I don’t think I understand the pre-loading aspect.
I more often than not only use the instruments from NotePerformer.
I DO have BBCSO, but since they take up so much memory when loaded I rarely use them since I can’t create a full orchestra with that library (I run out of RAM).
Will NP5 automatically load BBCSO even if I don’t use it all that much?
Reply from Arne:
Hi Rich!
Can you please try this:
Open File > Engine Tools in NPPE
Locate “Hollywood Choirs” on the right-hand side.
Locate the exact instrument that failed.
Click the “Long” articulation, and choose to “open the VST3 preset”. An Opus VST3 instance will open.
Ensure that the microphone busses in the Opus player are active, and routed to Audio Ouputs 1: Main, 2: Close, 3: Ambient/Surround.
If you can’t work it out, can you please send a screenshot from the Opus player with that VST3 preset?
Best regards,
Arne
Wallander Instruments
With NP5, you can use BBCSO and it will have with a comparable resource use to baseline NotePerformer. You won’t run out of RAM like you would with NPPE4 (apart from, possibly, during the preloading step in NPPE5, but that can be worked around).
the preloading is for the NP Performance Engine libraries – my understanding is that the whole point of this is to reduce RAM in particular when using libraries like the BBC SO (which I also have and use)
I’m creating my pre-load file for BBCSO core, it’s been running for almost two hours now (still ten minutes to wait). What kind of timings do you experience? Do faster newer computers make it really faster than my old macbookpro intel? By which order of magnitude?
It took about 30 mins for NP to preload BBCSO Pro on my M2 Ultra Mac Studio with 64GB RAM…
Two hours is perfectly normal, and it could be a lot longer if the system is slower. The time is determined by the VST3 plug-in’s performance and your system’s number of CPU cores.
It’s a one-time process. The longer it takes, the more reason to preload for your system, since it mirrors the VST3’s realtime performance.
The timing is odd, as I just ordered a M4Max macbookpro this very morning…
Does the pre-loader keep the computer from sleeping, or should one turn the screensaver/sleep off manually while pre-loading?
6 cores of my M2 Pro going full blazes for 1 hour to load BBC Core.
I’m wondering – can I uninstall BBCSO, and the NPPE will still work, using the pre-loaded data?
We didn’t add anything to forcefully prevent sleeping, because I think users would have mixed feeling about it.
You need the original VST3 installed at all times, including any license devices such as iLok.
Sorry – another question.
Is it possible to set stereo multi-output channels as the default? I seem to have to set it for each new instance.
Perhaps the location of the samples influences how quickly NP can preload a library. I couldn’t afford a huge internal SSD for my Mac Studio owing to Apple’s premium pricing, but find the WD Black SN850X to be very quick, especially in the Orico Thunderbolt 3/4 enclosure.
Unfortunately, no.
I’m not sure that we’ve going to add separate audio outputs as a default option, because it increases CPU use 5-10x, and we don’t want inexperienced users to turn it on accidentally. Maybe we could make it a hidden feature only for power users, e.g., creating a text file on your drive triggers it, but we’re not there yet.
Yeah, that would be an option I would love to have always on 
Just out of curiosity - is that specific to NotePerformer, or is it a general issue with vst3 plugins?
I too would love a preference (hidden if necessary) to make this default.
Congrats on the release, sounds like yet an incredible achievement!
No, this is managed by us. We could certainly choose to route to audio outputs 1-16 by default, but most NP users would rather save the 90% CPU.
In the meantime, we added the Settings > shortcut to quickly do it. So the process is only a few clicks per score and it’s saved with the document.
I was referring to the increased cpu. But never mind, I think I found the answer in the version history document:
Note: Enabling multiple outputs increases CPU usage since reverb must be processed per output.
It took about 30 minutes on my M3 MacBook Pro, 36 GB RAM, for BBCSO Core. And I’m happy to say it sounds fantastic!