Issue with replay regarding playback end offset

Dorico
1

I am transcribing a piece for choir into Dorico right now. This piece uses a lot of 8th notes followed by 8th pauses. For some reason, the playback system decides to add to each of these specific notes a Playback End Offset of “-240”. This offset is so big, that the 8th note can be barely heard on the standard “sustain ah“ and some playback sounds like “voice oohs” just refuse to produce a sound at all.

Instead of just complaining around, I’d rather be interested in two things.

  1. Are the developers aware of this effect and intentionally made the decision to have this offset be so strong by default (maybe unintentionally leading to some replay-systems being unable to produce the written notes)?
  2. Since I have many 8th notes like this (followed by an 8th pause and marked with a tenuto), is there a way for me to edit all of these notes to have a shorter offset without having to select every single note affected or unintentionally changing all the other notes of the piece as well?

TL;DR: Constellation of 8th note followed by 8th pause leads to insane Playback End Offset that stops some playback-styles from producing a note at all. Asking if that was intentional and if there’s a way to change all of these notes at once

Thank you for your support in advance!

2

Hi @Just_Someone, your Playback End Offset must be a manual override, or something that has to do with XML import: Dorico doesn’t apply an override (in the Properties panel) (1), but may shorten the played durations based on the global Playback Options (or overrides them the Expression Map) (2):

CleanShot 2026-02-28 at 00.58.53@2x
CleanShot 2026-02-28 at 00.58.53@2x2024×2769 413 KB

The shortening applied for different articulation can be defined in Playback Options>Timing>Note Durations:

CleanShot 2026-02-28 at 00.55.43@2x
CleanShot 2026-02-28 at 00.55.43@2x1920×1643 191 KB

…or in the Expression Map/Playback Options Overrides (for example in the Note Performer Expression Map):

CleanShot 2026-02-28 at 00.18.18@2x
CleanShot 2026-02-28 at 00.18.18@2x1920×1635 254 KB

3

My guess is the offset you hear is built into the sound library (“ah” always has a very slow attack). The developers have no control over the sounds.

4

Then it is the Result of the import, although it was a MIDI-import not an XML-import. But I assume it applies to both of them. Looking at the overrides and I see that they are active and their values not altered from their default value, so I’m just going to change the affected notes individually. But thanks for the help and explanation ^^