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Originally posted by cryophonik I know this is a trance forum, but I suspect that many of you produce other styles as well (e.g., chillout/ambient, tribal house, etc.), so I figured I ask for opinions. I've been considering buying one of the following for over a year now: - MOTU Ethno - EWQL RA - Ethno World 4 Does anybody have any experience with any of these and can you share your thoughts on their usability for EDM/IDM/etc.? I've read countless reviews of each, but they're always from guys writing world, new age, or cinematic music; whereas I'm more interested in incorporating them into my downtempo stuff (Delerium-esque) and/or even my housier-sounding tracks. I'll admit that I'm leaning toward MOTU Ethno and away from the others because I really dislike EWQL as a company (no resale of its products, even when they don't work as advertised [e.g., PLAY engine]), but I could be convinced. Also, I have Kontakt 3, so I'd be interested in any other world/ethnic libraries that you care to recommend, but the three that I'm considering seem to be the most diverse libraries/instruments on the market.

Don't you have a Roland xv-5050?
And i see that u have Kontakt 3!
Cryo save your time and your money playboy!

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Dr.DRE "It's not the equipment....it's the muthaf@#%r running it"

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Originally posted by Pagan-za Fighting online is like winning the special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded.

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Originally posted by atxbigballer1 Don't you have a Roland xv-5050? And i see that u have Kontakt 3! Cryo save your time and your money playboy!

Actually, I sold my XV-5050 early this year with the intention of buying EWQL RA, but then indecision set in. I even held on to my Roland World expansion for a while just in case, but then decided to let it go and get one of these instruments instead. Kontakt 3 is great, but the factory content doesn't include enough of the world/ethnic samples that I'm after.

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I already ordered Ethno. The samples are mine! All mine!

Doru Malaia - 230 Ethnic Drums & Percussions (6400 one-shot wav samples)

if you can still find it somewhere

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Originally posted by cryophonik Actually, I sold my XV-5050 early this year with the intention of buying EWQL RA, but then indecision set in. I even held on to my Roland World expansion for a while just in case, but then decided to let it go and get one of these instruments instead. Kontakt 3 is great, but the factory content doesn't include enough of the world/ethnic samples that I'm after.

Yo cryo, how much did u sell your xv-5050 for?
Also do u miss the xv-5050 for world/ethnic sounds?

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quote:

Dr.DRE "It's not the equipment....it's the muthaf@#%r running it"

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Originally posted by Pagan-za Fighting online is like winning the special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded.

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Originally posted by atxbigballer1 Yo cryo, how much did u sell your xv-5050 for? Also do u miss the xv-5050 for world/ethnic sounds?

I sold the XV-5050 for $350, then I sold my two expansions (Orchestral and World) for about $170 each IIRC. The 5050 doesn't have a lot of good world/ethnic sounds in the factory patches, but the World expansion (SRX-09) does. Still, I think that Kontakt gives me a lot more flexibility for bread-n-butter sounds (e.g., pianos, orchestral sounds) than the 5050 does and something like Ethno gives me more flexibility than the SRX-09 does for world/ethnic sounds. Plus, Kontakt is pretty much infititely expandable.

I'm in the process of installing Ethno right now and will report back (with some demos) after I've spent some time with it.

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Nice, will be waiting to hear those. Will probably make me impatient to get my copy of course.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I ordered it through Sweetwater and chose free shipping.

I'm not sure what your options are at this point, but I actually got Ethno very cheap at Guitar Center. I went in with a 10% off anything coupon, but when the sales guy went to ring me up, he said "actually, I think we can do better than that." Then, he left for a moment, came back and told me that it was "on sale" for $223 ($244 w/tax)! Their website shows it at $279, so it was possibly either an in-store special, or maybe they just gave me a deal because I buy from them pretty regularly (the sales guy definitely knows who I am). At any rate, it may be worth checking if you have a GC near you and maybe you could cancel your Sweetwater order, get a price match, etc.

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The nearest Guitar Center is over an hour away. I checked the store locating tool when I first moved and was disappointed. I had one about fifteen minutes from my apartment in the last place I lived.

I bought MOTU Ethno Instrument a few years ago and I love it.

I use it in lots of my tracks, even if it's just one sound. It's good stuff.

Plenty of fun things you can do to adjust the effects and eq of the instrument (although I never use the in-the-box EQs/Reverbs, I have other plug-ins for that).

I also like the search interface, very easy to find an instrument you want.

The only con is that the VST loads a little slow (by my standards) but it's no worse than any other big plug-in (Omnisphere and Altiverb come to mind).

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Thanks for the input wrzonance! Yeah, the convolution reverb and some of the effects (esp. the filter) can give your CPU a noticeable hit, but it's not too bad - I like the fact that you have those options available in stand-alone mode.

This thing is pretty cool. The instruments sound great and there are a ton of them. I like the way that keyswitching is implemented on this instrument - it has a lot of options, which makes it very playable. The loops/phrases are also cool, but I'm thinking that I'm going to have to export many of them and run them through ReCycle and/or Melodyne in order to customize them. Still, they're a lot of fun to play around with. Here's a quick and simple demo that I made using 5 parts and keyswitching between the vocal phrases:

http://www.cryophonik.com/files/ethno_example01.mp3

(Ethno only + its convolution reverb - no other instruments or effects used)

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Originally posted by cryophonik http://www.cryophonik.com/files/ethno_example01.mp3 (Ethno only + its convolution reverb - no other instruments or effects used)

Very nice! I think I will go ahead and pick this up. I've been drooling over the demo sounds.