Correct Instrument Pan

[Laurence]

I’m trying to work out how to use the Pan controls. I just don’t understand them and they seem inconsistent.

Presently I can see three different places where I can adjust Pan. In the Mixer; and at two locations in the HALion Sonic SE window (see red circles in attachments). But adjusting any one of them does not adjust the others, and no one of them seems to be master over the others.

Additionally, my files seem forget what the pan is for each instrument.

Please, could someone tell me what am I doing wrong? Sometimes things work beautifully until I close and open Dorico. Other times the Pan is forgotten instantly, and at other times it never sticks.

Additionally (and this is either a different topic or an additional symptom), I have seen references to reverb effect called REVerence, and that it should appear in the Mixer in the Reverb channel. This has never happened and I can’t seem to get it to appear there.

Any help?

Many thanks,

Laurence

[dspreadbury]

In general I would recommend only using the pan in Dorico’s Mixer, unless you have a good reason to do otherwise. The pan in Dorico’s Mixer corresponds to how the output channel from the plug-in is panned, which is separate from how the pan controls in HALion Sonic SE itself for each sound work.

Can you check that REVerence is at least installed? You should see it in the list of effects plug-ins that you can access from any of the Insert or Send slots.

[Laurence]

Thanks Daniel,

I’ve found REVerence now. Seems I was looking in the wrong place. It is an Insert. Got it.

This morning, I tried removing the HALion VST instrument and setting it up from scratch, my aim being that I would not touch the other scary controls in that menu. I fully planned to follow your suggestion to use the Pan from the Mixer.

Trouble now is, the Drum Kit part is playing all the wrong sounds, though on the correct instrument. If it helps, it seems to be reading the percussion clef as treble clef. The G space (above the staff) is giving me a squawky toot of some kind. I prefer the high-hat sound. I had also reconfigured the percussion kit as to what notes are should be read on what line/space… Don’t know if that changes things or how to reset it.

Additionally, all the other sounds (brass) are very quiet, and, according to the Mixer, are all going through Channel 1. I have set up each instrument on a different channel in Play view, and all are configured to a different instrument in the Edit (VST) Instrument (HALion) menu.

I seem to be getting these sort of sound troubles a lot with Dorico. I’m really trying to adjust as little from the defaults as possible, but I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty when necessary. I’m just getting dirty a lot…

Am I doing something obviously wrong?

[dspreadbury]

It sounds like you’re trying to set up all the instrument assignments yourself, and you don’t need to do that. Dorico will do it for you, just like other music notation software you may have used in the past, though the way it works is obviously a bit different to those other programs. To undo whatever manual work you may have done yourself, go to Play > Playback Template and choose ‘HSSE+HSO (Pro)’, then click Apply and Close. Dorico will then load all of the required sounds, assign all of the appropriate expression maps and percussion maps, and things should start to play back without you having to lift a finger.

If you don’t find that you get the right kinds of instrument sounds after applying the default playback template, that’s the main thing we need to address in the first instance.