Recommended VST/Sample Library

I found it worthwhile to upgrade to EWQL Platinum-- in addition to more instruments/articulations, you get the close mic positions, which means that you're not stuck with the hall reverb on every sound (The default Gold mic positions are a bit too wet for my taste)..

Honestly, the few libraries avaiable are all equally great.
Different, but not in a bad way.

I for myself wont get any more play libraries (I have the choirs, but have a lot of problems with the player, wordbuilder crashing in about 3 out of 4 Sessions). But I gather that they are mostly very good, but too large and memory eating. Keep away from Hollywood Woodwinds, though. They seem to be awfull at the current state. The library may get better with time though as it is beeing reprogrammed, or so I belive.

For me it is all Spitfire Audio now. I have Albion I, Albion II: Loegria, Solo Strings, the Harp and all the Single Modules.
They all come with 3-4 mic positions so they are pretty flexible, low on memory since Kontakt based and very real sounding.

If I had the money, I would add Cinesamples Brass & Woodwinds to my template.
But I am kind of waiting for an announcement for the next few Spitfire products. They are always hinting.
So I suppose they are working on something like solo brass ore solo winds.

There is also Embertone to look out for, I loved the string quartet legato freebee.
They are currently working on solo strings with the violin right arround the corner.

Every library has strengths and weaknesses. I've heard more than one top guy will tell you they "have everything that's out there".

Having said that, EWQL is old sample technology and things have come a long way since then. There's no denying that EW's latest stuff based on Play - Hollywood Strings and brass - they sound great. But Play is very buggy on the Mac, to the point where I've had to stop using it entirely. My friends report the stuff works very well on PCs, however. I find the libraries a bit disorganized, messy, and hard to use, but you can get great results.

Another user mentioned Spitfire - they are doing great work. Albion is a great all-around library. For strings my favorite right now is Cinematic Strings. Anything by Cinesamples I can recommend - the libraries are solid and sound great, I love Cinebrass and Cinebrass Pro.

Symphobia is a favorite of many, but it's getting a little outdated now. But the atonal stuff they have in Symphobia 2 is excellent and widely used.

It's a deep topic, however - the best libs often depend on what kind of music you are doing at the moment.

I've used quite a bit of the EW stuff in the past and found PLAY to be pretty stable on the Mac. The only issue I've had is typing while loading up a session and accidentally deleting whatever instrument was picked. This is because, unlike other samplers, PLAY jumps to the front when loading a patch and recognizes any keystrokes if you're typing. Highly annoying.

But crashing and stability issues almost never happen for me with PLAY. Getting multiple libraries is often not possible so you'd most likely have to do it one or two at a time but I agree with the other posts, each brings something good to the table.