Write Every Note Yourself.
Hear It Played in Vienna.

It adds, it doesn’t replace. Vienna Performer loads like any other instrument and lives on its own track. You decide, cue by cue, when a performed line is the better answer and when a sample library is.

If you use VSL libraries: Vienna Performer was recorded at Vienna Synchron Stage, the hall your Synchron libraries come from. A performed line sits next to them without extra reverb or EQ.

If you use other libraries: nothing in your template has to change. Put Vienna Performer on one more track for the lines that should sound played, and keep everything else as it is.

Either way, it renders to audio in your project, so the result is a file you own, and nothing changes about the libraries already on your drive.

You will find dedicated mixer presets that match the sound of the instruments in Vienna Performer. The following products already come with those “Vienna Performer compatible” presets:

• Synchron Duality Strings: 1st Violins, 2nd Violins, Violas, Cellos
• Synchron Solo Violin 2
• Synchron Solo Cello
• Synchron Woodwinds: Synchron Flute 1, Synchron Clarinet 1
• Synchron Brass: Synchron Horn 1

Performed as a section. Our ensembles were recorded with the actual number of players. No stacked instruments: a section line sounds like a section because a full section played it.

One plug-in, no second app. Vienna Performer sits on a track in your DAW like any instrument. Play the passage once, press render, and the audio lands in your project.

The audio is yours. More than an ordinary audio file: every render is a four-channel file with a close and a room signal, to mix as you like. Use it in releases, films, games and client work, also after you cancel.

At release, nine: five soloists (violin, cello, flute, clarinet and French horn) and four string sections (1st violins, 2nd violins, violas and cellos), each section recorded with its actual number of players. Trumpet and double basses follow soon. Everything recorded at Vienna Synchron Stage.

That can’t be answered with a number. Vienna Performer reacts to note lengths and note connections automatically, so the performance is in the model, not in an articulation list. On top of that, you can switch to other playing techniques, such as tremolo and pizzicato with the strings.

Yes. It runs as VST3, AU and AAX, which covers every current DAW, the free ones included. There is no standalone version: Vienna Performer lives in your DAW or notation program, where your notes are and where the render lands.

Vienna Performer runs on macOS 12 or later and Windows 10 or later. You need:

• A host for plug-ins: a DAW or notation program that hosts VST3, AU or AAX plug-ins. On macOS, Vienna Performer installs as VST3, AU and AAX; on Windows as VST3 and AAX.
• An internet connection for rendering. Renders already on your disk play without one.
• A VSL account with an active Vienna Performer subscription. No iLok.
• Disk space for your renders: they are saved as FLAC files in a render folder you choose, ideally inside your DAW project.

No. Vienna Performer runs on your VSL account, so there is no iLok account to set up.

It is how the plug-in gets your notes. Vienna Performer has to know the whole passage before it can perform it. A musician reads the line before playing it, and so does this. So you play the section back once, which is when the plug-in captures the notes, and then you render.

That is the whole workflow: play, then render. No exporting a MIDI file, no dragging anything anywhere, no second application. It works the same way in every DAW, because it is just playback.

Yes, rendering needs an internet connection. The performance itself is computed for you, so a laptop on a train with no signal can still write and edit, but not render. Everything you have already rendered is audio in your project and plays back offline like any other file.

Not necessarily. A render you already have never changes: it is a file. But if you change a bar and render again, the phrase may come back slightly different, also in notes you did not touch. Anyone who has worked with a live orchestra knows that take two is not take one, so keep the takes you like.

Yes, and very well, with Dorico and Sibelius in particular. Vienna Performer can be integrated directly into Dorico and Sibelius, so you don’t need a notation export: your score becomes the line it performs. Write it in notation, play it back once, render.

A score suits it naturally. Like a musician reading a part, Vienna Performer needs the whole phrase before it can perform it, and a score is exactly that.

Yes. With our Dorico Wizard, you can generate Dorico Playback Templates including Vienna Performer. A playback template tells Dorico which sound to load for each instrument in your project: apply it, and your players are set up with Vienna Performer without assigning anything by hand.

Add Vienna Performer directly to your Playback Configuration, or use it in Vienna Ensemble Pro 8. Adding it to Vienna Ensemble Free 7 is not supported.

Make sure you use the “Vienna Performer” sound set that comes with the Sibelius Sound Sets installer, which you can download in the Vienna Assistant under “Additionals/Notation”. In your Sibelius Playback Configuration, enable “Manual Sound Sets” and configure each instrument there.

Not yet. Today Vienna Performer works with Dorico and Sibelius.

A performance minute is one minute of one instrument, performed. In your account it is kept as 60 credits, one per second.

