Agree!
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Good point. One MUST have purchased and licensed the libraries before they can be used in NP5; and we can still use those same libraries in NP 4.5 to write music for sale and distribution, so I don’t really see what their issue is with NP5. As has been said, it would open up a bigger market for them as NP5 would make their libraries usable on many more computers. I used the NPPE 4.5 engines with my libraries, but, except for Synchron PRIME, could only use a few instruments of BBC SO Core and SSO 2024 at a time due to their very high memory and system demands. NP5 allowed me-for the first time- to be able to use the entire libraries that I paid very good money for. And, while the NP5 engines didn’t have the same depth as the full VST versions, they sounded better than NP alone and could result in a good product. Someone mentioned MuseScore; several of these same companies are creating versions of their software to work with MuseScore’s playback engine and useable, therefore, on more modest computer setups, and MuseScore is nowhere near as useable for professional use as Dorico is. You may be right about EULA issues, but I would have thought the same issues would concern the developers with NP 4.5 and MuseScore. This really is a sad situation. However, I, too will continue to support Arne and Noteperformer. He genuinely seems to care about the needs of the many of us who desire good-sounding libraries, but don’t compose into DAW- which seems to be the primary focus of most sound library developers 
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I would suppose that whoever is behind the scenes regarding Wallander’s decision to remove NPPE from Noteperformer 5.x, there are nondisclosure agreements protecting the companies that got Wallander to comply. They likely realized that (at least in the US) suits could be brought by affected parties to get their money back (plus damages) from said companies.
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Yep. Any first-year law student would easily see a cause of action by we consumers against any party that interfered with our contract with Wallander, aka tortious interference with a contractual relationship. They would defend by claiming that our contract was itself a breach of their intellectual property (aka terms of use). While it would make a rather interesting bar exam question, I prefer to occupy my mind on changing my workflow–so that I can get back to writing music. 
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The really bummer is annother one. Without Noteperformer and NPPE dorico itself becomes useless for me. Because especially the VSL version of Staffpad from the Musescore pool has a much better playback than Dorico. It has a super light footprint on the Ipad Pro and you can even use Staffpad to score for picture as well as can import Audiofiles at the same time. All articulations working too. The resulting audio is 24 bit 48khz. I can export each stem to reaper and still can add great reverbs and other stuff
This day is really a total abfuck how we germans would say
You just have to realize the amount of work. What can make it a bit easier is if you’re writing the music with the library already loaded and driving things. The problem is in notation, you’re often working in a situation where you’re loading up a score that was already completed previously with different sounds (like NotePerformer), possibly you or possibly someone else, loading up the Playback Template and hitting the play button. When there are problems everywhere the moment you hit play, it can be overwhelming, and you almost don’t want to deal with it. Very different from the experience of composing with the library already loaded (this is more like the DAW mindset). In this case you are dealing with issues “as they come” as you are in the process of writing the piece and not dealing with everything exploding simultaneously all around you.
You also need to realize that not every library is suited to playing every line. Sometimes there are certain lines that library X just does not work on - they fall flat no matter what you do, or sound weird, but you switch to library Y and it is perfect. Where the problem comes in is when you have to spend hours on an existing score doing tweaks just to hear what it sounds like with library X (if there are too many problems, you may not be hearing what it actually sounds like with library X). It may end up being a case of where library Y is necessary to do that particular thing well, and then you’ve just wasted the time doing manual compensations for problems with library X, because you have to switch that line/part/instrument to library Y instead.
If the library has good balance/agility/consistency so that it generally sounds right being driven from notation with defaults, you can identify whether the line is workable with that library much sooner, especially once you know what types of things are “easy fixes”, and waste less time with the “wrong library” for a certain moment.
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I think they could claim money back from Arne. I don’t think the library suppliers would be liable to Arne’s customers for enforcing their IP rights. That would penalise them for acting lawfully.
4.5 still works. Stick with that for now.
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My dear friend composers, so we are given the choice to either work with NPPE 5.0.0 or NPPE 4.5.1 : a choice every of us has to make so do I after the terrible news that VST 3 mining will no longer be possible in NPPE 5.0.1
In order for me to decide, I created the NPPE 5 vs NPPE 4.5 video here after : same music, same library (Sptifire SSO), same spatialization (MIR PRO 3D, Salzbourg). So everything is 100% comparable. This video plays alternatively the same number of bars first by NPP5 and then by NPP4.5.1
I hope this will help you to figure out the difference between the two engines and help you making your own decision.
My feeling is that, for those who does not have spatialization engine such as MIR PRO, NPPE 4.5 is the best choice because reverb is still in the samples and you get the best sound out of the box but to the detriment of RAM.
