Playback Engines Discontinued

Dorico
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We regret to inform you that VST3 hosting has been removed from NotePerformer 5.

While some plugin developers were enthusiastic about the preloading technologies introduced in NotePerformer 5, others were uncomfortable with them—partly due to mischaracterizations of how the technology works in public discussions. These systems were developed to push boundaries in performance and efficiency—but ultimately, we’ve found them too powerful to distribute responsibly without full cooperation from all content owners. Without developer support, we cannot continue offering VST3 hosting for notation safely or sustainably.

Our current release, NotePerformer 5.0.1, no longer includes the Playback Engines extension. It retains all improvements, fixes, and new sounds from version 5.0.0, apart from the removed module. We remain committed to developing our own built-in sound engine and will be focusing our efforts there moving forward.

REFUNDS AND DOWNGRADES
If you purchased NotePerformer 5 between May 5 and May 9, you’re eligible for a full refund.

If you previously purchased NotePerformer 4 engines, you may downgrade to version 4.5.1 to continue using them (link). However, we are no longer offering Playback Engines for sale.

In addition to quality limitations and ongoing challenges around VST3 integration, these engines were always operated at a financial loss, as users often expected us to resolve VST3-related issues that were beyond our control. Looking ahead, we also recognize that advancements in AI may significantly shift how this kind of technology is developed and delivered, making this trajectory increasingly unsustainable.

We understand this will be disappointing for some users. The decision was made out of necessity, in response to circumstances that were partly outside our control, and we’re grateful for your continued support. We hope this explanation has helped clarify the situation, and we respectfully ask for your understanding that we won’t be sharing further details at this time.

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Ain’t that typical.

Jesper

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The key problem is that nobody else can legally prove whether NPPE’s built-in anti-piracy implementation really works, since NPPE is a closed-source software. Even if open-sourced, such anti-piracy implementation can be removed by anyone.

I guess that there’s a legally acceptable choice for Arne: to make customized plugins for each vendor and let these vendors release their individual customized NPPE instead. However, this means the end of NPPE for Cinematic Studio series, unless Alex changes his mind. Currently, I don’t see any passion from him serving a little for digital notation workstations.

Every of my bone strongly hates MIDI Mockup monoply in this industry, forcing all orchestral composers to also be professional audio & MIDI engineers or die starving. NPPE is currently the only smasher against this monopoly. Sigh.

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Sad news indeed, and still fully supportive of the brilliant and generous team at Wallander Instruments.

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I do not fully understand where this leaves those who purchased NP4 and several NPPE engines for various VST packages. Do those folks still own the engines they purchased such that they can use them with the corresponding packages?
@Wallander

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Yes: as long as you stay on NP 4.5.

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I think if you downgrade (which I will do)

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Yes. The 4.5 engines simply control the VSTs, which is what all DAWs do. There is no problem there with the library vendors.

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NP has been an amazing gift to composers ever since it first came out!

Arne wouldn’t even need to change anything and just leave it as it is, even before the whole NPPE experiment!

The fact that he’s never even charged for an upgrade is remarkable in the 15 years or more that I’ve been using NP. The news that he will continue to develop it is terrific.

The current upgrade of being able to have separate track outputs in the Dorico mixer is great news to those of us who already use NP as demo-mockups to get our music out to conductors/ensembles etc. We can ‘finesse’ any of the NP sounds even further if we feel they need it.

Best of all, NP works with Dorico… Steinberg offers great playback sounds!.. Yamaha is a company that believes in music and actual musicians!.. carry on!

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This is a real shame (not least for the effort I’ve put it creating engines for various libraries in the last couple of days…!)

The dream of using our own choice of samples under ‘intelligent’ control is just so compelling and fantastic that it must be pursued.

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This is very bad news.

I just finished setting up a configuration with VSL to get decent saxophone and euphonium sounds with NotePerformer.

I truly hope that a solution can be found and that this new features can be supported again in the future.

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12

For me, right now, going back to the previous version of the Playback Engines is a good thing, because with that one I achieved excellent results that now, with the new version, I could no longer achieve and by the way I have a computer powerful enough to load without problems a complete orchestra with the old Playback Engine engine.

After buying three playback engines at a high price, I didn’t like the idea that they were now free (obviously not because they were free but because they weren’t before) and I would have expected, with the downgrade to version 4.5.1, that all the engines were activated, even those not purchased, since it is a now discontinuous product. And instead it’s not like that: it would have been a great thing.

