This is highly annoying…
In 3.0 (and I think 2, maybe 1, as well), there was an option in Preferences > Play > Audio Devices to release the audio device when Dorico isn’t the active window. In 3.5 this is gone.
Yes, it is described in the version history under the bug-fixes Segment.
It seemed to have caused more problems than the team would like to have.
That makes me very unhappy. I used it heavily and never had issue. NOT having it will cause quite a bit of pain.
out of personal curiosity: how and why did you use it? which platform are you on (mac, windows)?
Windows… I oftne leave dorico open for long periods. It’s nice to have sound that works (e.g. Youtube, or whatever) when I alt-tab over to my browser.
It should still be possible for you to have sound that works outside of Dorico even without the option to suspend the audio engine in the background; normally the trick is to switch off the option in the Generic Lower-latency ASIO Driver that grants Dorico exclusive access to your sound hardware.
Or if that doesn’t work, try ASIOforall instead of the Steinberg generic ASIO driver. That certainly works for me.
Ah this is a shame.
I’m on a mac and I use this feature all the time with Cubase. It’s important for me to be able to bounce around programs and have the audio follow the program.
Will this feature come back when you can get the issues ironed out since it is a feature in other Steinberg programs?
I’m using my device’s native driver. There is no such option available. ASIO4ALL works very poorly with my device, so that is not an option.
PLEASE BRING THE OPTION BACK!!
Even if you put a giant “here be dragons” warning on it.
I am on Mac and I don’t think I had this feature activated. I was still able to jump around different programs and listen even simultaneously (e.g. YouTube or zoom calls)
I know that core audio offers more flexibility here.
I’m using ASIO for all, Windows 10 but it doesn’t work for me. There’s no option to tell the ASIO for All driver to share the hardware. I would really like to get it back too. It’s an option that can be turned off, is it, so everyone can choose whether or not to use it. I’m back to Dorcio 3.0 for now and I hope this will be solved, as it is a dealbreaker for me for further updates.
I’m using ASIO for all, Windows 10 but it doesn’t work for me. There’s no option to tell the ASIO for All driver to share the hardware. I would really like to get it back too. It’s an option that can be turned off, is it, so everyone can choose whether or not to use it. I’m back to Dorcio 3.0 for now and I hope this will be solved, as it is a dealbreaker for me for further updates.
I can’t comment on how likely it is that we’ll be able to reintroduce this option in the near future, but you should find that using Voicemeeter provides you with a solution to this problem. If using professional audio applications (which includes Dorico, since it has Cubase’s audio engine embedded within it) is important to you, then I would also recommend making the investment in better audio hardware that provides multi-client ASIO support.
I use Cubase Pro 11 and Dorico 3.5 with external audio hardware and proprietary drivers on windows 10. As a result of this feature being unavailable, I cannot switch between the two programs without quitting and relaunching them (and waiting for my collection of vsts to load).
The way I see it, two of your most popular software products are essentially incompatible in an important way (being able to run simultaneously) for a subset of users that are probably the most serious about music production (having external equipment and using proprietary drivers, not wanting the added few ms of latency from asio4all).
Sure I could buy a mac for the more flexible audio subsystem, but if I had to switch hardware and operating system to support my production software, it would be a major disappointment. I chose the Steinberg ecosystem originally because I felt it was the most professionally designed and supported. This particular feature issue is an ugly scar on that otherwise impressive reputation.
I guess my $800+ Roland UA-1610 is an inadequate investment in “better audio equipment”, even though it cost me more than the Dorico 3.5 Pro software itself…
Didn’t some thread suggest that Dori co and Cubase could work simultaneously depending which program (Cubase?) was opened first?
Please correct me if I am wrong.
I often have a lot of audio programs open at once in Windows. I use VoiceMeeter and FlexASIO, along with MIDI-OX to route the MIDI signals to various MIDI ports (which I created with loopMIDI) and everything works fine. It’s fairly complicated but when teaching on Zoom I usually have Dorico, Transcribe, Roon, ManyCam, VMPK, MIDI-OX, and a Vienna Synchron Piano VST all running at the same time, as well as needing to be able to play YouTube videos.
I imagine if you set your Roland to be the Hardware Out device in VoiceMeeter (I assume the Roland will have an ASIO option here), then set your Windows Sound Output to either CABLE Input (this is the VoiceMeeter virtual cable) or VoiceMeeter Input, and VoiceMeeter may help make your setup work. Be sure to uncheck “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” in your Windows settings too. If using the virtual cable, set Hardware Input 1 to CABLE Output in VM. The VM virtual input should work automatically.If you need separate MIDI ports to send MIDI signals simultaneously then you’ll need another program running for that too. Set FlexASIO as your ASIO driver in both Dorico and Cubase. Make sure all sample rates match, and I would think that it should work.
I tried VoiceMeeter earlier and it worked pretty well. What you need is a multi client ASIO-driver, which you’ll get with VoceMeeter. I think this is a Windows only issue. In any case, I have never had a problem running multiple music apps on my Mac.
Another, a bit more expensive solution is to use a RME (Babyface pro or higher) or UAD (Apollo or higher) sound card, which both are multi client ASIO.