How to Make Unused Mixer Channels Used and Appear in the Live Stage

[alexcap]

I’m hosting almost all my VSTis in Vienna Ensemble Pro. For my woodwinds, for example, each instrument uses a port, and the articulations use the MIDI channels (this allows me to re-use Expression Maps). In my Woodwinds enpoint setup, I’ve set the number of ports and audio outputs to match what’s in VEP. It’s not necessary to set more than 1 MIDI channel as the Expression Map plays back correctly regardless of whether I set 1 or 16. I’d like to use the Stage Template & Live Stage to work on my mix.

I’ve set the Expression Map to Apply Stage Template settings.

And here’s the Stage Template I’m attempting to apply (the user experience of editing a Stage Template leaves much to be desired, but let’s leave that aside for the purpose of this thread):

The problem is that, after applying this Stage Template, almost all instruments are clustered around their instrument families in the Live Stage (I think the electric guitars land in the right place because they are their own plug-ins straight in Dorico rather than hosted in VEP). I can manually move the instruments, but many of them are “stuck” together and always move together (there are no groups in the Stage Template).

After a little testing in a blank project, I’m under the impression a mixer channel needs to be “used” to appear in and be affected by Stage Templates at all. You can see all my other woodwinds outputs are gray/unused aside from the first stereo output.

Here’s the endpoint setup:

I found that changing oboe 1 to channel 2 weirdly causes the Oboes output, the 2nd stereo output from VEP, to become used. I get the same result when 16 MIDI channels are set in the Endpoint and the same Expression Map is set on channel 2.

To my chagrin, the Live Stage hasn’t changed. I also tried reapplying the Stage Template in both of these states (Oboes channel unused and used).

If I rename the Oboes mixer channel to Oboe 1, I get the same result. Am I missing something? Thanks for any ideas.

Version 5.1.81.2225 (Jan 16 2025)
Dorico 5 AudioEngine Version 5.6.42.5

[derAbgang]

I believe it may have to do with sharing expression maps. I had a similar problem a while back which led to this feature request:

Move stage template toggle to mixer strip

I’ve been playing with the stage template and live stage functionality this week and it confuses me immensely what relationship stage templates have with expression maps (where the toggle currently lives). I do understand that the setting filters down to the instruments that the expression map is applied to, but that really doesn’t have anything to do with the spatial positioning of the audio output. Consider a VSTi that has five instruments/patches loaded (midi ch 1-5), I have piccolo (in midi…

[alexcap]

I agree with your assessment that the the way the relationship between Stage Templates and Expression Maps is laid out is confusing. I had a suspicion it had to do with sharing Expression Maps, but if I do a test in a blank document with 2 instruments both using the Default Expression Map, they seem to play nice with Stage Templates & the Live Stage.

[derAbgang]

Honestly, I couldn’t figure out what my problem was. If I remember correctly, regardless of number of outputs assigned to the end point, Dorico would add a mixer channel for every instrument that had Space Template checked which led to 3 flute mixer strips but only one that actually output audio.

Me thinks the relationship between space templates and expression maps needs to be revisited by the product team.