Dorico 4 & VEPRO Playback Audio Outputs

Dorico
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Here is a dropbox link containing the Dorico file without score. Even with no score and just 4 players the file weighs in at 122 MB! Here is a link to it in Dropbox. It seems one needs to have a Dropbox account to share a file: TinyUrl used to shorten the link:
https://tinyurl.com/DoricoTest
Have not had good luck with Dorico today. My test file crashed when clicking on any of the Solo or Mute buttons, so had to recreate from scratch…and this is the linked file.

I double checked what was sounding and what wasn’t. and it’s 1 instrument (Horn) and the 4th instrument (Violins). Only these two light up in VEPRO when Play is pressed. And the Solo and Muted buttons don’t seem to work at all, but least on this re-created file pressing either one does NOT crash Dorico.

I am doubtful that there is anything wrong the VEPRO routine as it all works fine in Cubase–as does my entire template which is quite large.

Greatly appreciate the help on this. P.S.: I’m beginning to suspect something maybe awry with the Dorico Mixer—which was re-written recently as I recall…

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122MB ?! The whole Rite of Spring is only 15.

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Hi @Shubus ,
thanks for the data. Most of the 120MB accounts for audio engine data and in particular for plug-in state data. Must be from VEPro, but I really wonder, normally that should not happen with VEPro, but anyway, that is not the main problem here.
So you have 4 VEPro instancces and each of them presents 40 output ports to the Dorico mixer, and so Dorico creates in total 120 channels for them. Tracing all the routing from the data is too difficult for me. I need my development tools for analysing this, which I don’t have at hand right now. I will come back as soon as possible.

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Greatly appreciate your help on this, Ulf. My expectation has been that if VEPro works with Cubase then it should work with Dorico in a similar manner by matching Instances, channels and ports. But I could be wrong about that.

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15

You might consider changing your approach to VEP outputs. I settled on an instance setup with multiple buses feeding one main out. This greatly streamlines the interaction between VEP and Dorico.

Your mixing would then be done in VE Pro. If you do this you probably want to “clone” your VE Pro template to produce a VEP file uniquely named for each project. That way you can be sure any mixing doesn’t affect your base template. This also lets you cut out anything in your template that you’re sure you don’t need for a particular project.

Don’t know if this is helpful.

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Yes, I’ve considered the option of cloning the VEPro template and customizing it for each project. But this is exactly the scenario I’m trying to avoid as it creates an immense amount of work.

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Even without my development tools at hand, I’ve been thinking about the ports assignment .
You said it is like
VEPRO Outputs.==== Dorico Mixer Outputs
3-4 =================== 7,8
1-2 =================== 17,18
5-6 ===================.27,28
1-2 =================== 63,64

Now looking again at your Track Inspector, the first VEPro instance receives MIDI on Port 1 and Channel 4 and Dorico receives audio from the 4th output port so that matches the 7,8. Likewise does the assigned MIDI channel match the output port in all other instances as well. E.g. the choir receives on MIDI channel 9 and also outputs on the 9th output port (17,18). Same holds true for Piano and Violins. Well, Violins is a little different, it’s port 2 channel 16, that is 2 times 16 equals 32 which matches 63,64. So this all makes sense. There is only one misconception on your side and that you speak of Dorico Mixer Outputs, but they are actually instrument return channel which get fed by the corresponding output ports of the VEPro instances. The instrument return channels in Dorico inherit as name the port names from VEPro; that:s why they are named like 7,8 or 63,64.
Now, you say that Choir and Piano don’t work, but Horns and Violins do. Looking at the Track Inspector, I see for Piano and Choir input port 10 resp. 4, so I’m inclined to say that here is the problem. What if you set those two also to port 1?

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18

OP would need to work in decouple mode, that way Dorico only saves the connection information (ports, channels, etc), instead of all the plugin data from VEPro, thus decreasing file size and load/save times.

The caveat is that you need to create a habit of saving your VEPro server, otherwise changes in plugins are lost when you close the project. Another option, which is the way I usually work, is to have a master VEPro template (decoupled AND preserved, so I can switch cues) and automate all plugin parameters within Dorico via MIDI, that way I can recall instrument changes without having to actually save any plugin information locally in Dorico.

Not sure if that’s useful for OP (or make any sense haha), but I hope it helps.

