There are some particularly convincing mockups that to me really start to sound realistic. This Star Wars one for instance (and in the last section, this video crosscuts between the mockup and real recording to show how similar they are):
Or, Thomas Bergersen’s “Mojo Madness” from 2006:
Of course the two making those mockups have much better than normal abilities (I would say extraordinary) and both obviously put an insane amount of time and effort into it.
My intention is not to replace an orchestra, or try to convince someone that is what I have done. Far from it, I Just wanted to replace Noteperformer as that doesn’t sound convincing enough to my ears. The sound engine just sounds synthetic.
These mockups posted are incredible , yet very very time consuming Basically sonic animation. whereas I just typed in the notes with markings and hit play. For me…I am happy
Best
ed
You can buy the full Iconica, yet strangely, the Dorico expression maps do not fully cover Iconica (as far as I checked in the past - the downloadable ones). I am perplexed by that, and would have thought that Dorico would seamlessly support Iconica completely, especially over Spitfire, etc.
So, if you get the full Iconica, ($$$), it will still be a lot of finicky work to get ‘more realistic orchestral sound’.
So beware, on that choice.
Mind if I ask which expression maps are missing for Iconica?
There is an expression map to download but it has few articulations, it is more of an example, so, needs much more manual customization on a per-score basis - at least when I tried it. I dont have much more detail on this because my deadlines were imminent so I skipped using it.
Oh, I see! Thanks for following up; I’m desperate to figure out what’s causing issues with the Iconica harp sample in my arrangement 
To my ear the immediate giveaway is the impossibly perfect rhythm. Humans just can’t play that precisely in tempo, even with a click in their ears.
Exactly, which is why Arne Wallander created NPPE. The woodwind and brass are not bad – at any rate in faster music but the strings really give the game away, although I can understand that for some the results are good enough. There is no “best” library and we all have our favourites. To be honest you, @ArteFactual just need to listen to demos and read reviews of the more promising candidates. I’d tend to agree that VSL is one of the better ones regarding consistency but tends to be better for clarity than an engaging sound in my view. There’s already been a link posted to the NotePerformer Performance Engine demos which enable you to quickly compare results using that
and they very often are! And I’m afraid that NPPE doesn’t really fix that problem in the libraries I use, nor are the instruments themselves necessarily quite correctly balanced. Still, despite the corrections required under NPPE, it’s still imo easily the best way to get the sort of results the OP is probably looking for with the majority of supported libraries without an undue amount of effort. For absolute perfection, the articulation-per-track in a DAW approach is probably required but for me, that’s really overkill.
Is there a Dorico template specific to VE Pro 7, Epic Orchestra 2.0? E02.0 comes with VE Pro 7, and I don’t see a template in the VSL for Dorico installer. I tried mapping Dorico players to VSL SYcd Full strings, but . VL1 is playing Pizz, even when arco is indicated in Dorcio.
Please don’t post the same question on multiple threads.
You should check the VSL site to see whether they have created Dorico maps for Epic.
Thank you @Janus . The VSL site does not appear to have a Dorico Map for Epic.
VSL provides a single “VSL for Dorico” installer in your User area for all supported libraries but the Epic Orchestra is not included. You should be able to fairly easily create your own maps for the bits of the Epic Orchestra you want to use as it’s very much cut down “taster” versions of instruments with relatively few articulations. I’ve used the Appassionata Strings for instance once or twice and created a basic map for them in case it’s of any use.
Epic strings appassionate strings.zip (1.8 KB)
@dko22 this is super helpful! How involved was it to make a basic map like this? Once I get ahead on the current scoring deadline, I’ll look at how you created this.
it only took a few minutes as far as I can remember. You simply look at the articulation mappings in the Synchron player and enter them into the map. Just make sure you have VelXF mapped to the primary controller (volume dynamic) and Expression to the secondary. Mostly that is CC1 and CC11. The Epic Orchestra doesn’t generally have advanced, complicated patches.
