Dorico Elements trial - what am I doing wrong?

Given the current deals I thought it would be a good idea to test Dorico since I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. I signed up and downloaded Dorcio yesterday. My goal is to test some very specific things with regards to import data, export (pdf, midi, musicxml), as well as figuring out the quality of the built in orchestral sounds.

I chose to start a new project based on the Classical orchestra template.
One thing I find intersting is that I get this warning right away:
“The current preset or project was created with a previous version of HALion Sonic. If you modify the preset using new features of this trial version, a previous version might not be able to load it or the preset might sound different.” Not sure what to make of it, but I continue.

Next is that it seems that for example Violin I is actually not a section, but a solo player? I’ve looked through the forum and I notice some people having this issue after importing data, and they need to go change the player. But should this really be necessary for a new project based on a template?

I tried to change the instrument, but it seems no matter what variation of Violin I chose, I get single players:

Thank you for any input.

Follow up:

Some further tinkering, I found that I can, in Helion, change from the default [GM 041] Violin instrument to the Iconica Sketch Violins I instrument. That sounds like what I’m looking for :+1:t2:

Now my question is: is there any way to have Classical (or Film) orchestra load with Iconica Sketch instruments by default?

Thanks! :slight_smile:

Preferences → Play → Default playback template

Set that to Iconica…

I appreciate the fast response, thank you!

From your picture, and my own test of the Classical Orchestra template, the Violin 1 is clearly a Section player, as can be determined from the “two heads” icon. But it could be that you’re getting a sample sound of a single player, for some reason. That’s easily fixed by resetting the playback template, as you’ve done.

Note the distinction in Dorico between Players and instruments. Changing the instrument won’t change the type of Player.

If you should need to change a Player type, create a new Player (from the Setup menu, or the little icons at the bottom left; or the key commands). Press Escape from the instrument selector to leave an “empty” Player. Then drag the instrument strip from the original Player to the new one.

You will see this message while using a trial Dorico license. It will go away when you use a permanent Dorico license. You can also prevent it from showing by adding a permanent HALion Sonic license to your Steinberg ID account, which you can do for free on this page:

Scroll down and click Download Now. You don’t need to actually download HALion Sonic: you already have it. Simply requesting the download will add a permanent license to your account.

Golden input, thank you. Yep, processing the terminology and the relationships between concepts right now, it’s going steadily forward :+1:t2:

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Ah, ok. Well, I can live with that for the duration of the trial. I’m very impressed so far, so the trial period might be short :o)