Good morning, everyone,
I’m experiencing an annoying problem that I didn’t have on Sibelius, I’m using Version 5.1.81.2225 (Jan 16 2025) on a Mac with system 15.3.1
I’m using NotePerformer Playback Engines with VSL Syncronized Special Edition, on first playback there are clicks and pops especially in long legato notes for example of the clarinet (I’m writing a piano cello and clarinet trio)
After a couple of playbacks the problem no longer occurs
I have tried adjusting the buffer size of Dorico, which is set to 256 by default, but I have not solved the problem
The frequency is set to 44100
I use an Imac 3.6 GHz Intel Core i9 10 core with 48 GB of ram
I remember that nothing like this ever happened with Sibelius
Thank you very much
Best
Stefano
Did you make it bigger, or smaller?
Clicks and pops can be quite common in Digital Audio Workstations, if there is a latency problem in the setup. Dorico’s audio capabilities are much more like a DAW than most other notation apps.
Are the samples on the internal SSD, or an external drive? How fast is it?
Hi Benwiggy,
All my libraries, Vsl and Spitfire are on very fast SSDs in fact on Logic I have a huge setup for orchestration without ever experiencing any problems with dozens of tracks playing simultaneously
Here the problem occurs even with only one sound
I have tried increasing the buffer size getting only latency without solving the problem
If instead I export audio from Dorico everything works
In Sibelius as I wrote above such a thing never happened
Thank you very much
Regards
Stefano
It certainly should be possible to get audio playing back without clicks and pops.
What if you go to the Dorico Preferences dialog, choose the Play tab and scroll all the way down to the Advanced Options, unfold them and toggle the option Enable ASIOGuard. Does that change something?
They’re hard to avoid in any DAW as @benwiggy says. I have probably the highest spec machine you can get, 24 core, NVMe, 128G RAM etc etc. It still happens sometimes.
You didn’t say what audio interface you’re using. Anyhow one thing to watch out for is interference, I run at 48kHz and YouTube in a browser will sometimes inject trouble into the system. Also USB in particular is troublesome. I found a reclocker with good cables to help. Or using Dante with AES has been reliable.
Hi Dan,
thank for yor answer, my audio interface is Steinberg UR22mkII
This is the first vote I’ve had like this, it only happens with NoePerformer Playback Engin in VSL
If I exclusively use Noteperformer as playback I have no problem
It’s a mystery
After the second playback everything works normally again…
Hi Ulf,
I have tried but all as before
The low latency driver works well in my experience, especially with those Steinberg interfaces.
Hi @DanMcL , Stefano is on Mac, and on that platform there is no Generic Low Latency driver. Also, Steinberg always recommends to use the dedicated drivers from the audio interface makers, because they know their hardware best and thus make the driver best performing together with it. The Generic drivers are only a clutch to the cheap, built-in audio chips. It’s just to get some sound out with them but not high quality. Of course, the Generic drivers work virtually with any audio chip/interface, but don’t expect too much.
Hi @Stefano_Maccagno , VSL, NotePerformer and Dorico all reside on the same machine, right?
The strange thing here is, that you say it works nicely after the first round. I’d expect clicks and pops to be continuously happening, also in the second or whatever run.
Strange here is also, Dorico’s audio engine hosts NotePerformer and then NotePerformer has it’s own audio engine which in turn hosts VSL.
Does VSL have some multi core option that you can turn on or off?
The Synchron Players from Vienna had until not so long ago exactly such issue. No matter how many cores you may have, They would process only ever on the same core. So one core was flattened out to 100% and the other cores did basically nothing. In your case now this might be different, but just to make you see, the cause of clicks and pops can be a multitude and also difficult to analyse.
Hi Ulf,
the strange thing is that this has never happened on Sibelius with the same setup but with much denser and more complex scores and with as many players as an orchestra
Noteperformer’s playback engine is the same one that opens on Sibelius, and it’s all up-to-date
Noteperformer is on the same machine as Sibelius and Dorico, VSL is on a separate SSD, but again, no problems whatsoever, it feels like I’m back in the early 90s!
I wanted to do another test, i.e. import the file on Sibelius that I have just updated but, the Xml file created by Dorico of my project, crashes Sibelius
I don’t know what to say
Could you please load a project which exhibits those clicks and pops and let it play until it becomes clean audio. Then stop and choose from the menu Help > Create Diagnostic Report which creates a zip file on your desktop. Please attach to a reply here or send to u dot stoermer at steinberg dot de. Maybe I can spot something from the log files. Thanks
I tried but the error did not reoccur, as soon as I can I shut everything down and restarting from scratch should reoccur
For now thanks, I’ll try tomorrow
Greetings
Stefano
I almost invariably get clicks and pops if I use a generic driver. As Ulf says, you should always use the dedicated driver for a hardware audio interface. If it’s working in Sibelius my immediate reaction is the wrong driver is being used in Dorico (I have known once or twice for Dorico to mysteriously change the driver configuration for no good reason I could find). But that doesn’t seem to be the case and also doesn’t explain why it works second time round. I’d be interested to know if VSL SE works natively without NotePerformer as it’s not a particularly demanding library in terms of performance requirements (and t.b.h, I don’t remember issues running under NPPE either when I tested it).
Hi Dko22,
I always use VSL with the Notperformer playback engine and I have never had clicks and pops, I don’t know what to say, the situation improves after a couple of playbacks and the problem does not reoccur
Exporting the audio on the other hand all ok!
Thank you very much
Regards
Hi Ulf,
here is the zip file
Thank you very much
Best
Stefano
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (971,1 KB)
I have now tried importing the track from Dorico as a midi file into Sibelius (I don’t know why Sibelius, the latest upgrade, crashes with the Xml file generated by Dorico), assigned the playbackk to Notperformer, loaded the same setup into Noteperformer Playback Engine, loaded Vsl and everything is perfect
It also seems much lighter to me than Dorico
I don’t know what to say
Thanks for the data @Stefano_Maccagno . I also don’t know what to say 
These are the last log entries of the audio engine:
2025-03-15 09:35:18 : setTransportRunning: Start at project time: 0.000000, system time: 107.537153
2025-03-15 09:35:19 : License Info: ping response received in Dorico 5 AudioEngineVersion 5.6.4233F70F4A6CAC4EE99D9E75D0E703F7B3: from silk service
2025-03-15 09:35:20 : License Info: ping response received in Dorico 5 AudioEngineVersion 5.6.42F88CD14276D5486EA8CB466DC4C01029: from silk service
2025-03-15 09:36:05 : License Info: ping response received in Dorico 5 AudioEngineVersion 5.6.4233F70F4A6CAC4EE99D9E75D0E703F7B3: from silk service
2025-03-15 09:36:05 : License Info: ping response received in Dorico 5 AudioEngineVersion 5.6.42F88CD14276D5486EA8CB466DC4C01029: from silk service
2025-03-15 09:36:24 : setTransportRunning: Stop
So during that roughly 1 minute of playing you had the usual clicks and pops, right?
One cause could be outdated driver/firmware of the UR22mkII. Please check here for the latest version and run and install them if they are outdated with you.
If that also makes no difference then we need to do some other logging, but one step after the other
Hi Ulf,
Tlthank a lot for your reply, tomorrow I will try to date the driver
But I don’t understand with Sibelius and the same setup all works fine
Is an enigma for me
The pop occurs always in the same point when a clarinet legato passage goes to a long note legato, After this is all ok!
Tomorrow I will try
Thanks again
Best
Stefano