I’m in process of putting together a system after 20+ years away and now resuscitating some kind of musical life
I just listened to some recordings of mockups done in either Sibelius or finale with the original Garritan Personal Orchestra which sounded great and was easy to work with. That first version of GPO had limited articulations but the strings were beautiful especially with the Stradivarius and Guarneri layered in with the violin sections.
Besides the strad and guaneri GPO also included a bosendorfer, Steinway, glass harmonica, harps, etc all recorded in Czechoslovakia or someplace.
The whole package sold for $125 and Gary Garritan will ever remain one of my heroes. The strings were tampered with on subsequent versions didn’t sound as good I thought
It all ran well on a Mac w 4gb ram and a user with zero tech aptitude. .
Listening to those old recordings is like hopping in the way-back machine and though I don’t remember much I do remember that other than occasional hiccup or crash it all ran pretty smoothly
All of this technology is incredible but coming back into it after so long I expected problems like delay to be gone and ease of setup to have gotten simpler rather than more complicated. I gather from what I’ve read that NotePerformer will soften the landing a bit
Little bit of a tangent there
Ive installed NotePerformer and am taking my sweet time picking the libraries re ultimate goal of having as elegant a system as possible, and as close to the realism line as can be got with least amount of technical work/distractions
I agree w whoever said here that picking libraries comes down to taste
Noteperformer narrows those choices a bit and for my purposes cinematic studio series would work best though the percussion library is still at least a year out
And the Berkeley/Berlin orchestra because it sounds good and just for the fact it’s more complete
A friend is also a step behind me jumping from an ancient to a new system so a lot to learn here
I have a very different view of the Garritan GPO stuff. IMO, GPO never sounded “great” unfortunately, and was a lot worse than other samples of the time period, but a lot of people at the time didn’t have very high standards for samples, and you could get banned from forums like northernsounds for even suggesting that GPO was not necessarily the absolute best library on the planet. Northern sounds quickly became a haven for the most ardent of fans, more or less a “Church of Garritan”. Anybody happening upon that forum at the time would probably have thought everybody else thought GPO was the best thing out there, but that was only because the majority that felt otherwise was banned and started other forums as a result.
NotePerformer on the other hand is the real deal. People like it because it is actually quite good. I use it all the time, not for pieces where the finished product is samples, but for concert works that will be performed.
GPO wasn’t perfect and there was definitely a trick or two necessary to get a good result
The strings in version 1 were beautiful but limited dynamics
The sections needed to be mixed w the Strad and Guarneri to sound best. I would still use them in some contexts if it was possible
A friend used GPO for a ballet and while recording the horn players they thought they were playing to a recording of real string sections. He worked in a DAW so that might’ve had something to do with it
What I used mainly were the strings harp pianos glass harmonica and percussion all of which were nicely recorded and served my purposes. My memory is that other libraries and/or synths at the time were out of my $ league so I appreciated that you could get reasonable enough mockups done for $125
At some point Garritan asked for input and the strings went downhill imo
I will be moving ahead w Dorico Noteperformer and probably cinematic studio series + a few other instruments and I’m sure the result will be much better than what I recorded 20 years ago
It’s all pretty amazing stuff
Like many, I started with Garritan because there was little else. After a brief in-between phase of Kirk Hunter, the minute VSL released their Special Edition nearly 20 years ago now, I switched but even that sounds rather sterile in an orchestral context compared to what we have now (although I find some individual instruments, particularly woodwind, still pretty good in a solo context).
NotePerfomer was revolutionary when it came out but I fairly soon tired of the string tone. NPPE has transformed it and I would strongly recommend @bluekayak88 plans to wed it to Cinematic Studio which is my current favourite combination for full orchestral works.
that is the plan at this point
but then I stumbled on spitfire’s version so at the moment though I am torn between cinematic studio strings and spitfire’s chamber strings which are really beautiful but I don’t believe will work in noteperformer(?)
I will post that question in a separate thread maybe, or ask the noteperformer people via email
my gut is that noteperformer will only get better
if they could match up with all these great libraries would be terrific
The only Spitfire libraries for which NotePerformer currently makes an NPPE are BBCSO Core and BBCSO Pro. The link below shows the instruments mapped for the Pro version.
