Older versions of PLAY can be downloaded directly from EastWest. For example, PLAY version 5.0.1, which I have successfully used with Dorico and the Symphonic Choirs, can be downloaded from EastWest for Mac or for Windows.
No, I’ve not had much luck with Play 5 either. Maybe if Play 7 works better, I might go back to it.
I use 5.0.6. I thought that Play was now going to be discontinued in favour of Opus but might be mistaken?
Anyway, if you’re still interested in using SC, then you only need to say what exactly you’re trying to do with and where you’re struggling and I’m sure one of us could give a few pointers though of course that doesn’t exclude the possibility that you are simply asking more of it than it can deliver.
Thanks for the tips, all.
I’ve picked up this project again. What I’m wondering now is how I get EQWL Voices of Opera to work.
It sort of kinda works for me, but the vocal behavior is weird and inconsistent. What I’m hearing could be an improvement on Noteperformer, but not with this inconsistent sound that occasionally sounds like one voice and sometimes several voices.
I’ve attached a screenshot of how I’ve set things up, and also a 15 second recording of what I’m hearing – with apologies for the lousy audio quality. (Just made it with my phone, but I think it conveys the issue.)
Thanks,
Mike
Hey Mike! For starters I’m curious, why the three instruments? I’d drop to just one for testing for now.
I can see the switch to legato at some point in the phrases of course, but just the difference in the volume levels you are showing for those two instruments would make those inconsistent when they switch. Or alternatively - if they are not switching - then their differences in attack and such could be part of what you hear.
Two identical sus instruments?
I see there is an expression map for Cubase. You will probably just have to do some minor adjustment, but importing that map should have you nearly ready to go.
Tomorrow I’ll check.
Paolo
I just joined their ComposerCloud service to see what I can learn.
It would seem that Opus, at this point, is only fully supported by the newest Symphonic Orchestra series, the orchestral composer, and perhaps some other effects and opus oriented ‘music construction kits’.
The choirs that support word-builder, and many (most) of the other libraries still use Play, and likely will for quite some time.
It looks like ‘some’ of the older libraries can be loaded into opus to some degree, but critical features are missing. I.E. Symphonic Choirs shows in the instrument list. I can all up a preset, but the word-builder is missing.
On the left Is Play 6, and on the Right is Opus. Both will load this Boy’s Choir preset from Symphonic Choirs, but notice that the Word Builder is MISSING on the Opus side.
When I first ran the installer after signing up, it only had Play 6, and instruments that work for that. After updating Installation center, it had installing Opus as an option, and titles that work with Opus were added to the list.
As for methods to roll back to Play 5 or earlier, I haven’t figure out how to do that, or if it’s even necessary. Once I get enough instruments downloaded to test drive things in some hosts, I’ll try things like bridging into Dorico with bidule and/or jbridge before opting to roll back.
I haven’t had a chance yet to search the threads here to see what problems people have encountered, and why one might want to roll back to something earlier than Play 6…but I will when I get a chance.
P.S. Sometimes cheesy is good?
It sounds like cartoon characters off the cuff, but is free to explore. It has two voices available, Bones and Marie, and at one time one could get Daisy (still can if you find someone that has archived it and will share).
Sometimes having a ‘hint’ of an instrument like this layered on top of generic oos and aahs can make suggestive hints that are not overbearing/cheesy sounding.
Other ‘not so free’ vocolid systems exist for solo voices. They tend to have anime producers in mind, but some are pretty convincing, and could probably be stretched and taught to sound more ‘realistic’ and worked into more ‘traditional’ mixes.
this is exactly what I was suggesting recently in another thread on the subject. The Hollywood Symphony Orchestra has been redesigned for the new Opus player but other libraries, although they may be technically able to run under it, are likely to have some issues or only partial functionality such as with Wordbuilder choirs.
The specific issue with Play 6 is with repeated notes – neither Dorico nor Sibelius send new note off information for repeated notes. This appears to be the critical change over version 5 and the only workaround is to shorten the note lengths in this situation which doesn’t do Wordbuilder any favours when working out the transitions. I discussed all this with Michael in Tech Support a while back. There may be additional Dorico-specific issues with 6 but I’ve never really investigated as 5 works OK. If you have time to do more tests with 6 then I’m sure this would be welcomed.
At some point, there will inevitably be a Wordbuilder choir which works with Opus but there’s no suggestion anywhere I can see that it’s anything like imminent.
