I don’t recommend trying to serve samples over the cloud (iCloud/Dropbox/OneDrive/GoogleDrive/etc) unless you use a plugin/library that can load everything it needs up front (most stream D2D these days), have a LOT of system RAM, and then, it might take projects a long time to load, and the first few times you try to play it could be pretty dodgy (dropouts, sputters, silence) until it gets everything it needs to play smoothly loaded into RAM.
A NAS might be alrite, but mileage varies. It depends on how good the network is, and what kind of networking interface is in your system, how good the drivers for it are, how good your network routers/switchers/wire is, etc. So, if you have a NAS setup, give it a try. It might work nicely, or it might not. Trying it won’t hurt anything 
For some libraries a quality USB thumb-drive is fast/efficient enough. If you have some laying around with enough space, you’ve nothing to lose giving them a try. Garritan for example, should be fine on a modern Thumb Drive on most systems.
For the huge modern sample libraries, you’ll want higher end storage, and plenty of it. It doesn’t have to be SSD, but it does need to be a large/fast drive with solid/steady drivers for streaming multi-media, quick file access times, and good heat management. If you’re going to be tossing the device in a bag and hauling it all over the world, SSD is probably a good idea; however, it’s not uncommon to have drawers full of older or less expensive platter storage devices that haven’t been used in years. It certainly won’t hurt to see if you can get some extra life out of those old devices. Just try it and see
If you need to go portable with a small amount of internal storage available you might consider the following:
- Install HALion Sonic, and the “HALion Sonic Selection” content that comes with Dorico and keep this on the system drive. This will be around 5gb. Groove Agent, and/or the rest of the HALion content, you could install and then use the “HALion Library Manager” to ‘move’ everything HALion/Groove Agent BUT the “Sonic Selection” Library (and maybe the Micro Choirs) to an external drive.
This approach allows you to use the “Sonic Selection” playback templates in Dorico when your external storage isn’t available. To use Sketch/HSO (And whatever else you’ve put on external storage), plug in the drive.
One advantage to keeping Sonic Selection on your internal storage, is that it can also be used with any host that supports VST3/AU/AAX plugins. Sonic can also be run as a Stand Alone instrument.
Dorico sets Sonic up in ways that do NOT take advantage of how good the “Sonic Selection” instruments can sound. It simply calls up a bunch of presets that are essentially zeroed out (pan center, not well gain staged/balanced, and no effects applied).
It doesn’t make the best choices in the presets it chooses either! I.E. Group/Section string staves should be loading “[GM 049] String Ensemble” sounds, not solo strings! (Just use the same preset over for Violins, Violas, Chelli, Basses). It should also load [GM 045 Tremolo Strings, and [GM 046] Pizzicato, and include the expression map to bounce among them. I have to manually change this every time (or set up a user template that takes care of this for me), and it’s been this way for years.
Some of the default expression maps Dorico chooses for Sonic Selection instruments are flat out ‘wrong’ (or have been in the past). Sometimes maps are chosen that try to change the wrong thing (I.E. A trombone trying to use the Mod Wheel for dynamic control, when it should be CC11 or Velocity. The result is pitch going wonky with excessive vibrato as the score plays). No thought was put into scaling dynamics properly for the instrument with a custom expression map. It’s just a quick and dirty implementation to get some sounds in the box. Users must go in and craft the sound/mix desired.
The good news, is once you understand how expression maps work, and how Sonic and the Sonic Selection library is designed, it’s not difficult at all to make a few corrections, and get your scores playing a very nice mix.
So, it takes a little manual tweaking to get the most out of it. It does have a LOT of potential to shape up a good mix, and sound really nice. It just takes work and a little practice to get there. To me the raw waveforms in Sonic Selections sound a lot like the waveforms that came in the Yamaha MOTIF series (plus some extras). They’re powerful, warm, and punchy. One just needs to know how to use Sonic to process/condition things, and put it where it’s wanted in the mix 
Out of the box, with Dorico’s preset picks…Sonic Selection sounds like this:
With a few tweaks, it can be more like this (or even MUCH better).
My one major annoyance with a “Sonic Selection” only setup is, the lack of Solo String instruments with no vibrato (Garritan Personal Orchestra Doesn’t Have this either…World Instruments has a Fiddle with no vibrato (can add it with a LFO control), but if you don’t have the World Instrument’s library…same boat. All solo strings have built in vibrato that cannot come out).
I’ve since built some of my own that are compatible with the Sonic Player. Other than this, the library seems to cover pretty much anything ‘pallet wise’ that Note Performer does, and more. The problem is, it needs much manual intervention when compared with Note Performer. Note Performer is about as ‘plug/play/forget’ as they come for Dorico. It just works, and you don’t have to think much about it to get a nice mix.