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Hi Ulf,
I won’t quite understand how this mapping between VEPRO & Dorico works especially regarding the Dorico Mixer Outputs being fed by the VEPRO instances as there is nothing related to Ports 63,64 in VEPRO. In Dorico I tried changing the Choir to Port 1 Channel 9 and the Piano to Port 1 Channel 14 and sorry to report but alas the choir & piano are still silent.

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Hi Zolhof,
I’m thinking of trying your method of work and have thought about running VEPro in decoupled mode. Will give that a shot once this port mapping is figured out. Greatly appreciate your explanation of how to use VEPRO & Dorico.

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I think we explained this over a year ago: Dorico and VEPro Port 2 and beyond
As has been mentioned several times over the years, there is currently a limitation to the number of stereo feeds to the Dorico mixer from a single VEPro instance. This is set to 16 for 16 midi channels. You can easily have Port 1, channels 1 to 16 coming into the Dorico mixer on 16 different stereo channels, but once you use more than one port in a VEPro instance, the outputs will start overlapping and will therefore not work: If you have say an instrument on Port 1 midi channel 1 you will hear that in Dorico, no problem. If you then have another instrument in the same VEPro instance on Port 2, midi channel 1, it will not come into the Dorico mixer as a separate channel, and you will not hear anything because midi channel 1 is already assigned to Port 1. If you un-assign your Port 1 instrument, you will hear your Port 2 instrument.
It is therefore recommended to use 16 channels per instance, all on Port 1 to get 16 channels in the Dorico mixer.
If, however, you assign all your instruments in VEPro to the Stereo bus, they will come into the Dorico mixer on one stereo fader, and you can use as many Ports in a VEPro instance as you want.
I don’t know what it will take for this limitation to change or expand, but it has always been like this thus far.

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Thinking about this a little but more, I know Daniel has said he doesn’t use VEPro, but it is pretty ubiquitous for most composers using large sample libraries, and therefore it might be useful for someone in the team to have a license for VEPro and be able to test and maybe fix this output limitation when using more than one port in a VEPro instance. It might save people like Ulf a lot of valuable time trying to explain and figure out these things when it is a well known issue for many Dorico + VEPro users and has been the subject of quite a number of explanatory posts over the past 2 or 3 years.

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Hi Grainger,
Yes, that was me over a year ago in “Dorico and VEPRO Port 2 and beyond” and here I am still trying to get a handle on it (again!). And unfortunately, one thing that seems clear is that I cannot use my VEPRO master template “as is” with Dorico.

I think my problem is that I’m getting confused on what is a VEpro “Instance” so here I’ll stop using the word “instance”. Instead: VEpro with 4 tabs with various instruments connected to various ports and channels–that’s the way it is now.

VEPRO
Connected to Dorico it looks like this:

Connected
Connected1531×332 68.8 KB

Each of these tabs is connected to Dorico separately as shown in the 2nd pix. One instrument each and within each VEPro tab there are many Ports above 16 but none above 16 being used in this test and the MIDI ports are (of course) 16 or less. So in my mind I seem to be within the current limitations of Dorico as you have outlined. Anyway, that’s how I MISunderstand it.

Now to get my setup working I guessing I need to change each instrument in the VEPRO tabs to use Port 1…and only Port 1 and of up to 16 channels in all the VEPRO connections to Dorico.

Does this seem correct? Greatly appreciate all the help I’ve been getting here on this issue.

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My post above.

I understand you’re not interested in the cloning aspect I mentioned, but you can at least experiment with a single output pair per instance fed by multiple buses, each fed by one or more channels. This of course means mixing in VE Pro, but I don’t see an alternative given the issue.

Hope you can find a path that works for you.

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Yes, that will solve your problems. Just create new tabs or instances in your VEPro instance (I can see the confusion in calling everything an instance) to add more instruments. Use only Port 1, midi 1-16. Create more VEPro entries accordingly in the Dorico VST rack and connect them all.
If you don’t need all the separate inputs in the Dorico mixer, then DaddyO’s solution will also work very well and you can use as many ports as you can shake a stick at! The main drawback with this method for me is that you can’t use Dorico’s solo function to much effect, but it seems to work for other’s so it’s really just a matter of preference.

