Beginner's question

I’m new to Dorico, having switched from Sibelius. I just upgraded to Dorico 4 and in the mixer I am not seeing pan control on the channel strips.

How do you show/hide pan controls?

This is the pan control
Screen Shot 2022-01-15 at 11.21.33 pm

Of course. So easy. Thank you!

Naturally this will take some getting used to, but even immediately, Dorico is SO much more logical and cleanly laid out than Sibelius.

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Welcome to Dorico. :slight_smile: Don’t hesitate to ask here if you have questions.

Also, if you haven’t already, check out the First Steps guide (I don’t have a link, but The Google should find it).

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Pan control in mixer is having no effect whatsoever on panning. Everything is all the way to the left, and the panning does not change even though the pan control shows panning all the way to one side or the other [ex: R100].

I will admit, I haven’t ever actually used the pan control - I just know where it is. Perhaps someone with some more knowledge can help you out on this one :slight_smile:

Thanks for the mention @dan_kreider – our First Steps guide is here, although the important caveat at this time is it was written for 3.5 and the section in Play mode is fairly light (and requiring significant review for v4).

Nonetheless, the fundamentals in Write and Engrave modes especially should still be helpful for new users. Welcome, @UpstateComposer!

@UpstateComposer, what playback device are you using? At least with a regular VST instrument like HALion, the pan works perfectly well. I wonder whether maybe you’re using NotePerformer, in which case you need to use NotePerformer’s own interface for mixing tasks.

Thanks for the reply. I’m using HALion.

In that case, you should certainly hear the difference. Try starting a new project using just the default piano sound. Add a few notes, set the pan control for the piano fader in the Mixer full left, then full right during playback. You’ll be able to hear the difference!

Daniel, a related question… In the Dorico 4 mixer, what’s the difference between setting pan on an Instrument fader vs a MIDI fader, and why is the Instrument pan range -100 to +100, rather than -64 to +64? And I suppose the same question for the volume fader itself. Thanks.

When you’re working with an instrument fader, you’re working with audio outputs rather than MIDI, so the values don’t have to be expressed using an 8-bit value between 0 and 127. Instead, values like pan and channel gain are internally represented as floating point values (typically between 0 and 1.0) so they can have a greater resolution than MIDI values.

OK - thanks Daniel. Possibly showing my lack of knowledge, but as I understand it then, the instrument faders affect an instrument through its audio VST interface, whereas MIDI faders do so by sending messages in the MIDI stream. (So, if I were to export MIDI out of Dorico and into a DAW, I’d retain the MIDI fader settings, but lose the instrument fader settings.) It’s just that I notice that faders behave differently depending on which instrument player I’m using and how many instruments I have loaded into one instance of the player. In some cases (e.g. OT’s Sineplayer) , the instrument fader appears to operate at the player level for all loaded instruments.