Sibelius can load sounds from other instrument libraries automatically into some virtual instruments, like the Sibelius Player (for the Sibelius 7 Sounds) or Kontakt Player and ARIA Player (Garritan Personal Orchestra). For most other virtual instruments, like East West Quantum Leap, whether they are multi-channel or single-channel, you'll have to load the sounds yourself. If you are more of a beginner on this subject, please first see "6.15 Virtual instruments for beginners" in the Sibelius 7 Reference Guide for more information.

One easy way to make East West Quantum Leap virtual  instruments work with Sibelius is to download what is called a "Sound Set" from SoundSetProject.com, a 3rd party website that makes these for use with Sibelius & East West Products. In order to play a particular sound, Sibelius needs to know which sounds are available on its playback devices. To find out, for each device, Sibelius has a “sound set”;  an XML file that lists all the instruments/sounds the device can play (called Sound IDs) and the MIDI messages (e.g. program changes, controller changes, keyswitches) needed to play them.  In short, this sound set tells Sibelius how to associate the instruments in your score with Virtual Instruments like EWQL Symphonic Orchestra.

EWQL sound sets (Symphonic Orchestra, Symphonic Choirs, Storm Drum 2, Hollywood Strings/ Brass/ Woodwinds and more) : http://www.soundsetproject.com/soundsets/eastwest/

*The PDF document, which is available for download once you've received the sound set, provides detailed instructions on how to install and setup everything properly.

* Please note that Avid technical help cannot provide support for these third-party sound sets.*

Installing a Sound Set (Sibelius 7 and earlier):
Please see the instructions from this article: http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/how_to/How-to-install-a-Sibelius-sound-set

You can also make these sound sets on your own, but it's definitely a more time-consuming process. Please see "6.16 Working With Virtual Instruments" in the Sibelius 7 reference manual for instructions on creating your own sound sets.

Getting the best out of your Virtual Instruments:
Sample-based virtual instruments tend to require a lot of hard disk space and a lot of RAM to use them effectively. Some of the samples in the East West libraries are so large that you can only use a few sounds at the same time on a single computer (and it can take upwards of 10 minutes even to load them all from disk before you can play anything*), so it is important to strike the right balance between sound quality and pragmatism – for more information see "How to get the best out of virtual instruments and effects" in section 6.15 of the Sibelius 7 Reference Guide.

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