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Dorico playback: samples vs noteperformer

dcoscina said:
If Arne is indeed working on a new version with better sounds, I'm super excited about it.
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Yeah, me too sort of... Since I compose mainly contemporary (not quite avant-garde) music, none of those solutions really work for me. So I'm not sure if I'll ever use them. I constantly rely on specialist libraries.
 
Bollen said:
Yeah, me too sort of... Since I compose mainly contemporary (not quite avant-garde) music, none of those solutions really work for me. So I'm not sure if I'll ever use them. I constantly rely on specialist libraries.
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I find notating modern scores like aleatoric sections to be a bit of a graphic challenge (if not a playback challenge). Its the one area Sibelius seems to be a little easier at- hiding notes or stems and such... but I haven't tried it again in Dorico 4 so perhaps they made some improvements there as well
 
dcoscina said:
I find notating modern scores like aleatoric sections to be a bit of a graphic challenge (if not a playback challenge). Its the one area Sibelius seems to be a little easier at- hiding notes or stems and such... but I haven't tried it again in Dorico 4 so perhaps they made some improvements there as well
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I hear ya! I haven't updated to 4 yet (waiting for tempo line edit), but so far I haven't encountered anything I can't notate in Dorico. It's sometimes fiddly, but then again that's the case in any program. I often use an added hidden staff for certain playback elements that wouldn't be notated.
 
Bollen said:
. If you rely on Expression Maps you will get a robotic and unnatural performance...
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Yes, this has always been the problem with playback from notation software - robotic and unmusical playback. No matter how good your samples are, if the playback engine is dumb, you'll get nice samples played back robotically. NP helps with some AI logic, but hopefully there's more on the horizon with AI that can help. It's no wonder that with DAW's, playing the parts in tends to give a more musical performance.
 
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joebaggan said:
Yes, this has always been the problem with playback from notation software - robotic and unmusical playback. No matter how good your samples are, if the playback engine is dumb, you'll get nice samples played back robotically. NP helps with some AI logic, but hopefully there's more on the horizon with AI that can help. It's no wonder that with DAW's, playing the parts in tends to give a more musical performance.
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See this is where I find StaffPad really good. Its playback sounds very organic, not robotic.
 
joebaggan said:
Yes, this has always been the problem with playback from notation software - robotic and unmusical playback. No matter how good your samples are, if the playback engine is dumb, you'll get nice samples played back robotically. NP helps with some AI logic, but hopefully there's more on the horizon with AI that can help. It's no wonder that with DAW's, playing the parts in tends to give a more musical performance.
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In dorico you can ofcourse change the midi data without altering the notation. E.g. do note overlaps in the play module, so the legato's are triggered with library <name>, change the start time of the sample a bit earlier than the notes indicate, to compensate for the sample delays etc..
Or alter the CC information to your liking.. so it fits the libraries better (in a way like you would in a daw).
It's not instant ofcourse.. but it can work out well for the render.
 
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Jett Hitt said:
I would love nothing more than to be able to make a notation program sound like StaffPad. The interpretation behind Noteperformer is indeed its strong point. If they could just harness better samples with it, it might be amazing. As I struggle with expression maps in Dorico, this seems very appealing.
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The amazing thing with Noteperformer, and a big reason why so many composers and engravers use it, is that it's so light. No waiting time at all when loading a big orchestral score, and that's really important for professionals!
 
dcoscina said:
Conrado's music is amazing. I love how he gets those textures using StaffPad.
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Bernard Duc said:
The amazing thing with Noteperformer, and a big reason why so many composers and engravers use it, is that it's so light. No waiting time at all when loading a big orchestral score, and that's really important for professionals!
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Totally agree. No messing around, works on both desktop and laptop. Easy peasy.
 
Bollen said:
Speaking as someone with 25 years of experience with the real thing (i.e. real musicians) and having an almost allergic reaction to computer generated music, I have to say these comparisons are silly.

I have Staffpad and have used it a lot. A few years ago I did all my drafts and sketches on it, then I would do the full fledge composition in Sibelius/later Dorico. As my music has developed more and more complex tuplets I have moved away from it and now do 99% of my work in Dorico.

In comparing playback between the two there are only two possibilities that count for something: 1.- how good is the performance out-of-the-box without ANY tweaking and 2.- how realistic a performance can you get out of them. For no. 1 the examples provided above I can hear Staffpad has been manually tweaked—there are swells that no AI to date would apply contextually correct. It also soaked in reverb, hence hiding a lot of imperfections. The Dorico example on the other hand is quite dry, almost a classical recording, thus exposing imperfections much more. We also know that NP requires no tweaking and we don't know if this file has been or not, and if so how much? How much time spent tweaking between the Staffpad version and the Dorico one. Finally, NP is modelling not samples (I think).
For no. 2 there is no discussion, since Staffpad does not let you use external libraries and in Dorico you have to do everything manually which takes a huge amount of time. If you rely on Expression Maps you will get a robotic and unnatural performance...
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In terms of NP, I've found that in most cases, a lot of tweaking is necessary to get the balance correct. Sometimes that means adding a dynamic to one instrument so it is either sufficiently loud relative to the other instruments at that point, or softer. And for some things, it isn't worth all that, or else I'll use NotePerformer to play back string harmonics (which it does really well) and GPO5 for the other measures (so I create duplicate instruments, some for NP some for GPO5).
 
Bernard Duc said:
The amazing thing with Noteperformer, and a big reason why so many composers and engravers use it, is that it's so light. No waiting time at all when loading a big orchestral score, and that's really important for professionals!
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I agree, but I can't produce a final product with it. With StaffPad, I can most of the time.
 
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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ok, i'll bite. staffpad is the leader in the space. by far. it's amazing that we're even comparing an iPad app with a 600 dollar desktop app.

Note performer sounds like… note performer, always. the drums are terrible. It’s better than midi, but not by much. I've never had anyone at the studio bring me a noteperformer output. I've used staffpad output in final mixes many times.

I agree that steinberg should have bought staffpad, but like... 9 years ago when they were starting to build dorico... heck imagine if they'd spent 9 years and an entire dev team improving the score editor in cubase.

anyway if it's so easy to build a playback engine like staffpad... why has no one else done it? are you able to do this symphony chart with dorico for iPad and note performer? or even the full 600 bucks dorico and thousands of dollars of libraries with hours of expression map programming and days of midi blob wiggling? to me staffpad sorts the men from the boys, if your doing academic music then maybe it doesnt work very well... but for the jobs i get paid for, it knocks it out the park.

 
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