FR: Mixer - abolish the "unused" tracks concept or allow user control over these

[wing]

I have a hybrid template which involves NotePerformer as my primary playback template, along with some select libraries over VEP (Kontakt, VI/Synchron etc).

This unfortunately results in a completely convoluted mixer channel section, which is impossible to organize or manually control as a user.

Now that I’ve gotten into the VSL MIR 3D Pro ecosystem, the “unused” channel concept can be maddening. When searching for the output which is passing audio, it really is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I have at times revealed the “unused” tab and seen hundreds of channels (not an exaggeration), 95% of which are truly unused, but somewhere in this list as I scroll will be the channel which is actually being used, labelled anything like “Out 13/14” or “KT.35”. One such example:

For one, I find the “unused” tab to be pointless and a general source of unnecessary confusion:

1. Many channels which are being used, and in fact passing audio, end up in this “unused” section along with channels which are actually not being used. I have not figured out any rhyme or reason to this. Sometimes it can be NotePerformer, sometimes VEP or Kontakt. When setting up MIR I need to isolate an instrument and then literally scroll across hundreds of channels in the “unused” section until I find one which is clearly passing audio. Then I relabel it. This may sound like no big deal but when using both NPPE and VEP with Multi-Outs invariably several of them end up in this haystack, in random order - multiply this by 32 channels to set up with MIR and this takes A LOT of unnecessary time.
2. To this point, I really wish I could remove said channels from the “unused” tab and color code it (and even re-order it so they are in musical section order) – as clearly a track which I am actively using!
3. If channels are truly unused, why should they continue to exist? Why not just remove them? I don’t even understand why Dorico decides to maintain a dumpster full of channels, but also unclear to me how some end up here that are being used… It would be nice to if like many DAWs there were a menu command (not resetting the playback template) but to simply “remove unused channels”.
4. If the unused tab must go on existing, similar to my point #2, I would love to have full manual control over the ability to add or remove channels from this tab. Perhaps then, it might be more clear to rename to something like a “hidden” track list, where users could elect to hide a channel they are not currently using, but then show whenever necessary.

Thank you!

[dspreadbury]

You can at least limit the number of channels that will be shown for each endpoint via the Endpoint Setup dialog, but of course if you need (for whatever reason) to show a discontiguous set of channels, you’re out of luck, as you can only define the maximum number of channels, and Dorico will show all channels from the first up to that limit.

We know greater flexibility is needed in this area, and we will get to it at some point, though I can’t promise when. (It won’t be soon.)

[wing]

@dspreadbury

You can at least limit the number of channels that will be shown for each endpoint via the Endpoint Setup dialog, but of course if you need (for whatever reason) to show a discontiguous set of channels, you’re out of luck, as you can only define the maximum number of channels, and Dorico will show all channels from the first up to that limit.

Yes, the problem when dealing with hybrid setups such as mine (involing replacing a single instrument with one in VEP) and templates involving precise mixer settings (such as MIR Pro loaded on every insert) is that end point configurations reach their limit of usefulness (I don’t usually switch playback templates once I’ve started adding MIR Pro instances because if I do, I will lose all that work in the mixer), and endpoints are challenging to A/B sample library options.

So as a result, I end up with lots of “unused” tracks. The worst offender, I have found, is loading Kontakt directly inside of Dorico - I suppose when working with a multi in Kontakt it automatically generates dozens and dozens of channels all labelled stuff like KT.42, KT.89 etc.

Weirdly enough using NotePerformer’s multi out function (via NPPE) I have spotted that audio sometimes gets passed through one of these so-called “Kontakt” unused channels, hence needle in a haystack, where I have to scroll left/right across hundreds of channels until I see meters which are active, which might be named anything.

Thanks for looking into it and letting me know. I’ll have to be patient, but even hopefully a simpler solution being able to right-click a channel and select “hide” or “unhide” would be most useful, because then I could at least remove a track from this “unused” section when it is indeed passing audio.

[gdball]

As far as rhyme and reason: faders show in the Dorico mixer based on their instruments order in the score normally.

One source of confusion is when they share a multichannel instance like VEP or Kontact, but the order of instruments in the instance is different from their order in the score. Like say, I added brass first, then added bassoon to the same instance. Dorico wants to add the bassoon to the mixer first, but it is on channel 9 or whatever while the trumpets are on 4, and ends up looking weird when you display unused instruments.

