# Notion playback quality using inbuilt samples



## Elephant (Jul 8, 2016)

Hi all ! I am currently waiting for Dorico - I use Sib and have tried NotePerformer and did not like it. Will it give me an improvement in playback quality over playback with NP, to export a Sib score in MusicXML, open it in Notion5 and play the score in Notion ?
Clearly it is not going to be as good as tweaking individual notes in a DAW, but for someone who is trying to get the best playback possible without doing all the DAW tweaks, is playing back in Notion (with the internal LSO samples) a viable option and will it give me a better result than playing back in Sib with NotePerformer ?

Appreciate if anyone here who has Notion and Sib and has tried this approach can say how it worked out

Many thanks !!


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## kmlandre (Jul 8, 2016)

Hi Elephant-

I'm something of a Notion fanboy, so I can tell you it's really terrific as a composition tool, especially for instant feedback while writing a piece. However, like every kind of DAW, in terms of performance you will get out of it what you put into it. You have to carefully mark your dynamics, orchestrate with intelligence, and setup your virtual soundstage as carefully as you would for any other mix. Often this means moving the start or end of a note to "decomputerize" the playback.

That being said, an "out of the box" piece of music in Notion is going to sound wildly better than it does in either Sibelius or Finale (IMHO, anyway), and with much less fiddling and twiddling.

But if you're after engraved, publishing quality scores and parts, you're definitely going to want to export back to Sibelius or Finale. Notion is good enough to throw in front of a player and have the ideas clearly communicated, but it just doesn't look as professional as either Sibelius or Finale.

You may run into issues importing from Sibelius, but most folks I've read about have figured out how deal with the occasional hiccup there...

-- Kurt M. Landre'


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## dcoscina (Jul 9, 2016)

I second what Kurt says. Notion 5 also hosts and has templates for other popular libraries for better sonic quality. Note Performer and Sibelius are decent but I find it not as abundant for articulations that can be played back like Notion can.

Also Dorico isn't going to have comprehensive playback when it first debuts. It's going to use Halion Symphonic Orchestra which is pretty slim on articulation variety (I own it).


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## wcreed51 (Jul 10, 2016)

Also on the near horizon is the library that will be the companion to Overture 5 (and of course, Overture 5). I had a chance to hear and play with it at summer NAMM, and it's quite spectacular; much better than all of the above.


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## Elephant (Jul 10, 2016)

Thanks very much for the replies ! I am most probably going to give it a whirl. As long as the stock playback is better than Sib/NP then I will probably be satisfied. It seems that you can also simultaneously output the audio from separate staves in Notion for mixing in another application. A couple of followup questions -
1) Do you find that the sequencer overlay controls are sufficient to produce a commercial quality mockup/output, or do you always have to go to a DAW ?
2) Are there any particular libraries that play nice (i.e. better than others) with Notion5 in terms of producing a decent output without individual note tweaking, and how do Notion's own add-on libraries figure in that equation ?
@wcreed51 - was it the quality of the sounds you liked, or are you referring to the playback of a score just written out, without individual note tweaks that I know can be done in Overture but are normally done in a DAW ? Looks like I now have another program to check out !


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## wcreed51 (Jul 10, 2016)

Both!


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## dcoscina (Jul 10, 2016)

wcreed51 said:


> Also on the near horizon is the library that will be the companion to Overture 5 (and of course, Overture 5). I had a chance to hear and play with it at summer NAMM, and it's quite spectacular; much better than all of the above.


That's encouraging since I bought Overture 5 but hardly use it at this point. Reminds me of Encore which was my go to notation program for 1998 to 2004


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## Noam Guterman (Jul 10, 2016)

Notion 5's default sounds are perfectly acceptable for rough sketches. One thing I really dislike though is the machine gun effect on staccatos.


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## dcoscina (Jul 10, 2016)

Ye


Noam Guterman said:


> Notion 5's default sounds are perfectly acceptable for rough sketches. One thing I really dislike though is the machine gun effect on staccatos.


s I agree. I wish they would re sample the library with more velocity layers and round robins. Not sure where Presonus is taking Notion. They keep lowering the price and I'm worried they will drop it at some point, which would be disappointing since I love that I can use it on my iPhone, iPad and desktop.


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## Maximvs (Jul 10, 2016)

wcreed51 said:


> Also on the near horizon is the library that will be the companion to Overture 5 (and of course, Overture 5). I had a chance to hear and play with it at summer NAMM, and it's quite spectacular; much better than all of the above.



