Wallander Instruments has released an update today to NotePerformer. This is the first update to NotePerformer since May 2025, when NotePerformer discontinued support for its NotePerformer Playback Engine (NPPE) and third-party VST3 instruments.
NotePerformer 5.1.0 features several bug fixes and incremental improvements to NotePerformer’s core sounds. NotePerformer is a user-friendly solution for realistic-sounding playback of Dorico, Sibelius, or Finale projects, and today’s update affects the product both as it functions across all three applications.
Current registered users can obtain the update by requesting a new download link at the NotePerformer web site, which will provide the user with NotePerformer 5.1.0.
Here’s what’s new in NotePerformer 5.1.0.
NotePerformer 5.1.0 updates
New features
- Suffering from spectral build-up or cancellations while digitally blending sounds is a common problem that doesn’t occur in real rooms, which causes unwanted roughness in a digitally blended sound. This version features a new technology designed to ultimately overcome this problem, resulting in a smoother ensemble sound.
- Panning is now done with a virtual ORTF microphone model and ray-tracing. NotePerformer calculates the direct sound and main reflections for each instrument on stage, based on their positions in a three-dimensional virtual space. It produces a more natural-sounding stereo image, with instruments having a more distinct and less hollow-sounding placement ahead of the listener.
- Some instruments, such as the oboe, now benefit from more advanced attack modelling.
- CC104 (number of unisons) now supports up to 16 voices rather than 8.
- Many minor fixes such as CPU optimizations, interpretation tweaks, improved wavetable interpolation, and more.
Bug fixes
- NotePerformer is now fully compatible with the Sibelius Quarter-Tone Playback plug-in, which inserts hidden MIDI messages to make quarter-tones play back, and ships with Sibelius. However, it must be run with “2” for input rather than the plug-in’s default “16” to correspond with NotePerformer’s pitch-bend range.
- A bug was fixed where tremolo would play unintentionally rapid repetitions.
For more details, review the latest edition of the version history, which is found by scrolling down to near the bottom of NotePerformer’s home page, or you can download it directly from this link. The User’s Guide is also available.
Price and availability
Information regarding the price and availability of NotePerformer 5 remains the same as before.
NotePerformer 5 is currently free for all existing NotePerformer users. Current registered users can request a new download link at the NotePerformer web site, which will provide the user with NotePerformer 5.
If you don’t already have NotePerformer, a single-user license is the same price as it’s always been: $129 for a perpetual license. That one license gives you the ability to not only use it in Dorico, Sibelius, and Finale, but it also allows you to use it on as many computers that you personally use.
Supported notation software and versions are:
Further, NotePerformer offers a rent-to-own option, where you can rent it for $10.75 per month, and, once you’ve paid a total of $129, it turns into a perpetual license, making this effectively an installment plan for those unwilling or unable to commit the entire cost of the product at once.
Site licenses are available; pricing starts at a very reasonable $200 for up to 5 seats, with each additional seat costing $40. This is a one-time, perpetual license. This differs from the individual license; whereas the individual license is valid for one user running on any computer that the customer personally uses, the site license is reserved for any computer owned by the licensed organization, but can be used by multiple people on a single site.
Finally, there is a 30-day trial available, which runs for one hour. You need to restart your notation software to keep using NotePerformer after one hour, if you’re in trial mode.
Chris Best
I’ve just downloaded version 5.1 and am trying it out on some of my Sibelius playback files. First impressions are decidedly mixed. I’m focusing particularly on choir and solo vocal sounds, which appear to have received a lot of attention (perhaps not surprising, given the number of new AI voice programmes that are being developed that are based around real singers and can actually sing the words). On the one hand, the voices do sound more realistic. But there are some very nasty side effects, e.g.: low notes don’t appear to have properly adjusted formants so that sopranos start to sound like men in the bottom range; legatos between notes have added swoop effects that improve the realism somewhat but also make a soloist briefly sound like an ensemble (chorus type effect). Worst of all, the whole ensemble seems to have had an overlay of low frequency modulation (I’m watching the master levels jitter up and down as though on the verge of a nervous breakdown). It’s very tiring to listen to and not at all convincing. Experimentation continues….
Jerry Long
I’m installing Sibelius Ultimate after having used Finale for years. My previous scores are being manipulated and played with good instrumentation sounds. However, when I try to export the file into an mp3 file, it says virtual instruments are not available. Your NotePerformer was named as included in the package. Is your product what is missing? Please advise.
Ben
Scoring Notes does not develop or support Noteperformer — it is not “theirs”. They are just reporting the news.
This sounds like either a Sibelius issue, or a Noteperformer issue, so you should contact either Sibelius support, or Noteperformer directly.
I hope you get it all working.
Chris Best
Hey Jerry. I think you need to use Noteperformer 4 in order for VST instruments to work. They stopped supporting them with version 5.
David Lee
Has anyone else got really bad overdrive sounds from the strings when using NP 5.1? Just sounds like a really cheap distortion filter has been left on!
David Lee
The response from Wallender is that they are aware of the issue and a new version is likely to be released soon.
Chris Best
May I ask Mr Wallender also to check the new version of the tuba. It’s a serious downgrade from the previous, especially in its upper register. I’m having to mix into my score an export of the NP4 tuba line for it to sound tolerable.
Joey
I have a question for Mr Wallander about the first bug-fix listed. This change has broken all my previous Sibelius scores which manipulate the built-in MIDI pitch-bending to create microtonal music, since NP’s pitch-bend range is bigger than it used to be. I am wondering if there is a way I can revert to the smaller pitch-bend size so that my old scores still sound properly – or will I just have to go back to the old version of NP?
Regards
Arne Wallander
Older NotePerformer versions had an undefined variable pitch bend range which was dynamically set by Sibelius, making the built-in Sibelius plug-in for quarter tones unreliable. For example, if you inserted a glissando somewhere, the pitch bend range of the instrument was permanently altered by Sibelius and all the quarter tones instantly broke.
Since we had many users suffering from this, we have now changed our pitch bend range to a fixed 16-semitone range. The range was chosen with the Sibelius quarter-tone plug-in in mind, since it can’t produce clean quarter tones for ranges other than 2, 4, 8, or 16. When running the Sibelius quarter-tone plugin with recent NotePerformer versions, you enter “2” for a range value, which corresponds to 16 semitones in the plug-in’s range format.
If you prefer to use the older NotePerformer version with the undefined pitch bend MIDI range, unreliable or not, you can file a support ticket and we can provide that version.
If you want to use the more recent NotePerformer versions, I suggest deleting all the older pitch bend messages and running the plug-in again, this time with “2” for the plug-in range value. You can quickly select and delete pitch bend messages in a score by “Select All > Advanced Filter > Text > ~B”.
If you create your own microtuning messages by hand rather than by the plug-in, it’s more complicated. We never officially supported pitch bend messages for tuning. Rather, we have our own system for per-note detuning, in exact cents, that uses MIDI CC102 messages:
https://noteperformer.com/?page=support_sibelius&h=3561998100#3561998100