All user reviews of 4/5 for the IK Multimedia Miroslav Philharmonik

Easy and hassle-free installation and setup.

PERFORMANCE

I use it in my second home with an old pentium 4 (2 ghz) with 1 gig ram under xp pro .... no problems whatsoever.

OVERALL OPINION

It can be used to compose orchestral classical music or cinema scores fast. It doesn't have the same quality (nor the price) as modern libraries, like those of eastwest and projectsam, but it can be used with an old or mobile and light setup (with a net book, for example)... The interface is simple... you don't need to wait long to load sounds. It's quite all right for a first draft, if you consider that when writing classical music, the final goal is to record with real musicians. To make yourself an idea, you can listen to some examples here: .....www.ikmultimedia.com/philharmonik/audiodemo/

This VST installed quickly and has worked nicely on my High end PC (I've not tried it on my low end computer). I ran it on my 2.5GHZ Core2Quad & 4GB ram and it runs pretty brilliantly, more so than Sampletank or any other VST i've tried on the same engine. There can be some delay and latency between the keys and the synth, though I suspect that might be to do with my low end keyboard. The lbirary is accessable and nice to use, and is operated via folders on display on the GUI of the VST. The only problem I'd mention about library accessability is the overuse of folders. Some instruments are hidden about 5 folders deep into the library. It gets annoying to constantly click through. It is nicely organised into instrument types and then the actual instruments. It works nicely in both of the DAW's that I use, Ableton and FL Studio.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

This software works well in FL Studio with no hiccups, however I have to run Ableton Live in administrator mode to get it to work, otherwise Ableton will display it as an unsupported vst. The sound bank that comes with this VST is absolutely staggeringly amazing. This is no doubt the highest quality and best orchestral pack of samples that I've ever used. The CPU load is pretty low too so there is no problems with stacking up sounds. The memory usage is also low for a VST of the nature that it is. It is around 7 GB and comes with pretty much every orchestral instrument under the sun.

OVERALL OPINION

I love some of the sounds on offer from this VST, the strings especially are brilliant. Some of the non string sounds can be flat and boring though, but the epicness of the string sounds makes up for it easily in my opinion. I love to play piano chords then just load this VST in and load string sounds. They really are stunning. I would reccomend layering some of the sounds though, especially the orchestral ones if you want a true orchestral sound. I cannot seem to find a search function on the VST too, this makes finding patches previously used an absolute nightmare. I would still get this VST though knowing what I know now.