Anyway, now that I’ve returned to version 4.5.1, to free up space, @Wallander , which folders can I delete?

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exactly the question I was thinking of putting. Obviously the Preload folder is the one which will be no use with the removal of NPPE5 but I’m not sure about the others.

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Even though I rarely used NPPE, this is disappointing as the technology was quite promising for certain applications. I feel bad for Arne and everybody impacted by this.

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Amen!

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Just to clarify—am I correct that the “turnkey” functionality of NotePerformer 5 will still work with Dorico 6, I.e., the included NotePerformer 5 sounds?

Thanks,
Peter

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I don’t quite understand what the problem is with other developers. Does this mean that NPPEs will not be available going forward from NP 5.0.1 into the future? And that the only sounds we’ll get out of Noteperformer are its native sounds?

Mike

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This is a really tough and sad decision, and cannot have been easy to make.

I really hope that some of my comments do not fall into the category of mischaracterization, I was trying to be very careful. If so, I can only apologise.

As a software developer myself I can understand that supporting products from other vendors in your own product comes with a raft of problems. From the release notes of 5.0, my understanding was that the support burden of supporting 3rd party VSTs was much higher than supporting core noteperformer, and yet the proportion of the customer base using these VSTs was relatively small.

So I understand how it can be to make a decision like this, and I applaud Arne for his openness and courage. There’s only one thing worse than throwing away several years of work, and that is persisting with it and eventually throwing away much more.

I would like to say a few more things though. Whilst Arne does not charge for upgrades to NP, he deprives himself of revenue to fund ongoing development. It may seem like doing the users a favour, but those of us who know better, realise that in a market where you reach saturation, and your costs keep increasing, yet your revenue tails off, this is not a sustainable situation. It doesn’t help customers to limit resources for development of their product. But I also understand that scaling a company for this adds risk and responsibility, and it’s Arne’s decision. But I for one would very gladly pay for upgrades, and others have mentioned this as well.

I also wonder whether 4.5.1 would be a lot more stable if each VST instrument was launched in its own executable. We saw earlier that many VSTs are a lot more unstable once you access them with more and more threads, and performance also suffers. DAWs seem to have resolved these stability issues.

I also don’t really believe that AI will take away the market opportunity for NotePerformer. These AIs are enormously expensive to set up, and research. To add the ability to synthesize realistic music would be very costly for the AI companies, and they would want that money back. I cannot see a future where an AI company gives away this kind of capability for free. Also I cannot see how it would become anything other than off-line, and thus not useful during the composition phase of the music development. I’ve seen predictions before about how we would be living now (according to futurists, nobody drives a car any more). I will believe it when I see it. In general it always takes a lot longer than we predict, and so I think the opportunity for NP still greatly exceeds 10 years. But again, I respect Arne’s decision, it’s his to make.

Arne, thanks for everything, thanks for being open and honest and real, I know you care about your customers, I hope you can spend more time doing the things that are really important in life.

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Well, definitely a very sad news, no doubt…

@Wallander, thank you very much for your hard work on NPPE! :folded_hands:

Still there is a way the idea behind NPPE to be preserved and transformed.
Still I find the MuseSounds way of third-party libraries integration, the best and most successful.
NotePerformer is superior over MuseSounds, when it comes to AI playback, but still far behind in terms of sound bank quality.
Most of the Top companies that sell VIs have libraries for MuseSounds. And everything is legal, no issues with the companies, no third-party sample players involved… I don’t know why this approach wasn’t taken during the development of NP 4 family?!
Those libraries sound amazing in MuseSounds, but they could sound even better with NotePerformer. Definitely could be used even in an end product, not only for demos.
I suppose NP and MS both use the same principle of synthesis?! Recorded samples + additional AI generative synthesis.

To me, personally, this was always, and is, the right way for the third-party libraries to be integrated in NP. I believe no one, of us, would mind to pay the affordable prices for the libraries that are listed in Muse Hub + the price for NP, of course.
Just we’ll need to be able to create multiple libraries templates + mix console that allows us to have more control.

Best regards,
Thurisaz

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It is already being done, for instance this new Melisma AI system (神楽音楽出版 -KAGURA Music Pub.-) that is playing back this score:

Not perfect by any means, and not very many instruments available yet, but interesting to see where it goes in the future. It is like that Cantai vocal AI that there have been threads on recently, but for instruments instead.

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