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My latest attempt is as follows:
In VEPRO
JXL Brass Tab—>Horn set to Port 1, Channel 4
Audio Imperia Tab---->Choir set to Port 1, Channel 9
Piano/Harp Tab —> Piano set to Port 1, Channel 14
BSS&Sort Tab—> Violin set to Port 1, Channel 16

In Dorico each instrument is connected to these same corresponding VEPro Tab settings.

What has NOT changed is the outputs of VEPRO where
Horn —>Output 3,4
Chorus —>Output 1,2
Piano—>Output 5,6
VIolin —>Output 1,2

Results: Only Horn sounds and the Solo/Mute buttons do not work as expected–and in fact often crash Dorico.

The Dorico mixer channels have now changed:

Horn—> 7,8. (unchanged)
Chorus–> 17,18 (unchanged)
Piano—> 27,28 (unchanged)
Violin—>31,32 (this is the one that changed from 63,64

So, I guess I’m still MISunderstanding something.

Again thanks for all this help, it is greatly. appreciated. Maybe I’ll get something working this year!

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Without seeing how everything is routed etc it’s hard to diagnose what is going wrong, I suspect there are some overlapping channels in Dorico which are blocking some outputs. What I would suggest is to start again with a new Dorico project and a blank VEPro. Create things one at a time and see what happens….Make sure each instrument is routed correctly in Dorico and has the correct Expression Map entry in the Endpoint dialogue. Get one instrument working and see what happens when you change the midi channel in VEPro and consequently the midi routing in Dorico. Dorico will create a new fader for each midi channel on port 1. In VEPro, keep the outputs in sequence with the midi channels, in other words midi 1 is out 1&2, midi 2 is output 3&4 etc…keep it consistent. If you do this you should be able to figure it out by experimenting and learning. Once you have 16 instruments in your first tab, create another tab and repeat.

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This time I started with an empty VEPro as suggested with one Tab. In that tab I created 4 or instruments as follows:

Horn (MIDI 1, Channel 1) -----Output 1,2
Chorus (MIDI 1, Channel 2) —Output 3,4
Piano (MIDI 1, Channel 3) ----Output 5,6
Violins (MIDI 1, Channel 4)— Output 7,8

In Dorico I setup 1 and only 1 VST Instrument which is the single VEPro Tab.

Then in the Track Inspector I setup corresponding references to those in this single VEPRO
Tab:

Horn (MIDI 1, Channel 1)
Chorus (MIDI 1, Channel 2)
Piano (MIDI 1, Channel 3)
Violins (MIDI 1, Channel 4)

Now looking at the Dorico Mixer I see the outputs

Horn (1,2)
Choir (3,4)
Piano (5,6)
VIolin (7,8)

And THIS WORKS All instruments sound, Solo & Mute buttons work, Dorico faders work…all has hoped for!

So now where do I go here? i can reasonably assume then, that I can fill up this VEPro tab through 16 channels.

I’m guessing that or the next 16 channels, this should start on a new VEPRO tab and use Port 2 and Dorico also on Port 2. with a new VST Instrument for Port 2, etc.

So nice to get something working with consistent numbering of port/channels. Seems like I’m ready to go, or am I? What should the outputs of a 2nd VEPro tab be set to?

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Great! You are on the right path, except use Port 1 again in the second tab. The second tab in VEPro is simply the same as the first one in terms of outputs…Because it has a separate connection into Dorico it will work in the same way and Dorico will automatically create new channels for it. For ALL tabs use Port 1, midi 1-16.

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I have SUCCESS to report! 2nd VEPRO Tab created all using Port 1. All VEPro setting are exactly the same as the 1st VEPRO Tab so all are on port 1 and channel numbers are sequential as are the audio channels.

So this works and the Dorico Mixer, Solo and Mute all work as expected! < color me RELIEVED!>

So how to proceed with my rather large VEPRO template: The solution I’ve come up for VEPRO is to use Channel Sets. One VEPRO tab often yields as many as 8 separate channel sets. So far I’ve created 22 of these little Channel Sets The key here is that these Channel Sets save a lot of work as most of my time is spent setting up an instrument within VEpro. One limitation with the Channel Sets is no Automation settings are saved.

Glad to bring this all to a successful conclusion. It’s not the preferred solution–that would be to work as Cubase works. But I’m happy to be able to proceed with a reasonable work flow now.

Thanks to all who have chimed in with help analysis and suggestions!

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