Which of these two “Brass” is the best?
I have the Cinesamples Brass, the sound is spectacular, but … sometimes it becomes a little hard to handle. The notes are the same volume, you have to be continually managing to control the volume envelopes. I wondered if East West Hollywood Brass is the same, or has multiple layers of volume as the old “Symphonic orchestra”. The truth is that I prefer to refine the volume with keyboard notes.
Is there someone with Hollywood Brass?
Thanked.
I own both and they are both good. The main benefit to having Hollywood Brass is more articulations. They both have a different sound, but both can be “touchy” like you said in switching dynamics with the mod wheel. Well actually Hollywood Brass uses “Expression” CC to control the dynamics but if you have Cubase you can map it to the mod wheel which I did.
Whats great about having both is if I’m having a problem with the dynamics I just switch to the other and it usually fixes it.
||+786410|Sky-Productions said-|| I own both and they are both good. The main benefit to having Hollywood Brass is more articulations. They both have a different sound, but both can be "touchy" like you said in switching dynamics with the mod wheel. Well actually Hollywood Brass uses "Expression" CC to control the dynamics but if you have Cubase you can map it to the mod wheel which I did.Whats great about having both is if I’m having a problem with the dynamics I just switch to the other and it usually fixes it.
But … Does Hollywood brass, multiple layers of volume? I like more nuance to the piano, typing stronger or weaker.
Hollywood Brass is pretty good…not had experience with Cinesamples but…
VSL Dimension Brass is amazing. Particularly the autodivisi patches and humanise functions of VIPro which allow notes to start out of tune randomly and then resolve and humanise timing. Well worth a look.
Thank you Sky and Degibbons 
Brass is another section that I must buy, sooner or later. I’m not very happy of East West Play engine, so I would discard the awesome sounding Hollywood Brass.
I’ll follow this thread 
delgibbons saidHollywood Brass is pretty good…not had experience with Cinesamples but…
VSL Dimension Brass is amazing. Particularly the autodivisi patches and humanise functions of VIPro which allow notes to start out of tune randomly and then resolve and humanise timing. Well worth a look.
Hi! I hate to tweak the topic a bit, but I am just very curious if you also have experience with VSL’s Dimension Strings, compared with EastWest’s Hollywood Strings? I’d love to hear any opinions/suggestions that you have. I’ve been saving up for some nice string sounds, and definitely can’t afford both, been leaning toward the Vienna based on what I’ve heard/seen on Youtube. 
Play is starting to do my head in; its just seems a crap, crap engine at times from my perspective. I have a very powerful 12-core 64Gb RAM system with purely SSD’s, and yet timing issues ruin the brilliant samples on Hollywood Strings when used with certain other VST plugins at the same time.
My experience with VSL Vienna Instruments PRO is that it is a rock solid engine. I would go for the VSL without hesitation, as long as your system is up to the task. Vienna Dimension Strings is next on my list, particularly with it on Early Bird Offer at the mo…Love the idea of having slight imperfections to add realism (random note humanisation, randomisation, sound of fingers on strings, sound of player’s breath, sound of chair creaks from section, sound of paper score being moved)
Check out these film composer interviews on VSL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHDyeyGzXVw&list=PLC5G55FKmpIEz7BFXKHUke7-xUgBFle0z&index=4
I use CineBrass Core and CineBrass Pro and I love them!
With all the different samples I have it does some times get confusing them some use velocitys rather than modulation to control the volume/harshness of the playing.
However I feel that using the modwheel while using modulation CC data like that in CineBrass gives you a much more fluid sound.
Additionally the PLAY engine is just so god damn awful! Which makes CineBrass the clear winner for me.
Hey Kris I agree re PLAY. Frustrating as there are great samples in there but it has to be treated with kid gloves.
To me it works perfectly Play, since 2009 I have not had any problems with it.
I just bought Hollywood Brass and I can say they are excellent, the notes are not delayed, this if it happens with Kontakt and Cinesamples Brass, etc. 8DIO adagio violin.
The truth is that Play is the best operating system and I better answers.
Cinesamples Brass has very good things, such as legato, but the sound of Hollywood Brass is more blunt.
