According to the Library Manager, I have HALion Sonic Factory Content and HALion Symphonic Orchestra. And according to the Download Assistant, I have HALion Sonic 7.5.0 - Instrument, Iconica Sketch, Etude Elements, HALion Symphonic Orchestra, and Olympus Choir Micro. (I do NOT have HALion Sonic Selection - Content.)
SO –
Are the two Libraries adequate for playback?
Do I need anything else in the Download Assistant?
Anything in the Download Assistant I can remove?
I am writing only symphonic music. I don’t need anything outside of that space.
Someone here will confirm which Steinberg libraries you need to load, I have not installed Sonic Selection - Content (read on…)
For orchestral, I generally use NotePerformer, are you familiar with it? Very small memory size which might be what you are wanting, but with all (most) of the instruments you presumably require.
You will find various threads and posts here and examples of it being used. Many of us use it for orchestral playback instead of Steinberg’s HALion (although I use HALion for other general sounds outside orchestral.)
For no sound on playback, have you tried reapplying the Playback template (Play menu > Playback template), try Auto (or switch to another if there is one, then back to Auto).
Also look at Edit > Device setup which the audio routing to your speakers, headphones.
And you can upload your diagnostics, Help > Create Diagnostic Report here for someone to look into if all else fails.
You will no doubt have a few other suggestions coming in though.
Additional note: Whenever I start Dorico, after a few seconds I get a dialog that about a missing archive. The dialog disappears before I can read what it says, then Groove Agent SE opens.
I REALLY don’t want to install everything in order to make this work. Some people may have a terabyte drive, but not me. So, any help making sure I have what I need and ONLY what I need would be helpful.
PS – Thanks for the tip about NotePerformer. Will take a look at it as soon as I post this.
If disk space is limited, you can get away with installing just Halion Sonic Factory Content (which I think is the Halion Sonic Selection or HSSE - the names keep changing - and what its called seems to depend on whether you have Cubase as well as Dorico!) and Halion Symphony Orchestra.
But you will likely have to specify a particular playblack template and not use the one called Auto…
(You can set this as a default in Preferences>Play>Playback Template)
You may get a warning about missing the Olympus Choir library, and possibly Etude Elements (which is just a set of pianos) but you should be able to click an ignore this in future box.
That could be the cause of your problem. If you can catch the message (small white font on black? Shift + Command + 3 on macOS grabs the entire screen), it’ll help us see what’s going on: a missing anything (ideally a missing sound library) could also well explain why you’re not getting (some) sounds. Or another missing Halion (the standard Steinberg libraries for Dorico) component.
One more note: I have a DMG for Sonic 7.5 sitting in the HALion Sonic 7.5.0 - Instrument folder. When I run it, it says it is installing; however, when it finishes, the DMG is still there and there are no new files.
I’m tempted to uninstall everything and start over. Very frustrating.
Thanks for the info on the .DMG file. That is behavior I have not seen before. I wonder if Dorico runs the installation itself, then deletes the results? Or is it using it like a package of some sort?
The problems have cleared up, and I’m able to open files and hear playback. Apparently, most of this was caused by (a) not having installed enough libraries, and (b) a MusicXML file I imported calling for unusual instruments.
I do wish there was a way to use Dorico in a minimal way so as not to take up so much drive space. But for now, all is well (other then free space on my drive ).
I’m glad to hear that you could sort out your main problems.
Regarding the sound libraries, we could try out something in making Dorico think that they are there, where in fact they are not.
Would you be willing to have a remote screen sharing session with me?
IF you set it as the preferred playback plugin and template in Preferences
AND if you don’t try to use instruments that are not included in NotePerformer.
).