Help! I woke up this morning and all playback on any of my files is a whole-step lower!! I haven’t even used Dorico for about 5 days, can’t understand how/why this would happen. Is there a setting somewhere that would universally transpose all playback like that?
To be clear, this doesn’t matter whether orchestra or less, concert or transposed, large file or small, NotePerformer or Halcion or whatever. Running Dorico 6.1.10 on MacBook with M1 chip. Thank you.
Check to make sure your machine audio and Dorico audio are both using the same sampling rate (44.1 or 48).
On my MBP M1, if the sampling rate is not 48000, then the pitch is altered lower by the lower rate. Sometimes macOS updates, for a reason I have yet to determine, reset the machine’s audio sampling rate to 44,100 hz (the Mac default).
Interesting! Derrek or Kasky1, which should it be and where are these settings? Not sure what’s meant by ‘machine audio’. And by the way I haven’t updated anything lately, unless of course some background helpful (not helpful) update occurred on something somewhere, LOL.
UPDATE. I think I figured it out with your help, thank you both. I’ll record the solution here for others (dummies like me) who may run into the problem…
Though I updated no programs I remembered I that did have a Zoom call last week where Dorico had to be used for part of it. I think that’s what did it, there were problems with playback and someone advised going into Audio Setup and changing the output, it then worked. And just now when I went to Preferences > Play > Audio Device Setup, I saw that the sample rate was indeed 48000 (maybe that’s what Zoom needs, or maybe why it didn’t work!). I just changed rate to 44100, opened the Device Control and reset the output, and now all is well.
Thanks again.
@Finalished, I don’t know whether it is possible: consider giving your previous message in this thread the “Solution” tag; it will show up in the thread title and other people with similar good ears will be able to jump to the explanation directly.
That sounds like you have a mismatch somewhere. Check in Audio MIDI Setup.app; and in Dorico > Edit > Device Setup.
Every time I use Zoom, it changes the sample rate to 48000; it takes over. It doesn’t matter if Dorico is used as a part of the Zoom call. If I forget to reset it to 44100 I always have the same reaction to a Dorico file of, “why does this sound so off?!?”
You are not alone in this. But, at least we know what causes this, and how to rectify it.
Glad you got it worked out!
Happy cake day @rpearl
Jesper
Thanks - cake day?
I think it’s just the anniversary of the day you signed up for the forums.
Ah - thanks.
Not that I need an excuse to eat cake…
I finally just set everything to 48,000. That way I don’t have to worry about the other programs I use resetting the sampling rate.
This happened to me a few weeks ago and I had not connected it with Zoom or any other conferencing software. So thanks for that. But interestingly, it is not limited to Zoom. I opened Audio MIDI Setup on my MacBook Air and sure enough, Teams also messes with this, and unlike every other input listed, Teams does not allow you to change the rate from 48k:
I frequently have both Dorico and Reason open and my synth input goes to both, so if they have different audio frequency settings, the discord is obvious. So I just set everything to 48 kHz, and let’s hope something else doesn’t mess this up.
I just looked at an old file from Finale and Finale was still 44.1. So while Dorico is subjected to changes in its frequency from conferencing apps, neither Reason nor Finale are. Anyway, I think it’s probably prudent to just have 48 kHz as the default for everything.
Doesn’t that mess with the pitch? When Dorico is at 48000 on my system everything is about 1/2 lower in pitch.
Thanks! I will check this out.
Exactly. I had the same concern a few weeks ago but once I changed Dorico back to 44.1 at that time, everything was in tune between Dorico and Reason.
There has always been this ongoing debate as to whether 48 kHz is better than 44.1 kHz. 48k does capture more audio data and in that sense is better, but from a practical perspective, I doubt most people, myself included, could really notice the difference. I had some works of mine years ago produced on Audio DVD rather than CD as a requirement of the recording label because they felt it was so much “better” and there were some people who were demanding that. I suspect the number of those folks could fit in a small closet. At that time, not all computers or DVD players were compatible with DVD-A, and lots of people who had purchased these albums were angry when their systems couldn’t play the music back to them. The point is, the difference between CD and DVD-A was negligible in terms of quality and the only real benefit was in being able to place a lot of music on a single disc (which was understandably useful for at least one recording I know of Feldman’s 4-6+ hour String Quartet 2). I have one work that is over four hours long, for solo piano, and while I have it up on Bandcamp, there is no way Spotify would accept it without being split into much shorter sections. DVD-a can accommodate up to 240 minutes, which would still fall about 15 minutes short of being able to hold my piece.
I chose to do this a long time ago with trying to reconcile pitches with multiple Instrumental VSTs. On a Mac, it is a must in my opinion.
I’m glad to hear this case was resolved because of discrepancy in sampling rates.
For others who might stumble across this thread, I recall having something similar that turned out to be a mad wheel on by MIDI keyboard not set at the center position.
