Definitely looking forward to this feature!

Small update from the depths of software development: We managed to support the playback of quarter tone accidentals in Dorico! Stay tuned (pun intended), the official release is not far out!

@ManfredV said:
We managed to support the playback of quarter tone accidentals in Dorico

Excellent news - but is it only quarter tone accidentals? I'm fine with just quarter tones myself, but I ask because a large number of microtonal composers seem to have converged on Dorico for its support for many microtonal systems that can divide up notes many more times than just quarter tones, and of course in Dorico you can make your own microtonal systems as you wish and immediately get correct playback of it with everything that supports VST3 note expression to adjust the pitch independently for the notes (ex. in a simultaneous chord). There are systems like 72-EDO etc. If you're not supporting VST3 note expression then some of these other systems might not be supported, or support for them might be complicated by not having only to define them in Dorico but also in the player somehow, which is less user friendly.

@mducharme said:

@ManfredV said:
We managed to support the playback of quarter tone accidentals in Dorico

Excellent news - but is it only quarter tone accidentals? I'm fine with just quarter tones myself, but I ask because a large number of microtonal composers seem to have converged on Dorico for its support for many microtonal systems that can divide up notes many more times than just quarter tones, and of course in Dorico you can make your own microtonal systems as you wish and immediately get correct playback of it with everything that supports VST3 note expression to adjust the pitch independently for the notes (ex. in a simultaneous chord). There are systems like 72-EDO etc. If you're not supporting VST3 note expression then some of these other systems might not be supported, or support for them might be complicated by not having only to define them in Dorico but also in the player somehow, which is less user friendly.

To clarify: we don't just support quarter tones, but (hopefully) anything Dorico's microtonality system throws at us. But since we have no support of note expressions at the moment, we have to use VST's per-note detune information. This, however, should not pose a limit of which tuning systems can be used!

To clarify, will one be able to freely tune each note? (As with Pianoteq?) I don't own a VSL piano yet but this will be the difference between me getting it or not. Thanks.

...or if it can respond to a MIDI microtune plugin like Cubase has that would be great, maybe even better.

@cdpixton said:
will one be able to freely tune each

You can already tune each note in the piano player. The new features will enable the VSL instruments to receive real-time tuning from a host. At least, in the Synchron Player. I don't know if this will also be available for the pianos.

Paolo

Dear all, it took a bit longer than expected, but after a lot of tweaks, corner cases and bug fixes we finally released the new version of the Synchron Player with tuning support! Please open your Vienna Assistant to download the update!

@cdpixton said:

To clarify, will one be able to freely tune each note? (As with Pianoteq?) I don't own a VSL piano yet but this will be the difference between me getting it or not. Thanks.

Yes, you can freely tune each note individually, if you so choose. But - as Paolo said - the fully-fledged tuning feature is currently only available in the Synchron Player. However, Synchron Pianos does have a rudimentary tuning feature already, and I am working on including the full one as we speak.
About microtuning plugins: We support MIDI tuning standard, VST/VST3 detune and MTS-ESP, so I am positive that some of it fits your workflow!

Best regards from Vienna,
Manfred

Manfred, great work, and a revolutionary one. As usual, VSL is the only one aware of the current status of music technology and the importance of these things.

If there is something that I would like to ask you to check, is why Dorico Pro 5 can't send tuning messages to Synchron Player when Microtonality is set to Auto in the expression map. It should be the default one. The Detune mode works perfectly.

Not a major issue, since changing it is a quick action.

Paolo

Hi Paolo, and thanks for the kind words!

@PaoloT said:
why Dorico Pro 5 can't send tuning messages to Synchron Player when Microtonality is set to Auto in the expression map

When Dorico's microtonality is set to "Auto", it sends Note Expressions to VST3 plugins (which the Synchron Player can't interpret), and VST3 detune messages to VST2 plugins. I plan to make the Synchron Player support Note Expressions eventually, but for now you have to make sure Dorico sends detune messages!

Cheers, Manfred