And you know how Dorico assumes that the midi channel roughly corresponds to the returned audio channel.

If those don’t explain what you see, then you might be teetering on the edge of a difficult to reproduce bug. Maybe not that common, but the last time I hit it, I was doing something pretty similar to what you describe.

For now at least I’m choosing to use VEP locally from the start, return a consistent set of stems and locking the audio outputs down to just those as Daniel described. Performance is the best I’ve ever seen. Dorico seems light and agile. I’m not saying there isn’t a reason to go hybrid, but I really like this setup.

[wing]

Thanks. The reason I first discovered the Unused tracks section was when initially getting into Multi Outs from NPPE, most of the instruments would appear in a somewhat logical order (based on a NotePerformer playback template), but there would always be one or two instruments are still in orchestral order, which I could hear but not see anywhere. It was driving me crazy, because when wanting to add an insert and control the fader, it would be literally impossible to find what channel the instrument was passing audio through.

Then after doing some research I discovered that Unused tab, and like I said, it can be tens of dozens to more than a hundred tracks, often with names like “OUT 13/14” and “NotePerformer 35” and “KT.48” etc. They tend to be disorganized even with respect to this. Anyway, as I would scroll through, I would spot the meters which were alive, coming from NotePerformer - but labelled “KT.33” or “OUT 21/22”, even though it’s using NP!

@gdball

For now at least I’m choosing to use VEP locally from the start, return a consistent set of stems and locking the audio outputs down to just those as Daniel described. Performance is the best I’ve ever seen. Dorico seems light and agile. I’m not saying there isn’t a reason to go hybrid, but I really like this setup.

I have in fact begun to keep most of my alternate non-NP libraries via VEP now. So that includes Kontakt, Spitfire, OT Sine, synths etc. It’s been a lot easier to manage having them all in one mixer, but also much easier to add into Dorico as well as keeping the Dorico project filesize to a minimum (with VEP running dozens of instances I can still keep a large Dorico project under 800KB, whereas all those instances in Dorico was making project files 20-50MB! Naturally they would take forever to open and more prone to crashing.

Anyway, the other advantage here is that with only VEP beyond NP in my template, the mixer channels are not quite so superfluous as they were before (no more “KT” which was Kontakt related) among others. When I load the unused tab it is faster to scroll with only VEP.

However, when selecting multiple outs from VEP back into Dorico, so that I can use MIR Pro instances on every channel and visually place them within the same room – invariably all these VEP channels are within “unused” and even though I keep a consistent orchestral score order, they are usually a bit random as to where they are. I still have to scroll, scroll, scroll.

Perhaps Dorico can’t fully know whether or not I wish to use a channel to pass audio (using an external engine such as VEP or NPPE), which is why I have in mind an ability to right-click a track and elect it to be always visible, and after doing this do a cleanup as I would in any DAW after writing and going into mixing – remove unused tracks from a session for the final mix, which makes life a lot easier. Without changing playback templates, let the user have the option to hide/show/remove tracks with a click.

Regarding the endpoints, well the reason that can be problematic here is let’s say I want to A/B a flute library within VEP. I frequently mix between VSL or AcousticSamples. It’s nice because all I have to do is switch the channels in VEP with the flick of a switch, and back in Dorico I simply switch the relevant expression map. Within a few seconds I can compare two different flute libraries, all coming out of the same output and midi channel and MIR Pro or Reverb Sends, everything else equal. Between that and MIR Pro on every channel, pre-configured endpoints are unfortunately not flexible enough for my needs, so going manual “hybrid” is the way, although it comes with a bit of technical chaos!

[mavros]

Interesting till yesterday I had just been ignoring the unused mess but testing Sine brass muted I also had missing faders hidden and working in unused mixer channels.

I did discover that activating independent voice playback IVP seems to cleanup the unused channels.

I started with more than 16 unused channels, some for already deleted instruments, for just one 16 channel VE Pro instance and after activating IVP I have no unused channels anymore and have colored and correctly labeled faders for each voice.

[gdball]

When you say already deleted instruments, do you mean whole instances of spitfire of Halion or something… or do you mean instruments from within an instance?

