About to upgrade to PLAY - questions

[tunefool]

Hi all,
Forgive these newbie questions, but I'm a little confused by the whole upgrade process.

I'm using the East West Orchestra Library Platinum edition (original), distributed over two PCs (strings + percussion on one, and horns+ winds on the other), using Kontakt 3 as a standalone on each machine. FYI, the machines are eMachines with an Athlon 64 processor 3500+, 2.19 Ghz, 1.87 GB of RAM, with Windows XP. Originally, I had an old Mac (G4), and later upgraded to MacIntel desktop, on which I now use DP 5 to send MIDI to the PCs. I've only recently begun to take advantage of the plug-in capability on my Mac... So using the PCs as essentially external instruments doesn't give me some of the advantages of plugins, but I've never run into any processing overload problems... The system never breaks a sweat, even with all 64 channels of Kontakt running on each machine.

Some questions:
Can I have a similar set up with the PLAY edition of the East West Orchestra library? Can I distribute the strings+perc on one machine and put horns+winds on the other?

I'm thinking I'll need to get an iLok key for each machine, if I want to run them simultaneously; is that right? Can I purchase one iLok key now, and one later for the same library?

Can I get the features of the PLAY edition on Kontakt 3 or does that negate the features of the PLAY engine? (or are those two simply not compatible....)

Does it make more sense to simply install the PLAY edition of the EW library on my Mac, putting everything on a new internal hard drive (I only have one drive right now...) Or should I get two more internal hard drives, so the processing is faster? How many channels would I be able to get at once, using PLAY as a plug-in for DP. My Mac specs: MacIntel Desktop, OS 10.4.11, 2 x 2.66 Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 2 GB RAM.

Thanks for any and all information you can provide!!

[A.Leung]

If you want to USE PLAY on two machines SIMULTANEOUSLY you will need to purchase a second license.

[paulwr]

Can I have a similar set up with the PLAY edition of the East West Orchestra library? Can I distribute the strings+perc on one machine and put horns+winds on the other?

-Yes. And with Platinum, you don't need any additional license to do it. You are allowed a separate computer for each orchestral section.

I'm thinking I'll need to get an iLok key for each machine, if I want to run them simultaneously; is that right? Can I purchase one iLok key now, and one later for the same library?
You need an ilok in each computer you want running any part of the library.

Can I get the features of the PLAY edition on Kontakt 3 or does that negate the features of the PLAY engine? (or are those two simply not compatible....)

No. The files are different format from each other completely.

Does it make more sense to simply install the PLAY edition of the EW library on my Mac, putting everything on a new internal hard drive (I only have one drive right now...) Or should I get two more internal hard drives, so the processing is faster? How many channels would I be able to get at once, using PLAY as a plug-in for DP. My Mac specs: MacIntel Desktop, OS 10.4.11, 2 x 2.66 Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 2 GB RAM.

You won't know how much you'll need to try to run on the Mac until you see how much your PC's can even handle. You could shoot for Strings on one slave, Brass on the other, and bring woods/perc to the Mac. Then you'd still have plenty of resources for any other things you'd like to run on the Mac

I'd be concerned about the power of those PC's.

-Paul

[A.Leung]

I thought Platinum PLAY allowed 4 separate HArd drives for each section. I didnt think you can put in on MULTIPLE computers though.

[paulwr]

I thought Platinum PLAY allowed 4 separate HArd drives for each section. I didnt think you can put in on MULTIPLE computers though.

Yep. Four iloks. The Play Plat is a seperate license per orch section.

-Paul

[A.Leung]

nice.