I put 16 instances of my East-West “Play” VST3 but there seems to be a limit of 16. Is this correct or can I do it another way?
Do you really need 16 instances of Play? Is your computer powerful enough to run 256 patches through Play at the same time? What kind of ensemble are you writing for that requires 256 separate patches to be loaded at once?
Do you perhaps mean that you can only use 16 channels per instance? If so, you are referring to the lack of MIDI ports which will allow you to multiply channels for each instance, 16 for each MIDI port within a single instance. This is, as I understand it, a VST 3 feature.
Dorico does not currently support multiple MIDI ports per instance, but Daniel said recently, if I recall correctly, that such support is forthcoming with the next update.
That is correct - the next update has support for vst3 plugins which have more than one input port, ie with more than 16 addressable channels
East West/Play drives me to distraction. There’s only 9 stereo outputs, no purge functionality and personally I’d far rather work with keyswitches than separate tracks for different articulations. As good as some of the sounds are (and they are), it’s too unwieldy for me to use as a Go To library.
Looking to the future - if I consider Dorico not just as a notation program, but also as a DAW, I would like to think that at some stage we might be able to set up a detailed Playback Template similar to those set up in Cubase. In other words, Libraries, Instruments, Patches, Articulations, Maps, Controllers, Outputs, Inserts, Hosting and Networking can, for those who would like it, all be set up and ready to go - for everything. The only thing that needs to be done is to enable what you want from the list. Selecting an Instrument and then a patch, or loading an instrument template with pre-chosen patches, would achieve that. No more fiddling about in Play or the Mixer until the time actually comes to refine the sound. It’s already there.
