HSO 1.5 Experiences

I’ve had the HSO now for a few years, and only started looking into expressions and such recently.
What are the people’s experiences with it? For me it seems extremely tedious and not very playable at all!
The expression maps that come with it don’t work on most instruments; that is, SOME expressions work,
others don’t, within the same sound/expressionmap. I might be missing something fundamental here?
Seems really lame to me. I’ve roamed the internet for god knows how many nights now, with no luck to
any tutorials, and there seems to be almost no information on it out there.

Take for example Native Instruments’ Free Kontakt Player, even that seems extremely more versatile by investing
in some proper sounds. I’m looking for horns for a project I’m doing now, and The Session Horns sound amazing,
and look so easily playable.

If anyone has any experience with Kontakt vs HSO, please share.
The HSO wasn’t exactly cheap, and I would like to get my money’s worth.

Thanks