.
Keith O Johnson recording EWQLSO. The mic preamps used in the recording were the Professor's own design (the compact Mackie mixer at the edge of this shot was for monitoring only, and was not used in the recording path). Even the A-D converters, just visible at the extreme top left of this picture, were the Professor's own designs.
All the string ensembles and solo strings play vibrato sustains, 'expressive' vibratos, martel short notes and 'legato mf' samples whose initial bow attacks have been trimmed to give an instant note response, presumably with fast lines in mind. The ensembles play staccato short notes, and a large number of additional performance styles are implemented selectively. One very welcome feature is that the string sections' sustains (including tremolos and trills) are looped, enabling keyboard players to hold down notes for as long as they wish.
Sound library reviewing is all about close listening, so the 18 violins' close samples seemed a logical place to start. Loading their 'sustained vibrato' patch took about 50 seconds, but once in place, the samples established their quality in no time at all. The sound is smooth, polished and well balanced, with a bright, clear timbre, plenty of sheen and depth, and an expressive but not over-the-top vibrato. Quieter samples are sweet and steady, while the high velocity range introduces a more vigorous bow attack. One vibrato sustain option offers automatic alternation of up and down-bows, which sound much more realistic and lively than a series of uni-directional bow movements.
The 18 violins' 'expressive vibrato' performances start quietly and breathily, swell in volume while increasing their vibrato, then sink back to a lower level for their sustains. The effect is romantic and dramatic, but if you want less expression, there's a fast attack version which dispenses with the fade-in. The trimmed legato samples sound slightly unnatural when exposed, but would sound OK in a mix. Going against the Hollywood grain, no-vibrato sustains have an austere, slightly dispassionate atmosphere, but the muted con sordino performances produce a warm, inviting, very enjoyable timbre.
This violin section plays three types of short note: marcato (three different lengths), staccato (played with a good sharp attack) and martel. The short marcatos are the quickest of all, delivering an urgent, emphatic bowing which is very suitable for detach fast lines. Although fairly forceful, the martel samples' somewhat more lingering attack is better suited to slower passages. All three styles have built-in alternating up- and down-bows, and the staccatos even have an option that selects a down-bow for every third note played!
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