The story is different for those who has spatialization engine or issue with RAM usage because you now a full control of each instrument positioning (1 instrument = 1 audio output) for less than 10Gb of RAM. In addition, I think that phrasing has been improved in NPPE 5. You can see and compare the dynamic curve of the two audio file and definitely NPP5 has more dynamic contrasts than NPP4.5.
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There is also some to consider…. Which I didn’t know in the first place. But learned from the Vi control forum.. the NP5 Sound you get is without the Mix1 or Mix 2 signal from BBC SO. That means the differences are a lot. Which can be the result why people think that there is a big difference. Usually NP4 was using the mix 1 signal from bbc SO.
The good thing is you can create a new version of np5 bbc so engine with different microphone setup via engine tools. So you can get an almost identical sound back except that some of the reverb samples got lost in the process.
So…I think it highly depends on what engine You use
Alternatively you can use bbc core for having mix 1 and pro for having close, ambient and tree
I tried and cannot reproduce Mix 1 from Close mic using positional reverb, perhaps I don’t have the skills. It would be great if someone could make it and share the setup.
But legato samples should sound legato even without reverb (e.g. in a dry room). I believe some samples have been damaged by over de-reverb.
You can’t without rebuilding the playengine with the engine tools. But you can use BBC core when you want mix 1 signal. BBC core uses the same samples. Only the lead instruments are not in core. On the other side in vi control there is a thread sharing the np5 presets with a different mix preset.
In np 4.5.1 Noteperformer was always using bbc core when you have used mix 1 signal. It never used bbc pro for mix1 except on the leaders.
Edit: vi-control forum has removed the sharing post of presets including its post owner. He was removed from the forum.
So you need to build your presets in engine tools of 5.0 yourself and then precalculate the library Derivate in engine tools..
Iam out of this forum thread.
@Steinberg should make a move and offer Arne a couple millions and integrate Noteperformer into Dorico directly with a custom playengine and not this overcomplicated expression map insanity which most people hate.
This would be a big marketing win for Steinberg which would lead to a massive migration movement towards dorico. Without Noteperformer there is less valid reason to even take a look at dorico since there are better easier to use solutions available on the iPad. Also the iPad version of dorico is a joke compared to Staffpad.
So it’s up to Steinberg if they understand their chance or not.
a very useful comparison. You can hear just how much the tone suffers with NPPE5 in the slow music near the beginning after which things even out a bit more with in places, NPPE showing the better timing and articulation as matches my own experience. Still, given a straight choice between the two, I’d certainly go for 4.5
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You can check the so called Handelsregister in Germany about every Company. Then you see how much money flows and has flown. But thats a totally different story.
What library do you use? As i pointed out in the post before it turned out that NPPE 5 uses different microphones, especially not the defaults. Which creates a total different result. When you use the Engine Tools and reactivate the Microphones you used in 4.5 you will get almost the same sound impression. But you of course need to use the Engine Tools in 5 and build your own derivate aka playengine of your VST
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Are you serious? Maybe you wanted to say that StaffPad has superior playback for orchestral music, audio tracks and few other features that Dorico lacks. In that case I would agree.
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I use Cinematic Studio and BBC SO Core libraries. As the latter has only one microphone and I hear exactly the same sort of issues including weird artefacts with that one, I’m a bit sceptical that the issues I’ve been experiencing have much to do with microphone positions but you could try to convince me I’m wrong by explaining how to reactivate the unused mics in CSS if you like! I assume it’s a simple procedure – there’s little point in spending much time on this as all the bugs don’t look like they’ll ever be sorted now and almost inevitably, I’ll be heading back soon to 4.5.
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I will not advertise it but seriously Staffpad has a superior writing and playback. Its really outstanding. The only issue is that the Staffpad team has to rerecord all samples in cooperation with Musescore/and the plugin Owners.. You write your notation with the pencil super fast and the playback is really great, quite similar to Noteperformer. You can use Audio Waves amongst notation. I always use it for sketching to picture. You can load video files too. Everytime when i have done the sketch i load the xml to dorico and noteperformer and have a perfect sketch already in place. Love this. so damn much. But it requires a ipad pro m2 at least in order to have no framedrops on video scoring. Also great you use the text write function in staffpad to write playing techniques or tempochanges. sadly staffpad has a big learning curve because the wiki is not documented entirely but already large. The Microsoft Surface version is a joke because of the bad pencil microsoft has. Besides that. You have cinesamples, spitfire so and berlin strings and soon VSL too in it. Staffpad outscores Dorico on Ipad..thats a fact especially when you read comments in the apple store.
One of the issues with Dorico 6.. the video playback is still a sh–load of laag almost unuseable^^
From my heart i still subscriber for all the years of noteperformer and hope to see a integration into dorico 6 soon.
do it.. 