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Dorico playback: samples vs noteperformer

ed buller

ed buller

Senior Member
As some of you may have guessed I am totally smitten with Dorico and what it can do. Yes there is a huge amount of effort needed to set it up and master it's many playback possibilities but it is so worth it.

This is a very simple 20 bar example of a bunch of chord inversion swapped between various combinations. The dynamics and a tweak of CC11 are doing all the work.

In the Dorico "samples" version the sounds are coming form commercially available libraries that we all love. The "Noteperformer" Version is just that.

I bounced straight from Dorico , NoFX


Noteperformer:

View attachment FOREST NOTEPERFORMER - Flow 1.mp3



Samples:

View attachment FOREST SAMPLES - Flow 1.mp3


Best

e
Click to read more...
 
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The Noteperformer version sounds good until you hear the samples version. I just picked up Dorico 4 Elements. It's a bit overwhelming but your posts are clear proof that it's worth sticking with and learning.
 
Nice work. Hopefully we'll soon have the choice. Work in Dorico with a great midi editor, or work in Cubase with a great score editor!
 
Wow, that's eye-opening @ed buller I've been following your posts on Dorico for a while now. I spent the evening trying to build expression maps for BFC, and I had them sort of working for a while. The C0 in Sine did not correspond to the one in Dorico (by like 3 octaves). I am not sure why this would be, but then it just quit working altogether. I don't know whether it is user error or a Sine problem.

Was there some reference you found helpful for building these? Tutorial? Youtube video?

Thanks
 
Noteperformer is like $100 bucks. Obviously comparing that to expensive samples is silly. I mean, if you're paying big bucks for sample libs, then they best sound better or you're not getting your money's worth. But with NP, you get hassle free setup, no loading time of massive gb's of samples, no time wasted on midi/sample tweaking, and you get musical AI playback ( which a sample lib doesn't have ).
 
joebaggan said:
Noteperformer is like $100 bucks. Obviously comparing that to expensive samples is silly. I mean, if you're paying big bucks for sample libs, then they best sound better or you're not getting your money's worth. But with NP, you get hassle free setup, no loading time of massive gb's of samples, no time wasted on midi/sample tweaking, and you get musical AI playback ( which a sample lib doesn't have ).
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This is totally true. I have said so myself. All i am trying to prove is it's worth spending time if you have Dorico and Samples to integrate the two. But if you are happy with NOTEPERFORMER ..then so be it

best

ed
 
Jett Hitt said:
Wow, that's eye-opening @ed buller I've been following your posts on Dorico for a while now. I spent the evening trying to build expression maps for BFC, and I had them sort of working for a while. The C0 in Sine did not correspond to the one in Dorico (by like 3 octaves). I am not sure why this would be, but then it just quit working altogether. I don't know whether it is user error or a Sine problem.

Was there some reference you found helpful for building these? Tutorial? Youtube video?

Thanks
Click to expand...
I had a lot of help from the wonderful John Barron:




Anthony Hughes's videos are great too:



I can't lie..it was a serious ballache to get it to work but TBH when it didn't, I'd just tell myself I had done something wrong and went through it again. It was ALWAYS me screwing up NEVER the program not working properly .

Start small. Get pizz and trem to work. The holy grail is the length condition : This is hard as it' tempo dependant


note lengths (1).png

This so worth doing though as it really helps the realism. You just have to find the right patches for the corresponding note lengths. Do it at 130 BPM.

best

e
 
Huh, they doubled the player count to 24 for the elements version...If I've understood their player system right(?) then the Elements version is enough for a small orchestral score...I've been wanting to get more into composing with notation and the 100e wouldn't break the bank considering that I could throw in VEPro and my sample libraries in the mix...
 
I just got NP and the main benefit of it for me is it just works. It’s very much plug and play. Grace notes, ornaments, dynamics, etc - all handled perfectly. Using other libraries, there will be much more effort required to set up the map and then augment your score with various symbols - great if that’s worth it to you and what you’re using Dorico for. Amazing that Dorico supports both so well!
 
ed buller said:
This is totally true. I have said so myself. All i am trying to prove is it's worth spending time if you have Dorico and Samples to integrate the two. But if you are happy with NOTEPERFORMER ..then so be it

best

ed
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I wish David William Hearn sold StaffPad to Steinberg... imagine have its playback capability in Dorico? Shudders when thinking about it
 
dcoscina said:
I wish David William Hearn sold StaffPad to Steinberg... imagine have its playback capability in Dorico? Shudders when thinking about it
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That doesn't make sense to me. Staffpad's capability is in its notation input, Dorico far outclasses Staffpad when it comes to playback.... Confused.
 
dcoscina said:
I wish David William Hearn sold StaffPad to Steinberg... imagine have its playback capability in Dorico? Shudders when thinking about it
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I don't think that was ever in the cards given Dorico has an iPad app. They would be getting very little by also acquiring Staffpad - the hand writing recognition is worse than what you can license off the shelf and the playback capability is something Dorico can build in-house (or if they were going to acquire somebody - acquire the leader in the space with Note Performer). All Staffpad has done is the work to sort through various commercial sample sets / pare them down to work with its engine - the sample developers don't do any work to make their libraries work with Staffpad.
 
