EastWest Fab Four

Im a keyboardist/guitarist/writer/producer...been doing this for almost 35+ years. Along with being a devoted Beatle junkie, EastWest has outdone themselves with this one. Im using a laptop with duo-core processor, 2.5 GB of Ram and 320 GB external harddrive, 80 GB internal, Windows Vista Home OS. I also use a Tascam 2488 digital multitrack and a Motif ES6 synth and two M-Audio powered monitors..

The PLAY system was very self explanatory. I only had to glance through the manual a few times to get an understanding of the whole system...needless to say researching ( reading interview, watching the tutorial videos prior to purchase helped a lot!!!)...and mind you, I consider myself a "advanced beginner" with software recording...hey Im an ol' school twist a knob guy!!!...using the Ilok was a no brainer....I did the upgrades and worked like a charm.

FabFour/Play gives you the options to choose the sample rates for all the sounds and you can tweak to your hearts content. I havent even started fully producing with it yet....Im just enjoying learning the PLAY interface and hearing the sounds, as they feed creativity....As with any new piece of equipment, there's a learning curve ...take ya time!!!!!

Well worth the cost....for those who are looking for super digital guitars, keyboards...this is not the tool...but for those of us who remember The Beatles awesome introductions to their repretoire of songs...its "gear fab"....being able to play the actual sound of George Harrison's 12-string Rickenbacker blows me away...come on, the intro to "Ticket to Ride" doesnt bring a smile to ya face everytime....
Remember these are sounds that were created in the '60's, for the '60's , by the 60's....John, Paul George and Ringo created magic with what they had....raw talent and plenty of imagination and creativity...........EastWest's FabFour begs for us to do the same!!!!

I've been recording - composing for 20 years.
I have the latest version of the product.
I'm using this plug-in with Cubase VST 4.0.
My computer system is a Quad Core Dell Workstation running Windows XP.

I found the interface very intuative and easy to use.
I've never had any problem with it even with earlier versions. I suspect that's been due to the specs of my PC. THe manual is ok. The interface is really self-explanitory.

As opposed to a number of reviews that I've read here, I think that a number of the guitars samples in this product are great. Very authentic sounding. And a number of them as very poor. I don't get what the producers were trying to achieve in including them, but for the most part I'm very pleased with many of the guitar samples. I do sweeten the sound somewhat by running them through the Native Instruments Guitar Rig. The bass and drum samples are great as well. As a Beatlemaniac for most of my life it's been very fulfilling to get these sounds heard on my compositions.

It was well worth the price. I initially was frightened after ordering it and reading some of the comments posted on this site prior to recieving it. I don't get at all what some of the other posters were saying, particularly dumping on all the guitar samples. I'd love it for EastWest to produce additional instruments along these lines (as extensions to this product) that could be imported into the Play engine at some future point.

I make music since over 25 years , play guitar, bass drums and keyboards (hmm is computer an instrument too?)

The latest thats available, something like 1.0035

Nuendo 4

I make all kinds of music mostly 70 and 80 rock pop

PC Dual Core, Vista and one MAC PRO OSX, lots of hard disk drives

Speakers and headphones depends

easy to use interface

no other than it takes a bit of time for all these large libraries

The PLAY software was buggy at first, but it works great now. Just needed to install the updates

a pdf, love it, no waste of paper and always where I need it (on my computers)

Huh! I have it and I thinks it's fantastic! The guitars are not
modern sounding, and aren't as thick as today's sounds, but that's
how they were on Beatles songs. Put them in a mix with the same
amount of compression, reverb etc. the Beatle's engineers would have
used and they are perfect, you can hear that on the demos they have
on their website. I agree with you about the drums, just fantastic!

I think some of you were expecting the Beatles to be in the box!.

I think it is worth each cent, I have bought many promising products that turned out not to be good once I used them in my music. Eastwest always fulfilled or exceeded my expectations.

I love what I said above already, the sound and the accurate reproduction of the Beatles instruments (not the Beatles, hehe). Well done East West, another winner!

yeah it crashed once or twice before I installed the updates after that it works as well as all my other virtual instrument plug ins. My advice to those that have/ had trouble...be patient, new software products always need updates right away, just heard from a friend about the Logic 8 disaster.....but it will end u working well in a couple of weeks/ months

I "wish" I had more money to buy more if these thingies.....

I've been making music for over 20 years. I play drums, piano, bass, guitar, and sing. I'm a "studio-rat", and I multitrack everything.

I have the latest version of the software (as of 10/25/07).

I use the plugin with Cubase Studio 4. It won't work in Acid Pro6.

I write mostly Acoustic music. I'm not a big fan of synthesizers.

My computer specs are: P4, 2.4 ghz, 3 gigs of RAM, XP with SP2, and an Echo Layla 3g soundcard.

I track through headphones, and have Bose reference monitors (which I'll hopefully be upgrading soon).

The interface looks good and is easy enough to use. The installation and authorization process went without a hitch. The PDF manual is fine.

Regarding getting a good sound out of PLAY:

BEFORE the PLAY updates, the Play engine was riddled with bugs. Every guitar I loaded up glitched, sputterd and finally crashed in both the standalone, and vst version. I tried various settings on my soundcard (low buffer to high buffer) nothing made the Play vst work successfully, and nothing kept it from crashing. BTW, I loaded the library on a separate HD than my OS. I even defragged my machine before running PLAY.

