Are you only able to condense with Solo Players? or am I missing something?
As of Dorico 3.5, you can also condense section players, including divisi staves. It’s an additional option when enabling condensing. For more information, see here.
Okay thanks! Any way to make one note show up instead of two (when condensing) when in unison?
Can you share the example, either as screenshot or as a cut-down project (which can be easier to test the specifics)? With condensing it all “depends”, although it is often a question of whether that phrase is actually in unison or multiple parts sharing a voice or in 2 voices.
Reapplying the Silence playback template before uploading projects tends to make them a lot smaller, as they then don’t include all the data about playback devices.
However, that PDF is enough to suggest the reason for the duplicate noteheads is that in the phrase overall (phrases for condensing being all the music between rests or within a system) isn’t completely in unison: bars 1, 3, and 4 are chords, and bar 5 shows both up-stem and down-stem voices are in use (hence the duplicated noteheads for unisons in other bars).
You could try inserting a condensing change at the start of bar 5 and just tick the Violin 1 condensing group, to tell Dorico to restart the phrase from there - if the rest of the music after that point up to the next rest is in proper unison, the condensing result should update. There is also an option for allowing mid-phrase unisons in Write > Notation Options > Condensing.
Does writing reset condensing changes? I keep changing condensation and when go back to writing it resets itself.
Condensing is dynamic in that it responds to the current music on the source staves. If you’re not finished with adding the music, it might be best to disable condensing, add the music, and then enable condensing at the end where you have the benefit of a complete overview to determine how best to handle condensing on a page-to-page basis if necessary. Having condensing enabled also slows Dorico down, so you might find it easier to work without condensing on in the meantime too.
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Okay, definitely good to know! Thanks so much!