I changed the reference pitch from A= 440 Hz to 442Hz in the Playback Options. This resulted in occasional mute notes. In the enclosed example, the seventh note is mute in NotePerformer. I tested with two other VST instruments that respond to Dorico’s microtonal notation (Pianoteq and Steinberg’s Retrologue), and that same note remains mute. Deleting that note and re-entering it does not help. I am now unable to export an audio file with all the notes, and my musicians would need one when they practice their microtonal pitches. The original 440Hz version works but the the musicians want 442.
Not a real solution of course, but you could speed up the exported audio by 0.4545% in an external editor to get the same result, while the difference in tempo would be negligible.
Thank you, I did what you suggested. I hadn’t thought of this although I 've done this same operation many times before, to create differently tuned versions for soundtracks. I do have good quality pitch shift software but I simply processed the files in Cubase without time correction. It allows only full cents while 442/440 is 7.85 cents but that’s fine, as the tuning of the samples in NotePerformer varies quite a bit, anyway. (Retrologue and Pianoteq are better in tune.)
I am having a similar issue, only NONE of my notes sound except for A naturals in every octave. I am in 15,601 equal temperament. I am trying to put A4 in 432 Hz. But it only sounds in playback at 440 normally. I am using noteperformer but also tried with normal playback in Dorico and the same things happens. Is this a glitch that is known about by Dorico? I have been having a lot of glitches, even with Dorico deleting my my custom accidentals, and deleting my custom noteheads, not in my score but in the menu. There have also been a lot of issues with Dorico forgetting my settings which I set as default. I am on PC. I bought Dorico because I was told it was the best with micotonality, and it cannot even do very basic things without glitching and wasing tens of hours of my life. I am trying to create music in Pythagorean just intonation, the simplest of tunings. It has been very frustrating.
Welcome to the forum, @trueintonation. The playback issue will be completely separate from the issues you’re encountering with accidental definitions going missing. We’ll need to see a project and know what kinds of edits you’re making to the tonality system to be able to suggest what might be going on there.
When you change the base A4 tuning, you are effectively applying a detuning to every single note in the project. I think it’s then possible that further detuning required to achieve the specified delta could be overflowing the maximum detuning possible, and that could result in Dorico being unable to output the note.
I couldn’t find the original file but I re-created the example, and was pleased to find that in the present version, 5.1.51, it now plays back flawlessly in 12,000EDO in 442Hz, as well as in 432Hz and 419Hz, both with NotePerformer and with a Steinberg synth. However, I tested the division mentioned by trueintonation above, 15601edo, and got the same result: the playback fails completely if the tuning pitch is changed from 440Hz - even to 440.001 Hz. I also tested 12276edo, and it doesn’t play back, either, if the tuning pitch is not 440. So I thought 12,000edo might actually be the upper limit of the number of steps in a Tonality System, even if you can define it for 99,999 steps in the editor. But that’s not the case. I tested 11611edo, and that failed. But 12000edo works, so is it so that Dorico wants a 12- or cent-based tuning? I suppose no-one has used large edos in Dorico before, other than the popular 12000, so the non-functionality of the step definitions in the Tonality Systems have gone unnoticed.
It’s not the number of EDO that can overflow, it’s the actual pitch delta. Dorico (sensibly) won’t bend a pitch more than half an octave. But if you won’t show us the project, we can’t actually help solve the problem.
Large EDOs.dorico (668.0 KB)
In this sample file there’s a six-bar sequence in three tunings: 15601-EDO, 11611-EDO, and 12000-EDO. The Tuning pitch is set to A=442Hz in the Playback Settings. Only the sequence in 12000-EDO plays back correctly. If the Tuning pitch is set to 440Hz, everything will play back normally. I used a GM Sawtooth patch in Halion to make testing easier but it behaves the same way in Steinberg Retrologue and NotePeformer.
Thanks for the project! Unfortunately I am stumped. I can only report more specific findings:
Playback fails in exactly the same way when A is set to anything besides 440, even 439.999. It seems to be unrelated to the choice of VST. The problem seems to be in the two “Pythagorean” tonality systems themselves, but I have no idea what it might be. I even got the 11611 system to fail when set to A=440.
That’s right, I mentioned in my earlier comments that 440.001Hz is enough to cause the problem and that it happens in any VSTi. However, I had no problem with 11611 in 440Hz. - Could divisibility by 12 have anything to do with this? I’m asking because in the earliest implementation of microtonality in Dorico (version 2, or was it even 1?) , the tuning had to be a multiple of 12 for correct playback and behavior. This was soon changed for the better. Then, we got more digits so that tenth-of-cents became possible (12,000edo). I was just wondering if some remnants of the 12n-principle could be still be there in the code?
I think I’m on the right track! In the enclosed file, the Tuning is set to 441Hz. The first two bars are in 11611-EDO, and as we saw before, they don’t play back correctly. But I now created a Tonality System with 11616 steps - the nearest number that’s divisible by 12, and that plays back in any tuning! That’s bars 3 and 4 in the example. Bars 5 and 6 are in 12000-EDO, and that works,. as we know. For the last two bars, I added one step to the Tonality System. 12001EDO does not work! It seems that for the playback of a large EDO to work at a non-440Hz tuning, the number of steps must be divisible by 12. Nezt I’ll try to find out how large the EDO must be that it has this limitation / bug. Large EDOs 12n.dorico (688.5 KB)
Here’s a curious case. 12276 is divisible by 12, and the example, in 12276-EDO ,plays back correctly even when the Tuning is set to some other value than 440Hz - but not always! 441Hz works, 442Hz does not - but 442.001 Hz does! 12276EDO test.dorico (646.8 KB)
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (964.6 KB)
Okay, thanks. Here is my diagnoſtic which includes many issues including my playback being totally diſtorted when A is at 432 Hz and my tonality system of 15,601 ET is activated. I am in Ab major. Also a new glitch just happened that resulted in all the tempo for the entire piece slowing down to a snails pace upon placing a ritardando near the end of the song, a song with no repeats. Also when this glitch happened the green playback bar jumped back 2 or three measures in the score as the ritardando took effect, and now the whole score perpetually sounds like this. Also the fermata in the measure just prior to the ritardando is now instead being rendered as a staccato in playback, shortening the notes duration substantially. I really don’t understand how everyday is an avalanche of new glitches, big enough to stop me from working on the music altogether. If you could provide insight into what is happening and how to fix this, I would greatly appreciate it.
As you can see from my posts above, it turned out that of those very large EDOs, only 12,000EDO plays back correctly if the tuning pitch is not 440 Hz. At 440Hz they all work flawlessly. The staff is now looking into this. Those other issues you mention are unrelated to this microtuning problem.
