Dorico making Motu soundcard volume jump

[ShikiSuen]

@PaulWalmsley

@ShikiSuen

I personally think that it is totally ridiculous and insane if an audio plugin app refuses to directly utilize CoreAudio on macOS. All non-Steinberg audio-production apps for macOS (incl. AVID Pro Tools non-HD) utilizes CoreAudio directly.

Please stop making these unfounded assertions. CoreAudio2ASIO is a very thin adaptor layer that allows the Steinberg audio engine to address audio devices using the ASIO abstractions, so that most of the logic can be cross-platform.

Guess what? If you are using Pro Tools then this is a cross-platform application too, and at some point in the application stack it will have a similar adaptor layer that converts its internal APIs into CoreAudio, WASAPI, ASIO or whatever. All cross-platform applications will have a layer which directly uses CoreAudio, and a layer where they have an internal representation, and Steinberg is no different.

One more thing happened prior to your guys’ dismissal from AVID (not blaming or taunting you, just a timestamp): The speaker-blowing issue of CoreAudio2ASIO driver happens prior to “Cubase Elements/AI/LE 7.0.6, WaveLab 8.0.3 and WaveLab Elements 8.0.3”, according to Steinberg article:
https://www.steinberg.net/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_details/kb_show/playbackrecording-creates-noise-on-mac-os-x-109-mavericks

I thought that this issue gets completely solved since then, until I read Harmonica’s complaint above. This issue almost made me deaf when I was using Apogee Duet with Cubase 7 on macOS Mavericks. I guess I am the first person to address that this issue could cause permanent hearing problems to users who uses digital output volume controlled by the macOS, and here is the article I wrote during that time to urge all mac Cubase users to perform the update (for their sake of avoiding hearing loss):
http://www.midifan.com/modulenews-detailview-15512.htm


I thought you guys should have the responsibility to unckeck the device attenuation by default in Dorico, with ear health warning texts written clearly in the CoreAudio2ASIO driver settings window… until I read this:

@PaulWalmsley

I apologise if you thought my tone was condescending - that was certainly not my intent. Dorico users cover a very wide base from those very familiar with a pro audio workflow to those who don’t use playback features at all. The reason for the context was that this subject comes up very often and the usual response is ‘Why isn’t this the default?’ and so I wanted to give the background to that reason. This was also to explain the convention used in Steinberg products where 0dB out = 0dB out, bypassing the system volume.

Currently Dorico is not a pro audio workstation. Dorico is born for being a music typography software, not an audio workstation. Music engravers do not care about the audio summing precision cost caused by the lack of forced device attenuation normalization to 0dB. Are you guys expecting users to professionally do precise audio mixing in Dorico? If so, then why you guys sell Nuendo at the same time? for what?

P.S.: I don’t feel anything good from being toxic. However the biggest problem among Steinberg products are the overpursuit of product “completion”. Cubase is for MIDI arrangement, but it ships with too much non-important things, including its notation part which is pretty terrible to use. Dorico is the most comfortable music engraving software I am using, but your ambition regarding the completion of Dorico in pro-audio area is overflowing, pulling and tearing the balls of Dorico from running stable as a mere music typography software. I am afraid that you guys may need to make its VSTAudio app more standalone like the Vienna Ensemble Pro, for those people who don’t have that budget to buy a license of Vienna Ensemble Pro.

To say clear, regarding what I assumed ideal at this moment: Dorico does not access CoreAudio but only access CoreMIDI. Dorico sends MIDI playback and VST Expression playback data to a standalone Dorico Player (the VSTAudio app) and Dorico player handles the audio playback for composition demonstration purposes. If Dorico Player is down, one could just restart Dorico Player separately without rebooting the Dorico main app.