I have a whole bunch of Play libraries, ra, sd2, hw strings, ewso, symphonic choirs and othersnd when you run PLAY with certain vsti it does have timing issues at times. Well documented on the EW forums too.
delgibbons saidPlay is starting to do my head in; its just seems a crap, crap engine at times from my perspective. I have a very powerful 12-core 64Gb RAM system with purely SSD’s, and yet timing issues ruin the brilliant samples on Hollywood Strings when used with certain other VST plugins at the same time.
My experience with VSL Vienna Instruments PRO is that it is a rock solid engine. I would go for the VSL without hesitation, as long as your system is up to the task. Vienna Dimension Strings is next on my list, particularly with it on Early Bird Offer at the mo…Love the idea of having slight imperfections to add realism (random note humanisation, randomisation, sound of fingers on strings, sound of player’s breath, sound of chair creaks from section, sound of paper score being moved)
Check out these film composer interviews on VSL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHDyeyGzXVw&list=PLC5G55FKmpIEz7BFXKHUke7-xUgBFle0z&index=4
Thanks for this wonderful input and advice!
That is an awesome system you have, I have never heard of such an amazing computer!! I’m just working on a couple year old 4 GB ram Macbook pro, I’m hoping I can run some descent strings without hitting it’s limit. Still a little bit before I can spend the amount to get Dimension strings, I think I’m going to start out with Vienna’s special edition volume 1 for nowand get to know Vienna this way, and upgrade as needed. Thanks for the youtube link as well, very interesting stuff.
+1 timing issues with Play engine 
good to hear about VSL… wishlist up to date!
My personal opinion, just my personal opinion, is that Vienna has a sound too classic, the strings not good for film score, the strings in particular are for me the most loose of its range. The woodwinds perhaps the best it has by far.
To my Hollywood strings, Lass and cinematic strings, the Spitfire or outweigh Symphobia. After the DVZ Strings are but it is a fairly expensive.
But as I said before, it’s just my opinion.
I think it’s more important how we recreate pianissimo or mezzo forte and we work different Strings. We have amazing tools but if you don´t use them with love and care, they wont serve anything us
Thomas Bergersen seems to do just fine with Hollywood Brass . If they can give me those amazing fortissimos I can hear in his “Tower of Mischief” on H.B. demo page, they will make me a Happy man. I was hoping to replace my VSL Brasses with them, so I can finally have more velocity layers, more natural transitions between them, and ACTUAL fortissimos… This is a general problem in all VSL Samples actually. That’s why I want to replace them all. Already found “Cinematic Strings” ensembles and I wouldn’t change them with anything else out there right now. Their versatility and fluidity is outstanding.
Vienna Dimension Brass AutoDivisi with modulation wheel or expression pedal mapped sounds brilliant with plenty velocity layers and multiple matrices. They load way way quicker too, and a far better engine in my experience. Hollywood Brass is good; don’t get me wrong, and I do use a whole bunch of PLAY stuff but the pure brilliance of the VIPro/MIRPro engine vs PLAY just blows it away. I like putting Hollywood Strings into VSL Mir in the Vienna concert hall. They Sound great.
Still for me Symphonic Choirs with Vota is the best thing EWQL have done. With the wordbuilder in Play now it sounds so damn realistic, and easy to use. The new additional hollywood reverb patches in PLAY are very usable too, a nice surprise.
I agree that Vienna’s original orchestral strings aren’t so good for me apart from perhaps a few of the articulation patches and perhaps the legato solo strings - that’s why I got Hollywood strings and am giving serious thought to dimension strings. I’m lucky enough to be able to get real strings recorded for major projects for a fair price…I don’t think anyone has got truly fakeable string sounds right yet, arguably…
Actually so far I have rejected every single East West product I put my hands on, with RA being the exception. I haven’t used Hollywood Brass yet, but I was just hoping that they would solve the expressiveness problems I constantly encounter with VSL Brass libraries. I mean their single notes are jaw dropping, but when it comes to motion and power I found them very limiting. I never cared how many automatons I have to do to get the performance I want, as long as I can actually get it, and I almost never do with VSL. They are excellent for Classical music’s soft character, but in my opinion they are not suitable for power soundtracks.
As far as the Symphonic Choirs with the World Builder, I could never get what Requiem Choirs give me, for the same reasons. They lack power and expressiveness. I can’t “feel” them.
If Hollywood Brass library fails me too, then East West has failed me completely.