# On Sib., waiting for Dorico, alternatives to Note Performer



## Elephant (May 30, 2019)

Hello All !!
I use Sib., and have been hoping Dorico would be ready for prime time. Until at least v3, I am unlikely to move, and Sib itself has been developing. My main issue with Sib is the playback. I tried Noteperformer, and it just does not do it for me. (Although others love it.)

I am in the group of people that like composing for live players, and want decent automatic rendering during the composition process. So what I want is something that takes all the standard notation markings that Sib can put on a page, and translate them into playback instructions for a sample library, and can do a passable imitation of humanising, so the typically robotic playback from Sib. is improved as well as the sound quality of the samples used.

Has anyone tried VSL Smart Orchestra etc., that come with a Sibelius soundset, and how does it compare against NP ? Does it respond to all the Sibelius markings ?

Are there any other alternative approaches anyone is trying ? Are there other (including sketching) orchestras for which anyone has made a decent Sibelius soundset and that can respond well to all the Sibelius markings ?
(other than the ones on Jonathan Loving's site).

Any feedback and ideas would be of use !!! Thanks !!


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## joebaggan (May 30, 2019)

I've used Sib soundsets for various libraries in the past, and while it does help with libraries responding to some notation markings, it didn't help much with the robotic playback (I'm not even sure the soundset tech is designed to address this problem). I use Dorico with Noteperformer now and have found it to be pretty good. NP does some forward analysis of the music before playback starts so it can render a more humanized/varied playback. I'm not aware of anything else that does this, but would be interested to know if there are better solutions.


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## Jacob Moss (Aug 16, 2019)

I built a custom Sibelius Sound Set using Spitfire Orchestral Library: 

Sound Sets are about as far as Sibelius will go. If you want some sort of hybrid notation/sequencer software you'll have to look at something like Dorico.


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## wcreed51 (Aug 17, 2019)

You'd want the VSL SE collection, not the smart Orchestra. Sounds sets are provided, and the player has some humanize functionality, though overall tempo variations, etc are not part of Sib.


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