A really quick run…I don’t have many instruments downloaded yet (Just Symphonic Choir and a Solo Violin), and haven’t read the Symphonic Choir manual to see what tricks and options are hiding from obvious view, so this is about all I can try thus far. I won’t keep spamming the thread after this until I get more to work with and can push some limits…just a quick post to say I’m encouraged to experiment more with ‘bridging options’ rather than rolling back if I can.
The good news that straight away on my Windows rig, Dorico 3.5 Pro found Play 6, I can load and manipulate instruments, and it doesn’t crash…
The bad news is that while the word builder seems to function when I’m entering things and playing it with the keyboard through an active stave it’s bouncing the phonic entries as to be expected, but when I play a score it doesn’t bounce and notes eventually start getting stuck.
Good news again. If I host Play inside a VST Bidule instance that is hosted in Dorico, the same passage from a stave seems to bounce the phonics as expected.
I say ‘seems’…I’ll need to build a quick hymn or something and put this through some paces to be sure, but as of now I am encouraged that ‘bridging’ Play 6 might well be a quick and reliable option for some people.
Bidule isn’t ‘cheap’, but I’ve found it to be quite the swiss army knife for fudging in extra features or working around problems in several of my DAWs. It’s something of a ‘sound builder’ in its own right. It’s a little different from VEP, but the concept of host within a host is similar. I.E. I was using it to ‘channel bounce’ for plugins way back with Dorico 1 before it could do that internally via expression maps. Even used it to fudge in an AU plugin that I needed once that didn’t come in VST.
jbridge isn’t expensive at all, but it just bridges a single plugin…doesn’t have the tool box of something like bidule, VEP, VIP, etc. I’ll look into that as well.
Oh, I just remembered that I also have the Akai VIP host too. Haven’t used it much, but it’s a Host in host thing that ships with some of their controllers. It kind of has a VEP look and feel to it on the surface, but it’s just the basics to get a lot of instruments at one’s fingertips in live playing scenarios (host several instruments, configure where MIDI gets routed, mix down the audio of all the loaded plugins, etc.).
OK, I’m rambling now, but if these turn out to be solid ‘options’ for Dorico and EW users, it might be helpful to some people.
exactly -notes getting stuck was exactly my issue with Play 6, presumably for the note-off reasons I outlined previously. It might be worth trying it from VEP as a lot use this host. Although I now use SC under VEP in general with Play 5, I never tried it with 6.
Most of my work is pop choral arrangements and compositions. I’m very happy with the vocal sound in NotePerformer 3, as it’s pleasant, crisp enough on the attack, and renders a good, ‘hearable’ blend with instruments. There are tons of examples on my website.
Highly recommend!
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David,
Lovely work! You do get a nice sound. Maybe you are using better reverb than Noteperformer’s, though? Do you have a VST reverb on it?
Mike
Thank you. I do have a secret weapon that works exceedingly well with NotePerformer. It’s ToonTrack’s EZMix2. In particular, their “Basic Airy Master” setting in the Mastering II package. It seems to take what’s best in NotePerformer and add the necessary sparkle. As an Insert to the Dorico mixer on the Output track, it’s practically a miracle.
(And I always disengage the Dorico compressor that’s standard on that channel.)
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Tallinn by Orchestral Sounds is a new and beautiful sounding library!
I haven’t figured out how to do the expression maps yet, but at least it’s way more in tune than other choir libraries (very weird to me that even the very expensive libraries are still flat a lot of the time…)
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I wish these companies would do demos that aren’t just ‘moody’ musical wallpaper. You don’t need to pay hundreds if you’re just going OOooooooh over some slow moving strings.
How about a Palestrina motet, or the Hallelujah chorus, or a Baritone song with piano? A Barbershop quartet? Even without the real words, if the library can give an impression of voices in those examples, then that would be worth knowing, and worth paying for.
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I have to admit I was thinking of writing the same but didn’t dare… 
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I was talking to ‘a well known vocal ensemble’ recently about whether they would be interested in creating a sample library, so you could play Bach fugues to “ba-ba daa”. For example.
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Well, I for one would find this quite a contribution. 
I’m sure you have this sort of thing in mind:
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I imported the Cubase expression map, and it works for the basic set of articulations. Staccato, sustain, sforzato, legato, legato fast/trill, crescendos.
There is no support for switching vowels (AA, UU), or for selecting the consonants. Not difficult to make, but it’s not there. I’ll try to build them for my own sake.
Paolo