Interesting opinion by BRVLN over at VIC;
”First impressions:
Overall:
This really feels like the "Lite" version of what Hollywood Orchestra used to be.
With HO I had every patch I needed for any situation. With Opus, they kinda bundled everything together to very few patches. I personally hate the Slur+Port legato combos...
I don't understand why they got rid of so many patches in the previous HO library.
The "mood" changes nothing except the mics that are loaded and the ratio between them (and consord for strings in the soft passion). I think pro users usually like to dial things themselves. And to me having to turn off the surround mic every time I load a patch is a time waste...
Even the preferences are watered down... Can't fine-tune the settings as I could in Play and I'm getting more note cutoffs than I did using Play (I'm using a 28-core Mac Pro with 192GB of RAM running off SSD's for god sake!!).
As far as sound:
When I A/B HO & Opus and hear no difference whatsoever in terms of sound. (If anything I like how Play reacts to my playing better).
Orchestrator:
I found one or two patches that I really liked and see myself use in my template (usually legato stuff in octaves).
But the playability is flimsy and the engine is having a hard time to figure out the legato stuff inside of chords and this makes for weird artifacts in sound (at best) and occasionally notes being cut off (more than you think).
It's a nice novelty. But again, feels targeted way more towards amateur composers or composers in a hurry trying to finish a gig that pays too low for them to orchestrate stuff for them.
I will say, it's great for orchestration ideas, or maybe as a learning tool, but I don't see myself use it a lot.
I'm giving this a 4/10.
Because of price to what you're getting ratio. It's nothing new (most things we had already in HO and more) and I feel it's a downgrade from play.
IMHO”
Nice, lowest price ever. Already got their JP-ME-1 80ies reverb which is mighty fine.