nikolas: yes, I know samples are used professionally, and that they sound really good
.
peter: Finale does the same thing...sounds pretty good, but any decent musician can tell the difference between that and live, I'm sure.
QCC: yes, I'm assuming that the composer knows how to notate the music, adding slurs and dynamics and articulations and all the details. I don't expect a score with just a bunch of notes to sound perfect
.
I agree that these libraries' sounds are realistic, but to get them to playback realistically it requires a decent amount of work, usually in a sequencer to get the best control. I'm talking about simply notating the music and having it play back realistically (as in, sounding like humans are playing it). I'm talking about a notation program that takes care of everything, where we can hardly tell the difference between what's real and synthesized without an enormous amount of input. Because in today's case, it's not the computer that performs the music, it's the composer (inputting different samples, playing with dynamics and tempo, etc.), the computer simply plays it back. What I'm referring to would know automatically what to do, and be able to manipulate the samples to get the sounds just right. In 15 years or so I think we'll have this software/hardware (the hardware to run it, obviously
) and it will be at least as accessible or affordable as software today.
I'm not saying that this will be ideal for music (I certainly prefer writing for real players), but I'm quite sure that that's what computer notation/playback programmers are aiming for, and they will reach that goal eventually
.