Dorico Limiting Number of VEPRO Plugins

I am not seeing the problem here.

I know about Cubase “Rack Instruments” I have a very large template working in Cubase with the method you described. However, I want to use Cubase “Track Instruments” and I don’t think it’s possible to have multiple Cubase Rack Instruments within a single Cubase Tab. I would very much like to be wrong about this. If it was possible, that would probably solve my Dorico problem.

What happens when you select New from the VE Pro list on VST 6? Does it open a new VE Pro instance where you can open a server project or set up as you like?

If is clicked on then it get’s highlighted…waiting for a new INSTANCE to be entered.

At least this glitch in the matrix is easily reproducible.

I routinely have way more than 4 VEP Instances connected, so haven’t experienced this either. Will it work if you apply a Playback Template? Manually connect them one at a time, and while connected, hit the Endpoint Setup wheel. Save each Endpoint Setup while still connected to VEP. After saving all the Endpoint Setups, create a Playback Template using the Endpoint Configurations you just saved. If you then apply your new Playback Template, will everything connect properly?

My big band Playback Template below has 11 VEP instances, and I’ve gotten them all to connect at once, so it certainly “should” be possible to get your setup to work. (I’ve never come close to having 28 VEP instances open though.)

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I think I’ve discovered the issue. Dorico seems to be limited to connecting to 21 Tabs in VEPro. If I have 22 Tabs present then the tab selection list in Dorico won’t appear for the 5th instrument. So if only 21 VEPro tabs are present, I can connect VL1, VL2, Vla, Cello, Bass.–all 5 working fine. If 22 tabs are present in VEPro, then I cannot get the tab selection list to appear for the Bass. So the magic number appears to be 21.

Can you access more than 21 VEPro instances in Cubase, just out of interest?

Yes My VEPro Template for Cubase has 42 Tabs and each Tab has a lot more than just one port being used-- some as many as 15 ports. One VEPro port per tab is the Dorico limitation. Accessing all with in Cubase is completely as expected. The entire Cubase template is a Disabled Template, and I can turn on/off individual instruments within any tab inside Cubase itself, so there are no memory problems. You can well imagine how long it too to get that setup!

Hi @Shubus,
There isn’t any VE Pro port per tab limitation in Dorico. I’m running multi-port and multi-channel tab VE Pro templates in Dorico without any issues. Well I’m on Windows 10 Pro 22H2, so I can’t tell what’s the issue on your Mac OS.

Here it is:

7 instances of VE Pro 7 plugin in Dorico Pro 4.3.11 fully connected to their instrument groups/tabs


18 Woodwinds - dedicated port per single instrument.


10 Instances of VI Pro Dimension Strings - Multiple Ports and Channels.

The overall VE Pro template contains 8 tabs, but 7 of them are involved in the Dorico project given as example here. Everything works as expected. :slight_smile:

If you can’t find any solution, would be better to contact the VSL Support on this issue.

Best wishes,
Thurisaz :slight_smile:

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I cannot get multiple ports to work at all. Other folks on this forum have said you can only use one port per VEPro tab…and I got that working…up to a limit of 4 VEPRO tabs.

While I have no Vienna instruments, I do have BBCO and will report my test results tomorrow.

Greatly appreciate your posting your success. Gives me hope

Hi @Shubus,
There is no port limitation per VE Pro tab in Dorico.
Just you need to define the Ports and Channels you need in the Endpoint Configuration:

When you set the number of ports, or channels, or both you need, press “Set”, and when you are ready with the Expression Maps assignment, press “OK”.

Before that you should respectively assign the Ports and Channels in the Track Inspector:

Of course you need to be sure that you are having enough dedicated Ports and Audio Channels in the VE Pro 7 Server (Options > Preferences) and Plugin, too:

I hope this additional information would be helpful! :slight_smile:

Best wishes,
Thurisaz :slight_smile:

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Shubus have you updated VEP Pro 7 to the latest version. There was bug which sounds a bit like the issue you have in one of the many versions VSL issued lately. They just recently fixed it.

As some others mentioned I am also using VEPro on a Mac with Dorico with multiple channels per orchestra section (Woodwinds High and Low, Brass High and Low, Percussion 1 and 2, Strings VSL High anf Low, Strings BBCSO high and low). So 10 VEP instances with for most pieces at least 8 active. Most with more than 10 channels (all to the same port). Percussion 1, with 16 channels due to the many percussion instruments available in my percussion libraries. The instruments are a mix of VSL Synchron, BBCSO for string sections and Spitfire Percussion.

Some very useful infos here from Thurisaz & mavros. I want to try getting BBCSO Pro going so I can try the indicated setups but at the moment the standalone Spitfire Audio app is giving an “Error 2”. Need to resolve this before even getting to VEPRO & Dorico . Seems the rabbit hole is getting deeper here!