Vienna Performer always renders a musical phrase as a whole, because a musician never plays half a phrase either. A phrase is a run of notes with no pause of 2 seconds or more; a longer pause starts a new one. Each phrase is counted in 10-second steps, rounded up: a 7-second pickup costs 10 credits, a 23-second phrase 30, a 3-minute line without a pause exactly 180. If you change one note, the whole phrase it belongs to is rendered again. Phrases you didn’t touch are not.

In money, a performance minute works out at about 7 ¢ on Entry, 5.6 ¢ on Standard and 5 ¢ on Pro.

Two reasons. Every phrase is rounded up to the next 10 seconds, and the hall keeps playing: the reverberation is rendered with the performance, so a phrase you wrote as twelve seconds comes back a little longer than twelve. Re-renders stay small: only the phrase you changed, rendered as a whole so it still sounds like one line, rounded up to the next 10 seconds.

Only under a limit you set yourself. The Credit Saver has one threshold, 30 seconds for example. Below it, small adaptations render automatically: moving a MIDI event a few ticks, a minimal CC1 change, the hundred tiny edits that make up an afternoon’s work. Above it, you are asked first and shown the cost.

One thing overrides the threshold: anything that forces a complete re-render (changing the tempo, for instance) always asks, however short the passage. That is the edit that can quietly cost real minutes, so it never happens behind your back.

Two different answers, because there are two kinds. Your plan minutes arrive every month on your plan’s billing day: the day the plan started or was last upgraded, not the 1st of the calendar month. Minutes you did not use lapse when the next month’s minutes arrive. This is the same on monthly and yearly plans. Top-up Credits you bought on top never expire. And because the monthly minutes are always spent first, a top-up is not quietly eaten by a month you were going to pay for anyway.

On Entry, Standard or Pro, top up in your VSL account (MyVSL), from € 50 for 500 minutes up to € 1,000, in steps of € 50, without changing your plan or losing what you were working on. Those minutes sit in your account until you use them, so an over-buy in a busy month is never wasted.

Yes. Every plan can be paid yearly: you pay for 10 months and get 12: Entry € 99.90, Standard € 199.90, Pro € 499.90 a year, incl. VAT. You get exactly the same as on the monthly plan, with new minutes every month on your billing day. The saving is purely in the price. Cancel whenever you like: the plan runs to the end of the paid year and is not renewed.

Yes, between Entry, Standard and Pro, monthly or yearly, whenever you like.

Example: you’re on Standard monthly and have used half your minutes. Switch to Pro today, get Pro’s minutes right away, and pay € 49.99 − € 9.99 = € 40.00.

Top-up Credits are never affected by a plan change. On a yearly plan, the months still to come count as unused too. Change your plan in MyVSL.

No to both. No entry fee, no minimum term. You pay for a month or a year, and if you don’t want another one you cancel online in MyVSL. Nothing more is charged, and your plan runs to the end of the period you already paid for.

No. VSL’s education discounts (EDU) do not apply to Vienna Performer subscriptions. If you are a student, the Entry plan is made for first cues and smaller projects.

No. Your sample libraries work exactly as they do today.

Yes. Renders are yours to use, commercially and without limit – release them on Spotify or YouTube, put them in games, films and client work. No extra license and no royalties to us. And it doesn’t end when your subscription does: everything you have already rendered stays licensed after you cancel.

What you can’t do is sell the sounds themselves – extracted from your music and repackaged as a sample library, loop collection, virtual instrument or the like, or use renders as training data for AI.

They stay yours. A render you have received is a file on your drive, and its license is permanent: it survives cancelling your plan, the end of your agreement and even VSL discontinuing the service, which we are not planning to do. What you would lose is the ability to make new renders, so keep your renders and your sessions, which is good practice anyway.

From our dedicated training recordings: top session musicians from Vienna, recorded at Vienna Synchron Stage. The recordings are ours, and the musicians granted the rights for AI training. That is why VSL warrants that the instrument material in your render is free of third-party rights, and you can state that to your clients.

No, and they do things Vienna Performer can’t. Sample libraries give you far more control: the articulations, the instruments and ensembles, the microphone setups and the acoustic environments – the Studio Series is recorded fairly dry. The Synchron and Studio Series libraries offer a level of detail and tweakability that is hard to match.

There is also a sound and style that sample libraries themselves helped create. A lot of contemporary film and trailer music is shaped by it: tight staccatissimos, over-the-top orchestration, aggressive hybrid productions. Vienna Performer renderings represent a more purist style of playing, like a musician or ensemble interpreting a score on a scoring stage.

