Not quite. NotePerformer always included sound generators that were partly (or completely) based on samples or the analysis of real recordings. What makes NotePerformer more useful is that we include an engine that interprets the score very effectively by having a one-second read ahead of the score. Plus, we have statistics and a series of performance rules that render phrasing, dynamics, note lengths, etc. much better than unprocessed playback.
The sound generators we include have limited sound quality but benefit from continuous dynamics. The limited quality is not because our sound generators are bad but because continuous sound generators are not better than this. It’s a technology field that’s only seen limited improvement since Yamaha’s Physical Modeling instruments in the 1990s. Yamaha discontinued development because it reached a plateau, despite assembling some of the smartest people from Stanford and the synth industry to work on the project.
The problem is that all tone generators generate one-dimensional sound. There’s a realism gap between one-dimensional tone generators and real samples because acoustic instruments excite rooms in three dimensions. The timbre is different from various angles, but also, the direct sound is different from the ambiance. This aspect of sound is not just very difficult to simulate, but no reverb technology handles the spherical spreading of sound. Even if the technology existed, it would probably require a super-computer for a single instrument, so no one’s bothered to pursue it. In my professional opinion, this technology gap might never be closed. More likely, advanced A.I.-based methods that generate music audio directly will mature since that’s in the scope of machine learning.
NotePerformer had already reached this plateau with NotePerformer 2. There was nowhere for us to go. Meanwhile, the state-of-the-art (in sound quality) is deep-sampled libraries. They have the same signal chain, musicians, and seating positions as when you record a professional CD. The sound is exactly the same as when you hire a world-class orchestra. The problem is that they have a consistency problem; it’s difficult to organize ten thousand samples and even more difficult to make musicians play consistently for thousands of notes with no reference point. Still, this is the state of the art with all its limitations.
After NotePerformer 3, we had long since reached the plateau and could not improve our continuous-dynamics sound sources. Still, we had the interpretation system and rule engine that made our software unique. At that point, I decided we shouldn’t hold this technology to ourselves but adapt it to support other sound developers on the market. Their products have different strengths and weaknesses than our sounds but can’t normally be used effectively with a notation program, at all. With NotePerformer 4/NPPE, we overcome these problems and massively improve the situation. That doesn’t mean the library is perfectly well adapted for musical notation or can do anything NotePerformer can do. It only means if you want to use a sample library because you enjoy that library’s sound, now there’s a way to do that through NotePerformer 4, which is massively better and more convenient than attempting to use a library directly in the notation program.