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Hi @Shubus,

Here is another useful information provided by Spitfire Audio when I had performance issues with the BBC SO Pro.
The following settings will vastly reduce the resources needed for the performance:

Maximum Voices: 768 (Default 512)
Preload size: 6144 (Default 12288)
Stream Buffer Size: 8192 (Default 65536)
Maximum Pitch Voices: 12 (Default 8)

You should change them in the Spitfire BBC SO Player:

I hope this would bring another level of improvement! :slight_smile:

About the Error 2… here is a video that might be helpful in solving the issue:

Best wishes,
Thurisaz :slight_smile:

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I just tried creating 31 tabs (instances) in VEPro on my Mac. Created a VEPro instance in Dorico and am able to see all 31 tabs available to connect to. I do not think there is a Dorico limitation in this respect at all.
Regarding Ports and your comments a bit further up this thread - Multiple Ports most certainly work in VEPro - You can use as many ports as you desire - The issue is OUTPUTS coming into the Dorico Mixer. As I’ve reported multiple times, If you run all your instruments through the VEPro stereo bus, it’s fine to use multiple ports. However, if you assign separate outputs in VEPro, then there is currently a limit of 16 channels coming into the Dorico Mixer for each VEPro instance/tab, and as such, once you start using different ports, these outputs will start to overlap and cause major confusion. That’s why most people stick to midi channels 1-16 in each instance. If, however, you’re not interested in separate outputs coming into the Dorico mixer, and you want to balance everything in VEPro, then multiple ports will allow you to have loads of instruments in one VEPro instance, no problem.
As far as I know, it has never been recommended to use anything like 30 tabs in VEPro - In fact I have always been under the impression that it was always about how many threads your computer had. VEPro defaults to 2 Threads per instance in Preferences…My 2022 Mac Studio M1 Max has 10 threads…That’s 5 instances. I’m sure I can probably run more, like mavros, but unless something has changed, that was always the consideration. Maybe someone else can shed more light on this, but it seems pointless having loads of instances with only one instrument in each.

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Have just recovered from a series of unfortunate adventures whereby Dorico was hanging whilst saving. (On Mac you do a “Force Quite” to kill the app.) Anyway, I continued reloading the same Dorico program and working on it. Turns out that somehow this file got corrupted as it also was killing VEPro. Eventually I deleted the Dorico file and the VEPro file and started anew. My advice to anyone encountering a hung Dorico Save or a hung VEPRO Save (yes my VEPRo file also got corrupted) is to DELETE them an go back to last known good backup…and see if that backup can be saved without hanging.

I resolved my Spitfire Error 2 and quickly adjusted the setting that Thurisaz kindly supplied for BBCSO Pro… Thanks for that . I need to keep that info handy as I use BBCSO Pro quite a lot.

So now that I’m finally back in business again, am resuming testing of the port limiting problem I’ve been encountering. Too early to tell yet if it was my bad files as I’ve just restarted testing.

I greatly appreciate all the useful posts herein.

Have done some more testing. First, am very happy with the new release of VEPro to 7.2.1495–which seems to have fixed VEPro crashes.

Am happy to report that I have BBCSO Pro working as expected. The whole thing lives on one tab in VEPRO AND with up to 3 Ports, 16 channels. This test had only one tab in VEPro.

The next problem is how many VSTs in Dorico can be setup with lots of VEPro tabs available to choose from. By “access” (I mean the “E” option popup list in Dorico’s Track Inspector showing a list of VEPro tabs)…

To test this, I started with my 42 Tab VEPro template and started deleting tabs until I got everything to work.

After some pretty extensive testing, the limit I’m seeing is 21 VEPro tabs. as the number now. With up to 21 tabs open, the popup list on all VST’s created in Dorico works as expected and instruments can be used in any of those 21 Tabs on any port and any of the 16 channels. (Great!)

Now if VEPro has 22 Tabs open then in Dorico I can open one and only one of those VEPRO tabs and get a list. Once a VST has been chosen, a second VST cannot be since the list has vanished and only appears. This has been consistent in the many tests I’ve run in the past few days. If anyone in Dorico is able to assign 2 or more VSTs with 22 or more VST tabs open, then I must have something wrong somewhere.

Hi @Shubus,
I don’t have any VE Pro tab limiting issues with Dorico Pro
Here is an example with 72 active and visible tabs within the VE Pro plugin inside Dorico Pro 4 (tab Untitle 70 is connected to Instrument Rack 02):

I recommend you to contact the VSL Support for further assistance on your issue.
At least on Windows 10 Pro 22H2 everything works as expected.

Best wishes and success,
Thurisaz :slight_smile:

Hi Thurisaz,
I am able to follow your example and have all those server instances show up like you are showing. The problem doesn’t show up until you start connecting the Dorico VST’s to those VEPro server instances. Your example shows only 2 Dorico VSTs connected. Things get difficult when you want to have 30 VST’s in Dorico connected to 30 of those VEPro tabs.

Hi Shubus, I tested with 25 VEP instances all with contents of 1-16 channels in my VEP Pro Server file. I was able to connect all without issues in Dorico. I stopped at 25 but am sure I can connect more.

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