I ask - and it’s largely why I stuck my nose in this thread - because the deleted instances hanging around is a symptom of the bug I’m trying pin down and find a way to reliably reproduce. When Wing mentioned hundreds it really caught my eye, but that might actually be legit to see with his set up.

[wing]

@mavros

I did discover that activating independent voice playback IVP seems to cleanup the unused channels.

I started with more than 16 unused channels, some for already deleted instruments, for just one 16 channel VE Pro instance and after activating IVP I have no unused channels anymore and have colored and correctly labeled faders for each voice.

Interesting, as I’m not using IVP on these projects at all!

@gdball

I ask - and it’s largely why I stuck my nose in this thread - because the deleted instances hanging around is a symptom of the bug I’m trying pin down and find a way to reliably reproduce. When Wing mentioned hundreds it really caught my eye, but that might actually be legit to see with his set up.

My issue has not arised from deleted instances (as I have not done so either).

I had to go through this process last night on a project just setting up 6 woodwinds. Once being fed via VEP, low and behold several of them were not visible and therefore tucked away in “Unused.” In the interest of clarity I decided maybe it would be easiest if I screen-recorded the process with some explanation. It’s a little under 2 minutes but please watch it if you have the time. Hopefully it will clarify my workflow here and can symphatize why I think it’s convoluted and why not being able to tell Dorico to remove channels I’m using from “Unused” is frustrating (FYI the video is silent):

Dorico Unused Tracks

On the playback side, while it’s not in the video, I should note that the primary playback template is NotePerformer (including NPPE in the background). There is also a BOZ Master Keys (Piano) and VEP has been added manually. I have not at any point enabled IVP, and as I mentioned I’ve not deleted instances (only added BOZ & VEP).

Also I should clarify my earlier mentioning of hundreds of tracks was prior to VEP – this is when I was using Kontakt, Sine, Spitfire, and multiple other instances all inside of Dorico. Kontakt, I believe in order to account for its multi-channel output section, was most likely creating 16 (or 32) channels for every Kontakt instance I had loaded. Sine as well. So multiply this by let’s say 12 unique plugin instances— I am going to make an educated guess that is why I was ending up with hundreds of unused channels labelled “KT.137” etc, as it grew exponentially pre-created/loaded “just in case.”

However, loading a single VEP Instance with all those same plugins loaded inside of VEP instead, has kept this unused track madness down to a much smaller count as you can see in my video. Still a lot, but no longer hundreds!

Also I’m not entirely sure orchestral order explains the order of these tracks, since on my setup page they are in fact set to be viewed by orchestral order, and I add them also in that order when I originally build my templates. But scrolling through these channels, I will often see brass before winds, or interspersed with a random percussion instrument in the middle, as well as the randomly titled tracks such as “OUT 11/12” and “NOTEPERFORMER 14” etc.

In the end this is a very long way of saying: allow me to show/hide/remove tracks manually

[mavros]

I started with the only well functioning project I had using the Sine player, BWV1030 with an OT Harpsichord and OT Miroire Baroque Flute. Both instrument directly loaded in Dorico. So no VE Pro yet.

I then added the trumpet of my new OT Muted Brass library also as direct Sine instance. After some testing of the different mutes, I deleted the flute and harpsichord players and parts and setup all OT muted brass instruments in VE Pro in one VE Pro instance with 16 channels connected these to 16 separate instruments in Dorico, So each mute type as separate instrument,

As all sounded correctly but some did not show any activity on the instrument faders in the Dorico mixer I opened the unused channels and saw that apart from all output pairs used in VE Pro (OUT1/2 till OUT31/32) there were still 2 Harpsichord unused channels and there were also four obsolete MIDI faders left which were named part 1, part 2, harpsichord and harpsichord1.

Finally I reduced the instruments in Dorico to 7 (the real number) and set up the different mutes types as voices and activated IVP. To my surprise I then got a fader for each of the total 16 voices for the 7 instruments and all unused channels including the harpsichord had disappeared. On the other hand I now see that the above mentioned obsolete MIDI faders are still there. So I now have 16 instrument faders, 11 instead of 7 MIDI faders and 0 unused,

[gdball]

I just wanted to mention that I took the time to watch it more than a couple of times . I had some ideas but I think I should take those to another thread - I don’t want your ask to get sidetracked or anything, if that is okay.

[mavros]

Can you reproduce the cleanup of unused tracks upon activation of IVP?