I have been seriously looking and considering Overture 5, not for engraving work though but as a composition tool due to its flexibility in implementing external libraries... I would be very interested to hear some demos with the new Overture dedicated sample library, I have read something about it but nothing has appeared on the Sonic Scores website yet... Let's wait and see.


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## Maximvs (Jul 10, 2016)

dcoscina said:


> Also Dorico isn't going to have comprehensive playback when it first debuts. It's going to use Halion Symphonic Orchestra which is pretty slim on articulation variety (I own it).



Who told you that Dorico won't have comprehensive playback when it will be launched? I have read that there is a possibility that Arne Wallander may develop NotePerformer for Dorico... I think it is too premature still to speculate what Dorico will include or not...


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## dcoscina (Jul 10, 2016)

Massimo said:


> Who told you that Dorico won't have comprehensive playback when it will be launched? I have read that there is a possibility that Arne Wallander may develop NotePerformer for Dorico... I think it is too premature still to speculate what Dorico will include or not...


It's what Spreadbury said in one of his posts. It will draw from HSO which has very limited articulation variety, so don't expect a lot of articulation playback from samples.


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## pinki (Jul 16, 2016)

Elephant said:


> Thanks very much for the replies ! I am most probably going to give it a whirl. As long as the stock playback is better than Sib/NP then I will probably be satisfied. It seems that you can also simultaneously output the audio from separate staves in Notion for mixing in another application. A couple of followup questions -
> 1) Do you find that the sequencer overlay controls are sufficient to produce a commercial quality mockup/output, or do you always have to go to a DAW ?
> 2) Are there any particular libraries that play nice (i.e. better than others) with Notion5 in terms of producing a decent output without individual note tweaking, and how do Notion's own add-on libraries figure in that equation ?
> @wcreed51 - was it the quality of the sounds you liked, or are you referring to the playback of a score just written out, without individual note tweaks that I know can be done in Overture but are normally done in a DAW ? Looks like I now have another program to check out !



Definitely try Miroslav. With the caveat that you have to open in 32bit mode. But it's by far the best notation/library combination for out of the box replay-abilty for me. Way better than stock Notion sounds and super efficient. Then export to your DAW to tweak.


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## Elephant (Sep 10, 2016)

pinki said:


> Definitely try Miroslav. With the caveat that you have to open in 32bit mode. But it's by far the best notation/library combination for out of the box replay-abilty for me. Way better than stock Notion sounds and super efficient. Then export to your DAW to tweak.


@pinki - which version of Miroslav do you like ? And I presume you mean Notion/Miroslav as the combination ? What puzzles me after looking at the Notion6 manual is that some normal articulations like marcato are missing. So what happens when you take a Sib score with say everything in marcato, which I use quite a bit, output it as musicXML, and then reopen in Notion/Miroslav - does it work ? Does that combination also get rid of the machine gun staccato Noam referred to ? And what do you do in Notion if you want to write in marcato (for example) natively ?

Thanks ! 'Scuse all the questions, but it really does seem that the detail of this sort of stuff matters.


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## nanotk (Sep 12, 2016)

Elephant said:


> Thanks very much for the replies ! I am most probably going to give it a whirl. As long as the stock playback is better than Sib/NP then I will probably be satisfied. It seems that you can also simultaneously output the audio from separate staves in Notion for mixing in another application. A couple of followup questions -
> 1) Do you find that the sequencer overlay controls are sufficient to produce a commercial quality mockup/output, or do you always have to go to a DAW ?
> 2) Are there any particular libraries that play nice (i.e. better than others) with Notion5 in terms of producing a decent output without individual note tweaking, and how do Notion's own add-on libraries figure in that equation ?
> @wcreed51 - was it the quality of the sounds you liked, or are you referring to the playback of a score just written out, without individual note tweaks that I know can be done in Overture but are normally done in a DAW ? Looks like I now have another program to check out !




Notion works also very well natively with EastWest Symphonic orchestra.


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## Elephant (Sep 12, 2016)

Thanks @nanotk ! Does anyone here have both EWQLSO Gold or Platinum and MV1 and can give a view on which sounds better with Notion, and which sounds better with Sibelius(6) and a soundset file from Jonathan ? Which actually has more articulations ? And are there any other libraries with a large articulation list that are suitable candidates to use out of the box with a notation program, that have all the standard articulations that one would see in notation for real music - my primary goal is feedback during the process of scoring for orchestra. Thanks all !!


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## wcreed51 (Sep 12, 2016)

That would be VSL SE


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