Dorico very slowness

Dorico
1

I’m coming back to Dorico after some Atmos projects that kept me away. Version 5.1…70.

The software is very, very slow. I click on a Mute or Solo and have to wait. I only have 14 tracks, 13 of which are sent to the same VST instrument (a VSL piano).

What’s more, I have a Mac Studio M2 Ultra, with 128 GB, which doesn’t even stop with 700 tracks in Nuendo. There’s a problem. What’s the problem?

I’m going to try inserting 13 pianos, one for each track. Perhaps sending several midi tracks to the same VST instrument is a problem in Dorico. Incidentally, I find that soloing doesn’t work. I’ll be back with details.

2

Is it also slow using Dorico’s default sounds?

3

Upload your Diagnostics (Do Help>Create Diagnostics Report and upload the zip file that appears on your desktop) and the team will probably be able to give you advice.

Incidentally, soloing does work. Check your VST is not sending Dorico spurious signals on unused channels (click the unused channels button on the mixer)

4

I don’t know. I don’t have those sounds. I can try, but at the end of the day, I need my VSTs.

5

Thank you, Janus. Here’s the diagnosis. Solos now work if each piano staff has its own independent VST.

That said, I find the interface lazy. Every click is unnatural. There’s a hesitation, a waiting time, however short. It’s not pleasant.

Update: sometimes I have to click 2 or 3 times on a solo button to activate it… (in the Playback tab)

Dorico Diagnostics.zip (1.4 MB)

6

Can you upload your project? Or a cut-down version of the project that still displays the delays?

7

In the specific case of clicking the Solo button in the Mixer, Dorico has to communicate with the audio engine, and mute all the other tracks, which it currently does serially rather than in parallel, due to the way the inter-process communication works. This is definitely slower than it ought to be, and we will change this case to use a different mechanism in future.

8

Thank you Daniel for this information. I’m more used to Nuendo (or DAWs in general) than Dorico, hence my expectation of immediacy in the operation of these conventional knobs. Glad to hear this aspect will be leveled with DAWs.

While you’re on the subject, it would be nice, as in Cubendo, if, as an option, the solo function could be activated simply by selecting a track, I mean an instrument. In fact, this exists with the selection of staff elements, but not in the Play tab.

9

I don’t really have the freedom to do that, sorry.

10

Another slowness: adding a bar (on a dozen tracks) takes 10 seconds… I don’t think this is normal.

11

Indeed, adding bars is normally considerably quicker than 10 seconds. Can you send me your project, and details of where you’re adding bars, so I can take a look? You can send it to me in a private message here, or if it’s larger than 4MB you can email it to me at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de.

12

It’s done by e-mail.

13

To follow up here, after analyzing my file and creating a second, more functional file.

I believe that the midi (or sub XML) imported from Cubase contained too much midi processing with unnecessarily complex results or what I call garbage (such as duplicates where one note is of almost non-existent length, after quantization of a complex file, but appears in the score at the same starting point as the real note). Dorico, which likes logic, was overloaded with oddities, which slowed it down. By simplifying and cleaning up (a lot!) the score in Cubase before exporting it, this corrected 90% of the problems. So we have to be careful with what we import into Dorico and stay within reason, which I hadn’t done. Sometimes we ask too much of IT!