Dorico playback setup difficulties

Dorico
1

I got the trial of Dorico 6 Pro to see if this was worth switching from Sibelius. There’s a lot to like about the UI design, and I want to make it work. But just for some feedback, I was about to throw my computer through the window while trying to get simple playback working. Here’s what I tried:

  1. Created a new project using the built-in “Solo Piano” template. No sound on playback.
  2. Opened Play mode and confirmed HALion Sonic was loaded. Endpoint Setup showed “Piano” assigned to Channel 1 with default expression map.
  3. Opened HALion Sonic — patch name (“Yamaha S90ES”) was loaded in Slot 1.
  4. MIDI input worked (keys lit up when clicking), but still no sound.
  5. Checked the Dorico mixer — nothing is muted, metronome channel shows correct activity, but piano channel shows none.
  6. Discovered no horizontal scroll in mixer; had to resize the window to access Output fader. It was correct the whole time anyway.
  7. Tried replacing the patch with a GM “Acoustic Grand Piano” — still silent.
  8. Ran Steinberg Library Manager — confirmed all major libraries were installed.
  9. Opened the sample Bach project — it played back immediately. Holy hell, so it can work?
  10. Noted its playback template: “Iconica Sketch, HSO, HALion Sonic Sel., Olympus, GASE”.
  11. Returned to my own project and applied that same template via Play > Playback Template. Result: still silent.
  12. Discovered that applying playback templates only works after instruments are added.
  13. Also discovered Dorico 6 removed the “Reset Playback Overrides” checkbox.
  14. Manually deleted the HALion VST from the rack and re-added it.
  15. Re-applied the same template — still silent.
  16. Clicked the “e” button to open HALion — Dorico froze. Unresponsive.
  17. Eventually discovered a modal dialog box hidden behind the main window.
  18. Clicked OK — Dorico froze again… then loaded the Yamaha patch. Finally, playback worked.

This took me a little under two hours. For a first impression of a product, I have to say this was not a good experience. I can’t imagine how someone with less experience than me would have done this.

Anyway, I’ve had plenty of similar frustrations with Sibelius, so I want to keep trying this out. But I figured someone in charge of the software should be clued into this. I can’t be the only one who’s experienced the issues noted above.

2

Long shot here, @realalec: when you brought up the Dorico Mixer, where was the ‘Master’ Volume control slider - on the far right? Could it even be that it was not ‘high’ enough?

Like many (most) users here, I expect, I’d encourage you to stick with it. The more familiar with even the most basic of processes you get, the more you’ll like Dorico.

I was a Sibelius user before Dorico. I still sometimes hit Escape to stop playing, instead of the Space Bar. But in the end, I think you’ll find a switch will pay off.

3

Thank you. Yes, I checked the mixer in my original troubleshooting. Ultimately, I think it was a software bug somehow related to the way the VST was loaded by default in the newly created file. The bug was resolved ultimately by forcing Dorico to reload the exact same template that it said it already had loaded (and finding the invisible dialog box).

I’ve committed to finishing this one project before making a final decision about switching. But I’m running into persistent difficulties. Maybe someone can either validate or help reframe what I’m experiencing? Since fixing playback, almost every action has felt like a struggle. Tasks that I’d expect even basic notation software to handle smoothly feel surprisingly complex or unintuitive.

Take adding a tie, for example. Pressing T worked once, but then failed on the next note I tried. Eventually I realized it was due to the notes being in different voices - fair enough. So I tried to get a hang of voice handling:

  1. I looked for a persistent voice indicator. There doesn’t appear to be one.
  2. I enabled View > Note and Rest Colors > Voice Colors - helpful, but only when notes aren’t selected, since selected notes turn orange.
  3. I discovered that the bottom status bar shows voice info when a single note is selected - great!
  4. I need to do the same to several notes now. So I tried selecting multiple notes and pressing V, only to find that the voice indicator disappears when multiple notes are selected. Also, Dorico has added a rest in the now empty first voice.
  5. So I had to select each note individually with Ctrl+click, hit V, then deselect to view the color, and repeat several times to reach the intended voice.

Later I found Edit > Notations > Voices > Change Voice, which works much better. But it’s buried in four layers of dropdown menus! For something as central as voice control, that feels unusually deep.

But now I need to get rid of that phantom rest. If I try to select and delete it - a process that works for all the other notation on screen - nothing happens. I later discovered that, for this special case, I need to go to Edit > Remove Rests. This feels unnecessarily obscure for such a basic corrective action.

Other friction points I’ve run into:

Selecting notes in a chord - I can’t find a way to select all notes in a chord that belong to the same voice. Shift-click selects all notes on that beat across all voices, which feels counterintuitive in polyphonic writing.

Copying measures - I can’t copy and paste a clean measure if it contains the second half of a tied note. Dorico pulls in the first half from a previous measure, and there’s no obvious way to disentangle that. This complicates a basic workflow that’s straightforward in Sibelius.

None of these are dealbreakers, but they’ve cost me far more time than expected. Five hours in and I’ve got 10 measures of simple solo piano music. I’m aware Dorico is theoretically powerful under the hood, and I’d really like to understand whether this friction is expected for new users, or if I’m missing obvious workflows that would simplify things.

4

alec, you seem to try to learn by doing. Dorico is a too complex software. Without taking the time of making yourself acquainted with Dorico’s basic concepts and procedures, it is impossible to find your way into it. There are heaps of (very good) introduction videos. They can be accessed via the hub window directly from within Dorico.
I absolutely recommend you diving into them :slight_smile:

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5

@realalec, I’m curious to know what the modal dialog that was being shown that prevented Dorico from playing back said. It must have been coming from HALion Sonic, I guess, but what did it say?

Obviously our intention is that it should be simplicity itself to get playback up and running after installing Dorico for the first time, and typically that is the case, so it would definitely be helpful to know what the message was you were being shown.

As for the other difficulties you’re experiencing as you start to input music, I think you can take a step back to take several steps forward if you work through the Dorico First Steps guide, which takes you through many of the key concepts of the software, and indeed includes note input for keyboard music, so it introduces ways of working with voices etc. that will hopefully unlock understanding that will help you in your own projects.

2 Likes
6

Applying a playback template will change any existing instruments; but it will also apply to any new instruments that you add to the score.

I’d also agree with the advice given. Watch the videos on Note Entry, go through the First Steps guide. Don’t just click around.

1 Like
7

I think most of us would second @dspreadbury’s and @benwiggy’s exhortation to watch the introductory videos, for instance, so as to thoroughly familiarise yourself with the way that Dorico is built on music fundamentals - including the correct number and distribution of beats in any one bar - rather than expecting you to (re)construct them.

Yes, you can override these. But if the bar in question had a rest, there is every chance that it was necessary for the metre.

8

From memory, the message was something about how using the new version of (something?) might break how the old template was set up. I don’t seem to be able to trigger it anymore, which is good, I guess. But unhelpful for diagnosis, sorry. My guess was that this was specific to the Solo Piano template I created a new project using, because playback did work by default on almost everything else I tried.

I’m working through the tutorials now - thanks for that advice, everybody. I haven’t yet seen anything related to the particular pain points I was encountering. Maybe those are yet to come. To Dorico’s credit, basic, single-voice note input felt very straightforward.

9

This - one of Anthony Hughes’s indispensable videos and models of clarity - ought to help with Voices. Good luck!