Hello, I have Dorico Pro 5, and whenever I start a Playback for the score, the meters in the mixer are not lighting correctly (i.e. Strings playing at the beginning, but the faders for “Violin I”, “Viola”, etc. not functioning properly), or the playback for Tenor Tbn. showing meters for Trumpet I and Timpani.
Link to .dorico file:
Any advice is highly appreciated. Thank you!
Nothing seems obviously wrong here, but I don’t have SSO to test with.
In case it helps you troubleshoot, Dorico expects the audio returns to match the MIDI channels that the input goes in on. So if it sends MIDI to channel 1, it expects the first stereo pair back (1 and 2) to be the output of the MIDI on channel 1, then the second stereo back to be the output of the MIDI of channel 2, and so on.
If Kontakt is not sending the audio back out the correct output, the fader in Dorico won’t properly match up with the instrument it is labelled with. It does look to me like you have things mapped correctly, but perhaps SSO itself is doing something weird?
Same here, I don’t have that SSO. But as mducharme already mentioned, I would check the internal output routing of that SSO plug-in.
I cleared the output section in Kontakt and create individual channels for each instrument, and I have the channel correct channel assigned per each instrument in Dorico itself.
Yet (for example) the timpani (routed to channel 10 in Kontakt and Dorico) activates the violoncello and euphonium (routed to 14 and 15, respectively).
The only ones that respond correctly are the Flute I/II and Clarinet I/II, and they look like this in Kontakt:
But all the others look similar to this:
Halion Sonic does not do this, however; all the channels in the mixer behave correctly under Halion.
Yeah but is that where Kontakt is actually sending it?
I can see you have it set correctly, because I can see all of the routing. Unless SSO itself is actually not sending it the way you have it routed.
Check the “Outputs” section in Kontakt to make sure that the meters there actually correspond properly and that the faders there actually control the expected instrument.
The reason I raise this possibility is because even though Kontakt itself has a very simple routing, it is possible for complicated scripted instruments to override this and send audio to a different output than the Kontakt interface has set. And SSO has some complex scripting in it.
I can tell from the instruments themselves (which don’t load) that you’ve set everything correctly in the Kontakt interface:
All of those “Output” settings are just fine. But if the scripting in SSO is causing the instrument to ignore that and send the actual audio to a different output then that won’t matter, and that would explain the issue.
Hmm, the instrument scripting may be a point for that. Here’s what the outputs look like for bar 8 with the crescendo (Alto Tbn. dropped at the too-high notes):
I’ll have a look in the instrument itself, but if the scripting is the issue and nothing can be done with it, oh well.
The Audio export was successful with all instruments being exported individually without problem, however.
Try moving those faders in your latest screenshot up and down while it is playing, just to make sure they control the instrument you expect.
If they don’t, the problem is between the instrument and Kontakt iself, and not related to Dorico.
If they do, the problem between the mapping of the Kontakt outputs and Dorico, which should be automatic.
Just tested it, the faders in Kontakt all correspond correctly to their relative instrument. Each fader adjusts the expected instrument volume.
Then everything is correct on the Kontakt side, but there is some strangeness with the Kontakt outputs getting to the correct channels on the Dorico mixer.
From looking at the outputs in Kontakt itself (which there is no choice of), it looks like it assumes the first 5 outputs from Kontakt are stereo outputs (main 1, aux 1, aux 2, aux 3, aux 4) and the rest are individual mono outputs (unassigned 1 through unassigned 54). Perhaps Dorico thinks each channel of these mono outputs go to a different instrument? If this is the case, then the two flutes, two clarinets, and first trumpet would be OK, but the second trumpet’s left channel would go into the second Trumpet fader/meter in Dorico and the second trumpet’s right channel would go into the Alto Trombone fader/meter in Dorico.
Interesting. When I activate “Unused” in the Dorico mixer, some additional faders appear named “KT Unassigned [#]” like those mono outputs in Kontakt. That might be where some of your audio is going.
I am starting to think that this stereo/mono mismatch is possibly resulting in strange routing. Dorico may be misinterpreting each individual mono output of Kontakt 7 after those first 5 stereo outputs as a stereo output.
Yes, I was correct. When I mouse over the mixer channel name “Alto Trombone” in Dorico, the tooltip says KT Unassigned [2]
KT Unassigned 2 is actually the right mono output of Trumpet 2. That means the left channel of Trumpet 2 is going to the correct Trumpet 2 fader in Dorico, but the right channel of it is going to Alto Trombone. Then the left channel of Alto Trombone ends up going to Tenor Trombone and the right one to Bass Trombone. Then the left channel of Tenor Trombone goes to Timpani and the right channel of Tenor Trombone goes to Violin I etc. So it is a mono/stereo mismatch that affects Kontakt 7 when you go beyond using the first 5 outputs which are stereo, where Dorico thinks each mono output after these first five belongs to a different instrument but instead each pair of mono outputs belongs to each instrument (as a stereo L/R pair).
So the reason why this isn’t working is that Kontakt 7 only presents 5 true Stereo outputs and the rest of the outputs are individual mono ones - even though Kontakt is automatically grouping the mono pairs as ad-hoc stereo, Dorico doesn’t know it is doing this and is just treating the mono channels individually resulting in incorrect mapping of Kontakt outputs to Dorico faders/mixer-channels. I am not sure how to fix this - there would probably need to be a way to configure Kontakt to have more than 5 stereo outputs instead of just having a whole bunch of mono outputs at the end.
UPDATE: I have somehow gotten Kontakt to do this now and now I suddenly have the correct number of Stereo outputs in Kontakt by default. I am not entirely sure how I did this though. I tried some random things and they appeared and now they are still there.
I suspect it is possibly when I went to this dialog box and set these settings that it became fixed:
I think enabling “Make this your default configuration” is what did it. Checking that appears to have told Kontakt “when starting as a VST3, initialize 16 stereo channels with the host” (instead of the default of 5 stereo channels plus a bunch of extra mono channels).
Try instantiating a new Kontakt plugin in Dorico (even in a new empty file) and go into “Outputs” and click on that + button in the Outputs section and then use those settings like I did and click OK. Afterwards try quitting Dorico and going back in.
After fixing this, when I reopen the file you sent me, the Timpani shows very different from before:
(compare with your screenshot earlier in this thread)
I do a lot of combination with NotePerformer and custom Kontakt Instruments. I have noticed on such projects that I’ll end up with both phantom and hidden meters/tracks; such as numerous instruments which are passing audio to the output, but no meters whatsoever lighting up (and none with the correct name). I have discovered that clicking “unused” in the mixer, will reveal the true track where the audio is coming from, often labelled something somewhat random like “NotePerformer 22” as well as the KT Unassigned thing mentioned above.
However “unused” reveals hundreds of unused tracks which I don’t need. I don’t quite understand why this is happening, but there is some kind of mixup between Kontakt and NP I assume. It would be nice if I could delete unused tracks, and also assign/re-arrange any used tracks just how I might in a DAW, so they can stay organized.
