Aware that I’m wading into a topic of some controversy on this forum, but:
Relatively soon I expect to have some money and was looking into purchasing NotePerformer. I previously used the trial version of 4 when it was released, and it does represent a noticeable quality of life increase (and videos I’ve seen indicate it’s still more or less preferable to sampled VSTs if you aren’t prepared to spend a lot of time on the latter). However, opinion still seems to be mixed on whether NotePerformer 5.0+ actually improves on NotePerformer 4.5+ in terms of the built-in sounds and configurations. I don’t have much interest in using NPPE, but even people who don’t use NPPE have talked about downgrading due to various issues or w/e.
So: if I were to buy NP 5 would I also be able to downgrade to earlier versions, even though they were never previously installed on my system? Or would I have to have purchased those versions as well?
It seems to me that a question which really belongs either to NotePerformer support or the NotePerformer forum has ended up here on the Dorico forum by mistake.
I think the only reason to use NP4.5 is if you have previously bought NPPE for other libraries and want to continue using them. (You can no longer purchase them).
You will find the NotePerformer version history near the bottom of their page, listing fixes etc. improvements in v5. Why don’t you trial v5 now, then you can evaluate it for yourself? As usual we expect it to be updated from time to time with improvements.
Purchase comes with download links for
v4.5.1 (last usable NPPE) + all playback engines (these are no longer updated however)
v5.0.1 removes NPPE and adds improvements
v5.1.2 fixes some of the issues users complained came with v5.1
You can use whatever version and up/downgrade as you like (except the first release of 5 i.e. v5.0). Yes I’m sure you’ve read some people are finding differences in the woodwinds and issue of brass ‘blooming‘. I think core v5.0.1 sounds are same as v4.5.1 with some fixes.
BTW you can still use NPPE in trial mode with v4.5.1. Limitations: restart after one hour; no offline audio export (you can use something like audio hijack instead); no mix-and-matching of libraries; No template loading (this is the worst of the limitations); and of course the playback engines are no longer updated.
Thanks all—I realise this is also probably not the place for NotePerformer discussion (but it doesn’t seem to have a dedicated forum of its own on its website).
Downloaded the 5.1.2 trial and am not sure if I’m using it right: for example in many projects longer slurs will only play back as pairs of slurred notes, with the second one shortened, and adjacent pairs of slurs don’t play back at all. According to the changelog a bug was recently fixed that caused consecutive slurs to play back as one long phrase, but this is the exact opposite behavior (consecutive slurs play back as natural/legato technique is discontinuous despite showing as continuous in Play mode). This seems to happen in particular when the first note of the slur has an articulation or playing technique attached. Brass instruments definitely still have slow attacks as well, despite that bug apparently being fixed, and it seems like “natural” playing technique string notes last longer and are less well-defined than they should be. There are even some projects where either the NP solo strings aren’t loading, or they have been tweaked to sound almost exactly like the General MIDI strings (which seems unlikely). But I’m not sure if these are just due to the trial version not having full features, if these are known issues with NP in Dorico, or if I’m using incorrect expression maps or otherwise doing something wrong.
It is still an improvement regardless (particularly for strings).