ALittleNightMusic said:
I don't think that was ever in the cards given Dorico has an iPad app. They would be getting very little by also acquiring Staffpad - the hand writing recognition is worse than what you can license off the shelf and the playback capability is something Dorico can build in-house (or if they were going to acquire somebody - acquire the leader in the space with Note Performer). All Staffpad has done is the work to sort through various commercial sample sets / pare them down to work with its engine - the sample developers don't do any work to make their libraries work with Staffpad.
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The way Staffpad's engine analyzes notes and playback is generally superior to trying to accomplish the same thing with full libraries from the same developers. The note transitions especially in the Berlin Strings are done in a way that I've never heard with people using SINE or the Kontakt libraries. And frankly, I don't want to spend hours finessing a single line to make it sound as good as what Staffpad can do in seconds after I write a line in.

Dorico of course is more powerful in many regards, but trying to set up playback that matches what StaffPad can do takes 10000% longer to accomplish. I was just wishing Dorico had some integrated bespoke library that would work seamlessly with the note information the way Staffpad's does (which will end up being in MuseScore at some point).
 
dcoscina said:
The way Staffpad's engine analyzes notes and playback is generally superior to trying to accomplish the same thing with full libraries from the same developers. The note transitions especially in the Berlin Strings are done in a way that I've never heard with people using SINE or the Kontakt libraries. And frankly, I don't want to spend hours finessing a single line to make it sound as good as what Staffpad can do in seconds after I write a line in.

Dorico of course is more powerful in many regards, but trying to set up playback that matches what StaffPad can do takes 10000% longer to accomplish. I was just wishing Dorico had some integrated bespoke library that would work seamlessly with the note information the way Staffpad's does (which will end up being in MuseScore at some point).
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Let's see - the benefit is Steinberg has Iconica already (a bespoke library) so that could conceivably be integrated into any custom playback engine in Dorico in the future. Playback is an easier problem to solve. In general, I think Daniel and team have prioritized the right things so far and no sign of stopping. Takes me 10000% longer to input notes in StaffPad so happy that as a notation software, Dorico is progressing in the right direction.
 
I will add that I'm very happy with NP in Dorico for my compositional needs. In almost every case, when I work in Dorico, the end result will be performed by a live group so I don't care as much about mock ups or sonic realism. NotePerformer suits me fine.
 
ALittleNightMusic said:
Let's see - the benefit is Steinberg has Iconica already (a bespoke library) so that could conceivably be integrated into any custom playback engine in Dorico in the future. Playback is an easier problem to solve. In general, I think Daniel and team have prioritized the right things so far and no sign of stopping. Takes me 10000% longer to input notes in StaffPad so happy that as a notation software, Dorico is progressing in the right direction.
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I've worked with Inconica- it's nowhere close to as good as the Berlin expansions in StaffPad.

I agree that Dorico's development is a good one and heading in the right direction.

Sorry that StaffPad has not been as good a compositional tool for you as it has for me.
 
I, too, wish that StaffPad had sold to a different company. It would have been amazing to have that playback engine in Dorico or Finale or Sibelius. I would have started using whichever one adopted it. I guess it may very well appear in Musescore this spring, and perhaps I will start using it. We will see how the follow-through is. It would be a breath of fresh air to finally not have to grapple with StaffPad's shitty handwriting recognition.

As for Noteperformer, I call bullshit. If the developers of Noteperformer sold their souls to the devil, it still couldn't sound as good as that Firebird example above. For quick easy playback, StaffPad is the only game in town, and to achieve it, all you have to do is go crazy trying to enter the notes.
 
For complex rhythmic figures, StaffPad does provide trouble, for sure. Dorico is simple by comparison. The short cut keys I have programmed for Dorico make it almost as fast to enter notes for me.

Regardless, I seem to have found a good balance of using StaffPad vs Dorico and work with them both in tandem. As I have a M1 mac, I can have both apps open on my Mac Mini. Kinda cool.
 
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