AFTER the updates: The plgin is more stable. I purchased the Fab Four for the drums, and they sound and play GREAT. Unfortunately, the guitars, and reverb still cause my system to crash.

Now lets talk about the sounds:

1. The drums sound absolutely AMAZING. The software updates have made them stable to play and I can get a great performance and sound using KAT pads and various compression plugs. I give them a solid 10 out 10 stars.

2. The guitars and particularly the piano are the most poorly sampled/unexpressive I've ever heard. You can get better sounds from free soundfonts available on the web.

I pre-ordered and paid $355 US, and the plugin wouldn't be worth it at half that price.

I bought the plugin for the drums, and they sound great.

My favorite feature is being able to create different drumkits by layering patches together- taking a snare from one kit, mixed with toms from another, etc.. You can also save that patch for later use.

Turning on the reverb crashes the program. It's a CPU HOG.

It would be great if the PLAY engine were (more) stable, and gave the user a choice to load 16bit versions of the patches(like Fxpansion's BFD).

Additionally, it would be great if Doug and the East West crew listened/believed their customers/users complaints. My complaints and criticisms were not taken seriously until other people started writing in on their forum with similar issues.

I've been making music all of my life. I play drums, keys, guitar, bass, and sing. I have a sweet recording studio in my home, and I'm happy tracking/creating by myself.

I use (well, try to use) the latest version of the Fab Four plug in that is available as of 10/20/07 with Cubase 4 Studio.

I use F4 primarily to create Rock/Alternative music on a P4 machine running XP with SP2, and 3 gigs of RAM.

The interface is set up well.

I had no issues with the set up, or copy protection, as I remembered to buy the ilok with the purchase.

I'll talk about the sounds in the next category.

The manual is provided on PDF.

I will start off by saying this: The drums are amazing. I play them through a Kat Pad rig. They are perfectly recorded, easy to tweak, and sound completely natural. I am also capable of opening multiple instances of the plug in so that I can layer/swap kit pieces to create custom kits. If I could put them into a separate category and rate them, I would give them an 11. I couldn't even get these types of sounds out of FXpanion's BFD.

Now for the bad news: The guitar sounds are simply awful. I mean REALLY bad. I can't stress that strongly enough. There is no way to get a good sound with them even with a good keyboard technique. I play guitar, so this isn't really a problem, but if you are looking for quality sampled guitar sounds, you better look elsewhere.

The basses are OK, and the tack piano sound is among the very worst I have ever heard. I'd even go so far as to say that there are better Soundfont pianos available for free on the web.

Yes, the plug in is multi-timbral and a lot of that depends on your PC rig: Make sure you have a top notch machine, because this plug in is unforgiving. The convolution reverb alone will crash your machine if it isn't powerful enough!

No it was not and is not worth $355 US.

I purchased the Fab Four plug in as a pre order, based on the time and money East West had put into the project. I also purchased this product for the drums, and as I said before: They are OUTSTANDING.

I LOVE the drums, and I hate the fact that the guitars are unusable, and un-musical.

This plug-in is a memory HOG.

It's crashed on me every time I've tried to use the reverb. The standalone version, and guitars crash all of the time.

TAKE NOTE: East West initially did not cop to the fact that their PLAY engine was riddled with bugs, and was unstable. It took a lot of people bitching and complaining on their forum for them to come around and admit that there were some stability issues. As far as I am concerned PLAY is a lemon.

All round musician since late 1960's.

great iterface.looks cool and is very easy to use. I had no problems on installation either.

Very disappointed and feel ripped off! The main thing that interested me and in fact made me decide to purchase was from the guitar solo point of view. I have always been really struck by the John lennon Solo in "Get Back". This sounds absolutely nothing like it I'm afraid!
The bass guitar work is also poor!

Not worth the money but I guess there is no chance of a refund do you think?
I bought it for the Beatles sounds, unfortunately I am still waiting!

Home Studio / Computer Based setup.
Making Music Since 1985.

Installed with no problems.
Works fine as a stand-a-lone application...
But, to be honest here... we all want it to use with our sequencers,
and thats were it all goes badly wrong!

Sonar crashes constantly with this application, even with the latest fix from EastWest (Software Makers), also tried it with RENOISE... and still locks up when a sound is selected.

This is extremely frustrating!

When originaly purchased, I had no idea it would require the 'iLok' dongle to make it work, so had to order this separately... at a cost of ??29 GBP. whats wrong with a simple serial number? - And I have now lost my last spare USB port that the 'iLok' plugs into!

The sounds are very dissapointing for the money, the only ones I found to be of use are the Drums... they have a nice retro sound to them.

The guitars sound like they come straight from a Midi Keyboard, cheap and unrealistic!

The Sitars are ok-ish... and the Melotron Flutes are just passable.

in my humble opinion it is not worth half of what I paid for this...
??199GBP.

As mentioned previously... it crashes and locks up the computer.
Technical support leaves alot to be desired....

All in all this should not have been released in its current state and with just so little intruments to choose from.

Save your money!

thats my advice.... as you will not get a refund on a software product!

Engineer and Producer

Interface is great to look at, and is very easy to use. Easy to install, no issues.

Extremely disappointed! There are very few usable sounds. This is more of a novelty than a true instrument. The sitars are good, and the pianos are OK as well. However, the bass and guitars are totally weak. Even with much tweaking, these sounds sound amateur at best.

Don't waste your money - definitely not worth the hype. I generally like the East West line, but this one is a complete bust.