Hi will2009,

The 'store' version I mention is the full Miroslav Philharmonik package with the library of roughly 8 GB. Our reps will often install or have them installed in most brick and mortar music shops for you to demo.

The demo that you can download online is limited in the sounds that it comes with, which you download from our website. The software will otherwise run for a full 10 days time, with full functionality. After the 10 days has expired, the software will reduce its polyphony to 4 notes.

Check it out and feel free to contact me for any further questions.

Thanks.

Paul
IK Multimedia

East West's products are so prevalent that they, like Vienna Symphonic, don't need to offer a demo and probably for copy protection reasons also avoid providing one.

Frankly, if you're going for a "big hollywood sound" right out of the box, East West is what you're looking for, nothing comes close for scoring films. Vienna, if you can afford it, is better for straight classical mock-ups and in terms of pure volume, they have more articulations than anyone in the realm of sampled instruments -- it gets pretty ridiculous and beyond practicality, IMHO. I will say that in terms of quality from what I can tell Miroslav is vastly superior to the MOTU and Garritan libraries, for what it's worth.

To be fair, it's not always about the sound you get "out of the box" but some people like that. You may prefer the IK interface or performance implementations or the ability to more easily add your own post-processing to get your own sound.

Personally, I'm probably going to try to save up for Symphobia. http://www.projectsam.com/Products/Symphobia/ It's not cheap ($1,300), but it's quite handy. It sounds as good if not better than the East West library, it's in the same format as my primary sampler, and it's essentially an orchestral library for the lazy and or ignorant in terms of orchestration. All of the patches are recorded "ensemble" sections, fully orchestrated, so you're freed to focus on the "musical" aspects without thinking about instrument placement, blending, etc.