EW Play... with n4?

[colony nofi]

Hm.
I have some older EW libraries (Kontakt based) - and find some of the sounds quite usable / useful. Seeing as they have their silly sale on right now, I thought I might ask around and see if any nuendo users are successfully using play instruments inside N at all?
They're pretty much selling their composers library for $1k us, which is about the cost of the 2 or 3 libraries I was looking at buying anyway. (Silk, Stormdrum II etc)
So the $69000 question is, does play play nicely with N4 on mac pro with plenty of ram?
And I cannot find the info anywhere - (least of all the soundsonline forum) - can you get the libraries as kontakt based libs if play does not work well on your system?

Thanks for your time guys.

Cheers, Brendan.

[kdm]

Brendan, I can't give you OSX feedback, but Play is working on my XP32 system with N4. I haven't run into any problems with it specifically, but I only use it for SD2 on the host (all other Play/EW/etc libs are on slave PCs).

The newer Play libraries are not available in Kontakt form (Silk, SD2, Pianos, etc).

[dcwave]

I run C4 and have not been able to get Play to run without constant crackles, pops, clicks. It has my CPU bouncing all over the place (Intel CoreDuo XP32 4GB Ram)

[kdm]

What version of Play and C4?

[dcwave]

Latest on both (as of two month ago when I installed it)

[Daryl]

I use PLAY choirs within N4. Actually, I try not to, as it tends to bring Nuendo down. I sort of wonder whether it is the actual PLAY or just Wordbuilder. I have the latest versions of both.

In any case, I try to use it as little as possible, and when I do use it, I program against already existing audio, so that if it crashes Nuendo I don't have to load my template again.

I am also using the NI version, when I don't need WB. I would use it all the time, but unfortunately NI WB doesn't work on XP64.

D

[colony nofi]

Hm....
Its definitely one of those "do i or don't i" cases...
The EW composers bundle for $1k (er, $1.3k with platinum orch) is a damn good deal, but if its going to cause me more pain than its worth... its just hard. Maybe i should resurrect my old G5 and wack buckets of ram in, and just run play on that separately to my mac pro / nuendo workstation.

(Thought judging from the sounds online forums, they are basically saying that even though it is a spec that works, and we recommend as minimum, don't expect it to work smoothly cause we didn't really put that much time into the PPC side of things.... )
Man, their forum rivals n.com sometimes...

Thanks for the opinions...

Any more info / mac stories?

[Bman]

Like kdm I can't comment on OSX specifically as I'm on the PC. However PLAY works as advertised here without crashes on my FX-teleported slave machine. My problem with PLAY resides less with the stability (which improved out of sight after their v1.2 update) but more with the useability or flexibility of the interface compared to Kontakt. Think of PLAY like the original Kompakt...well perhaps that's a little unfair, but things like instrument banks, decent routing incl aux returns don't exist on PLAY. That is reported to come with PLAY Pro later in the year. That said, the EW sounds are generally excellent (at least with respect to RA, VOP, EWQLSO Gold, Choirs and SD2 - I don't have QL Pianos or Goliath). Programming in PLAY is generally a little better than the NI versions also. It's just the interface I have a problem with.

Rest assured though that Soundsonline will have the composers collection on sale again....They always have a sale :)

Brett

[Daryl]

Hm....
Its definitely one of those "do i or don't i" cases...
The EW composers bundle for $1k (er, $1.3k with platinum orch) is a damn good deal, but if its going to cause me more pain than its worth... its just hard. Maybe i should resurrect my old G5 and wack buckets of ram in, and just run play on that separately to my mac pro / nuendo workstation.

(Thought judging from the sounds online forums, they are basically saying that even though it is a spec that works, and we recommend as minimum, don't expect it to work smoothly cause we didn't really put that much time into the PPC side of things.... )
Man, their forum rivals n.com sometimes...

Thanks for the opinions...

Any more info / mac stories?
I would go with your instinct and run it on slave machines, if possible. No matter how it runs on your G5, you would need to run multiple standalones, because AFAIK PLAY is not 64bit on OSX (apart from turning off DFD, which in itself is a bit of a joke).

D

[Daryl]

Like kdm I can't comment on OSX specifically as I'm on the PC. However PLAY works as advertised here without crashes on my FX-teleported slave machine.
Brett

I think that this is the crux of the matter. You don't have PLAY on the same machine as the sequencer. Maybe that's the answer.

D

[colony nofi]

Thx for the extra info.
Muchly appreciated.
I'll see how I feel at the end of the week... If after completing a few long days i feel like spending the money i just made on this stuff, then i will bite the bullet.
Cheers folks
B.