- Invest in Note Performer. Only install this to your internal storage. Put everything else on external storage. Set the Note Performer playback template to be the default in Dorico. NP comes with a native set of sounds and plugins/resources that are well under 5gb. They’re also fairly kind to the ear when sitting there composing. The library comes with everything you need to use it in Dorico without having to manually build and install playback templates, expression maps, and more. With NP, install it, make it the default Playback Template, and you’re done.
The only drawback I can think of here, is that NP only works in Dorico, Sibelius, and Finale. It’ll be useless in your other hosts.
Straight out of the box, without touching anything at all in the playback tab, NP plays the Mozart score from above like this…
- Garritan Libraries aren’t very large in terms of storage requirements. It’s possible to take this same (Base set on the system drive, extras on external storage) approach with Garritan sounds (or any other player/library of your choice) if you prefer those. I.E. With Garritan, you could just install GIFF on the system drive, and put other libraries on external storage. You’d build a Playback Template for GIFF to use when the external storage isn’t plugged in, and build other templates for when you do have the external storage with you.
Garritan can be used not only with Dorico, but with any host that supports VST/AU/AAX. It also has a stand alone player.
If you’re on Windows, be aware that MM hasn’t released a decent VST3 version of the ARIA plugin. They put one on their support website, but it’s quite broken. The VST2 plugin still works for as long as Dorico continues to support VST2. If you’re on Mac, a decent VST3 ARIA player DOES exist; however, if you exchange scores with someone using the VST2 version of ARIA (Us Windows Users), ARIA settings will be lost going back and forth. Your collaborator and you will have to make some manual intervetions to play each others scores, and such changes might not be 1:1 identical anymore.
I.E. If benwiggy and I swap Dorico Scores that use ARIA, the ARIA stuff isn’t compatible. We both have to reset the playback stuff to get it working.
If I swap scores with someone who is using ARIA VST2 instead, the score just plays back as soon as I load it, exactly as it was set up in my friend’s system.
The free sforzando player by Plogue does come in VST3 and can play registered Garritan libraries. The catch with this one is that it’s not multi-timbral. Only one instrument per instance. It’s fine if you use key-switching variants of instruments, but in cases where you’d rather channel bounce to shape up alternate articulations and such, you’re out of luck.
The major problem with using other third-party libraries as your ‘default’, is that few of them come with reliable playback templates and expression maps for Dorico. You either need to build them yourself as you go, or scrounge around shopping for options others have made and shared.
If you do go with Garritan or other 3rd party options than NP, at first you’ll probably want to set Silent to be your default playback template. You might shop/search around to see if someone else has made templates you can install (or some libraries might ship with some for Dorico by now, but most won’t). Don’t count on finding one that’s acceptable for your needs right out of the box without a learning curve.
From the Silent template, or based off whatever you might find already built out there by others, you’ll initially be setting up plugin instances manually in Dorico’s Play Tab, and gradually crafting and saving your own Playback Template(s) over time. Eventually you’ll end up with enough saved favorites to have a nice ‘automatic’ playback template that’ll take care of most of your scores. When something is missing, just build it real quick, and add it to your template.
It’s not hard, but there is a learning curve involved in building your own playback templates and expression maps. It can take quite a bit of time to sit there and connect instruments manually for a large score…even if you know exactly what you’re doing…we’re talking a LOT of clicks and scrolls. The more you build and save, the more automatic it becomes, but in the beginning, it’s quite a lot to do…
Here’s a quick rendering of the same Mozart score in Garritan’s GPO. It took me a while to build up a template that I enjoy using, and I still need to make manual tweaks to it on a per-score basis to make it behave as I like.
I haven’t shared my templates and expression maps, because, they only make sense to me. I do alot of WEIRD stuff with them on a per score basis. I might have attributes that stack 4 levels to force specific things to happen for this score, that are irrelevant and unusable in the next score. I build them ‘as I go’. I also sub-host things in ‘bidule’, which allows me to do a bunch of round-robin and logic based CC cycling that I can’t do in Dorico. I.E. If there are 222 repetitions of the same note at a fast tempo, I can have bidule detect this and bounce things around (filters, or truly round robin different ARIA slots with different settings) so it doesn’t sound as much like a ‘machine’.
(Edit: The first GPO rendering I uploaded here was too soft. I redid it below with the master volume pushed up higher, so it’s loud enough to expose the beauty and flaws alike…some things with short articulations I could clean up with minor effort, but this is enough to get an idea of the ‘character’ of the library).
