Hi All,
I am looking to purchase the Spitfire Symphony Orchestra (2024) library to use with NotePerformer 4 and Dorico. However, I have absolutely no idea where to start or how to go about this. I already have NotePerformer 4 and Dorico, but when I go into the NotePerformer 4 Playback Engines application, there really isn’t any straightforward way of going about it. Is there a way I can try a demo first? Do I purchase the Spitfire library first? Is there something else from NotePerformer that I need to purchase? I am completely lost with this, so if anyone has done something like this, I would greatly appreciate you sharing how you went about setting this up.
Hi. Thanks for replying. Yes, I did read those instructions, but I’m still in the dark a bit. Here’s what I gather from it, let me know if I’m wrong anywhere:
You have to already own the Spitfire library in order to try the demo in 1-hour sessions.
You have to purchase NotePerformer’s add-on Playback engine in order for it to work, demo or non-demo. Where do I find this add-on NotePerformer purchase?
IIRC The NP add-on engine (NPPE) is free. One starts that engine as a separate program from Dorico and NP and uses the NPPE to access, demo, and purchase the add-on modules for various VST packages. (The Iconica Sketch NPPE module is free.)
Of course you must own the VST package to use the corresponding NPPE module. You might check to see if Spitfire has a demo you could pair with the NPPE demo.
@Matt427 (not sure if you have made progress from Derrek’s post or not) but this is a button which you click on (in the NotePerformer Playback engine program) which tries to find the relevant VST3 plugin for that library. Presumably you install the library first.
You are aware of the comparisons there at the NotePerformer website of the different orchestral libraries playing the same scores?
And if you search here at the forum, various Dorico members here have created their own comparisons.
Spitfire don’t offer demos of their libraries, you have to buy the library before you can use the NPPE demo. At present SSO is 20% off, but they quite often offer it at 40% off, sometimes even more.
Hi Everyone.
Thank you all for your help and apologies for my late response. I think it is making more sense to me now. However, I am still confused on where it says “Once activated, you can buy our playback engine for $89 or try it for free in 1-hour sessions” in the NPPE. Does this mean once I purchase the Spitfire library, I also need to make another purchase of $89?
Thanks!
Yes, because the NotePerformer developer has to do lots of individual work for each library, and the development effort for NotePerformer to be extended to each third library is not being compensated by the initial purchase price alone (due in part to no upgrade fees being charged), so they have to charge for the NPPE packs to make it financially viable. However, the developer has also stated that they’re going to be dropping the price of the NPPE packs once NotePerformer 5 is released. So if you can hold out until NotePerformer 5 is out, you can get it cheaper.
While we are able to answer your questions here (and you are welcome to continue doing so, because it might help others here) you can also contact NotePerformer directly with your questions (especially related to terms of licensing, demo, wording etc.)
The memory requirements for the third party libraries are also supposed to be reduced substantially in NotePerformer 5 so that the third party libraries in NPPE should use a fraction of the memory they required before.
a fairly basic Cinematic Studio (with BBC Core percussion) orchestral setup currently requires c. 52Gb RAM on my system. On my old machine I had to increase the virtual memory to get it to work at all. The news that memory requirements will be greatly reduced with NP5 is most welcome. I don’t suppose there’s any indication as to when it might be out - I haven’t seen anything anyway?
Arne clarified on another forum - they don’t want to do a summer release because it is hard on their staff. So either it will be a spring release, or it will be delayed until fall, and that all depends on whether it is ready in time for a spring release.
Perhaps. hopefully in version 5 of Noteperformer. Currently, in the manual, they tell you that the NPPE engines use more RAM. I can only load a few of my BBC Core or SSO 2024 instruments at a time. The deep layers of sampling, I suppose, are the reason for requiring so much memory.
As you can see from the NPPE engine, I’m already a bit over my system’s 32g of memory.
I’m not complaining; I realize I’m responsible for the specs for using vst libraries. I simply can’t afford the kind of system I’d need to utilize my libraries at the same time.
The reason for requiring so much memory is that NPPE has to load several copies of the same instrument in memory - even if from your perspective you are just loading one copy. This is undoubtedly for layering and other processing that it has to do for the sound. An example of the type of layering is many libraries may not have an “agile legato” option and then NPPE has to simulate one in the same way a composer would who was using the library: by layering legato with staccato or something similar, the staccato to provide the attack since the legato itself would get “mushy” with fast passages. Then it needs two copies of the instrument loaded to accomplish this layering. It may still do this even in cases where the library does have an agile legato.
Depending on the sample player, loading up multiple copies of the same instrument may or may not use a lot of additional memory. Some samplers support memory sharing, where when you load multiple copies of the same instrument in memory, only the first will actually allocate memory and the other copies will just use the same memory. Then, you can have several separate copies of the same violins 1 patch loaded but have only a tiny bit more memory usage than if you just had one loaded.
EastWest Opus, VSL Synchron Player, and Spitfire Player all support memory sharing, so NPPE modules that use these players should not use significantly more memory than if you loaded a single copy of each instrument. Orchestral Tools SINE and Native Instruments Kontakt do not support shared memory, so each copy of the instrument will take up its own slice of RAM and if NPPE needs to load 5 copies, then 5 times the amount of RAM would be used. Kontakt actually supposedly does support memory sharing in the limited case of the two instruments being loaded in the same “copy” of Kontakt - but I haven’t tried this.