A sample library gives you every recorded note on demand; Vienna Performer gives you a player for the line you just wrote. Each does things the other cannot, which is exactly why both were recorded in the same hall with the same players. Think of Vienna Performer as one more player in your template: most pieces will use both.

How you combine them is up to you. Some will sketch with libraries and bring Vienna Performer in once a part is settled to save render credits; others will render early and often, because hearing a line played is the quickest way to know whether it works.

No. At Vienna Symphonic Library we work with a pool of 300 to 400 musicians who play at Vienna Synchron Stage regularly: they record film and game scores, our sample libraries, and the training recordings Vienna Performer learned from. We employ them and pay them, Vienna Synchron Stage is by far the largest provider of session and recording work in Austria, and we are working to bring more productions to Vienna, not fewer.

And a render is not an orchestra. Vienna Performer plays every instrument track on its own, each with its own ambience. Musicians play together: the players of a section adjust to one another, the sections to the whole orchestra, everyone to the conductor, and every take is read a little differently. Recorded together in one room, they make one unified recording. A virtual performance can deliver great results, but it will never replace the magical coincidences that happen when people play together.

Yes. These sessions were recorded for AI training, the musicians knew that was their purpose, and they agreed to it and were paid accordingly. Recording training data is very demanding and can be exhausting work, and we are proud to work with such gifted musicians here in Vienna.

It is also why we can say exactly what Vienna Performer was trained on.

We believe it is the start of something new. Our goal has never changed: to give creative people the best tools there are for writing great music.

Vienna Performer does not write a single note for you. It plays yours, and it makes building a virtual orchestration a lot simpler, more intuitive and much faster.

While you play in or play back your MIDI, Vienna Performer gives you a simple preview sound so you hear the notes. The performance itself arrives when you render. We keep the preview basic on purpose, so the installer stays slim.

For a satisfying sound while you play live, use the instruments you already have, your VSL libraries for example, on a track next to it. Playing in real time is the part of making music Vienna Performer will never replace: like a musician reading a part, it needs the whole phrase before it can perform it.

No. An AI music generator writes the music for you: you describe a mood and it decides the notes. Vienna Performer does not write music; it plays what you wrote. There is no prompt: the input is your MIDI, your dynamics and your phrasing, and it decides only how the notes are played.

Its models were trained only on recordings we made and own: no scraping, no third-party recordings, no customer material. That is guaranteed in the license agreement, not just asserted in the marketing.

Side by side, the difference looks like this:

The same thing as always: the music. Vienna Performer takes care of how a line is played. What is played (the melody, the harmony, the orchestration and every decision behind them) is still yours, and a well-performed mock-up only makes those decisions easier to hear.

If you want to write well, yes. Vienna Performer plays what you write; it does not choose the instruments, the voicing or the register for you. What changes is how quickly you hear the result: write a phrase, hear a player play it, change it. That makes it a very fast way to learn.

It is a fair question, and the answer depends on the AI. Vienna Performer is not a general-purpose model. It was trained once, on a limited set of our own recording sessions rather than a scraped corpus of millions of tracks, and it is never retrained on customer material, because we never keep any. A render takes a few seconds of computing on a short piece of audio.

Because Vienna Performer is a service rather than a file. A sample library has its own ongoing costs – updates, compatibility, support – but they do not grow when you use it. Rendering does: every render runs on machines we pay for, each time you press the button.

It also keeps the product moving. Vienna Performer is the result of a year-long development process and we are just getting started: more instrument models are in production, and improvements will keep arriving. A subscription brings all of that to you as it lands, with nothing to buy again.

You start at € 9.99 rather than a large payment up front, you can upgrade at any time, and you can cancel whenever you like.

And what you subscribe to is the ability to make new renders – not the right to keep the ones you have already made. Every render is yours for good: use it anywhere, including commercially, even after you cancel.

Because it answers the question we have worked on since 2000: how do you make a computer play music like a musician? It is made from the same recordings, in the same hall, by the same people as our libraries, and you can check the results on this page before you pay anything.

No. Not your MIDI, not your renders, not now and not later. Nothing you send is used to train, fine-tune or evaluate any model – it is deleted as soon as your render comes back, so there is nothing left to train on even if we wanted to.

Yes – here is exactly what happens to it.

What leaves your DAW is note data – your MIDI, not audio of your score. It reaches the render service through our gateway and carries no information about who you are. Nobody at VSL listens to it or looks at it: we don’t review, filter or monitor what you send.

Your input is deleted as soon as the render comes back to you. The render itself is kept for up to an hour so you can download it, then deleted as well. Neither is held in a cache, an archive or a backup, and neither is ever used to train, fine-tune or evaluate any model. That is in the license – and the license also says we cannot weaken those commitments in a later version of it.