When you hand an instrument to a player, Dorico selects a sound from a whole lot of available sounds. I’ve spent a good deal of time trying to see the relationship but can’t find squat. For example, if I hand a trombone to a solo trombone player, I get the Iconica Sketch trombone. Why not one of the others? Based on my research I should start with the playback template… but nothing there, just the generic name “trombone”. I’ve looked at endpoint configs and nothing there either. One of the videos shows all kinds of great panels showing what I need, but all mine are blank. I’m just trying to see the mapping between a generic instrument assignment like “trumpet” and what sound gets selected from which instrument set (out of the box). Any ideas?
Are these sections in the manual focused on the panels you mean?
You can find out which template is currently applied by using Menu:
Play → Playback Template. You can see which is applied by default, use Dorico preferences → Play.
Basically …
A playback template is made from one or more Endpoint configurations. An endpoint is a single VSTi or external MIDI instrument. If it’s a multitimbre instrument (one instance uses more than one MIDI channel), its associated routing and, if applicable, percussion and/or expression maps are save within the endpoint.
I don’t think there is any UI where you can see which samples are linked to which Dorico instruments.
The difficulty is that the sample instrument is a saved state of the VST, which is a separate sub-process of the Audio Engine. When you save an Endpoint, you’re saying to Dorico, “save whatever is inside the VST plug-in, and load it next time I choose a trombone.”
Dorico comes with different playback templates, which are essentially, different sets of sample instrument choices – Iconica Sketch, HALion Symphony Orchestra, and the GM HALion sounds. The choice of instrument depends on which one you select.
So in the Play menu > Playback Templates: if I choose the blue highlighted template, then Dorico won’t use Iconica.
Can you show us or explain which panels you mean?
Let’s take alto sax as an example. Based on my playback template, the alto sax sound is coming from Sonic Selection. But Sonic Selection has 7 alto sax sounds. Dorico is choosing “Bright Alto Sax NoteExp”. Where is the mapping that tells Dorico to do that?
Re- the video. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/live/EmsdZ_34pS0?si=SM5h-H1Z-UXeROZ2
I see that it’s 3 years old, so obsolete? But I wouldn’t expect Dorico to remove that much functionality either. Anyway I see a bunch of screens that I can’t find in my installation of Dorico Pro.
Also I can’t edit the endpoint configuration as it is grayed out. However I can duplicate it and edit it… but I get nothing to edit.
The interface has changed slightly, but the concepts and functions should be similar.
Yes, you can’t edit the “factory” templates (that spiky icon is a factory!); and I don’t think they have conventional Endpoints that you can alter.
Are you just trying to create your own Playback Template, with different instruments?
In which case, you’ll have to create your own Endpoints from scratch. You can create an Endpoint with just the instruments you want to change, and then let the template “fall back” on HSO or Iconica for any others.
The mappings for endpoints and templates for the factory-supplied playback templates are saved as XML files in the program directory (“Plugin Preset Libraries” folder).
A playback template is basically a container - a collection of endpoints. An endpoint is a routing preset that contains the specific patch information, its assigned MIDI channel, the VI instrument (plugin), the expression and percussion maps, etc.
An endpoint can contain all this routing for a single instrument or for an entire collection of instruments. For example, I set up an endpoint “SWAM Trumpets” that includes C and Bb Trumpets, including the Dorico definitions of them with and without key signatures. Any time I open a playback template, I now have the option of adding this specific endpoint to it.
You can get the hang of this very quickly (and see its flexibility) if you try to make your own endpoint and use it in some playback template.
No, not trying to create my own playback template. Here’s my original question:
Yes, but what are you trying to achieve with that information. Factory preset data will be inside the application’s data, somewhere.
The mapping will show up in the Halion UI (as you have actually discovered).
If you want to change a default (eg use a different sax sound). Load it into Halion, check the expression map is still suitable for that sound. Then save a new endpoint. Finally create a new Playback Template (actually it’s easier to duplicate the factory one) and add your (Manual) Endpoint at the top of the stack.
Now you can apply your new template to the project. Your sax should use the new sound and all other instruments will use the default sounds.
@ebrooks provided your answer:
They are not intended to be editable by individual users. Where there are multiple possible sounds for a particular instrument, we have used our judgement to choose the one that we feel will be most useful.
As @Janus and @benwiggy have pointed out, if you want to make an alternative choice, the best way to do this is by creating a suitable endpoint configuration. What this really means is loading the sound you want to use for a specific instrument into an instance of a plug-in, and making sure that in the Endpoint Setup dialog that the appropriate instrument mapping is shown, then you export that endpoint configuration and add it to a playback template.
Once your project is using that playback template, whenever you add that instrument to the project, Dorico will load that endpoint configuration, which means it will load that plug-in with the chosen sound loaded, and it will connect the chosen instrument to that new plug-in instance so that it plays back using your chosen sound.
The only thing I’m trying to achieve at this point is more knowledge about how things work. And you and the others have provided a wealth it… so thanks! Apparently you are correct about the factory preset data being in the application, somewhere. It looks like I can’t view the Dorico instrument selection process unless I feel like interpreting the XML files.
Surely the only instrument selection process you need to understand is how to define (and save and reproduce) your own instrument selections?
There’s no magic to the factory choices. As Daniel said above, the Dev Team made their own informed artistic choices from the bundles sounds.
Agreed!