Hello! I recently upgraded to Dorico 5.1 (from 3.5) and have been having all kinds of playback issues. I’m not sure if there’s a single cause you can identify, but here are some of the problems:
-Volume is extremely quiet… I have to max out my computer volume to hear it, but all other apps play back at the correct volume.
-Whenever I make changes to my Noteperformer mix (the “Edit” window in Play mode), it switches the first instrument in my score to an unpitched percussion map. (The Noteperformer support people confirmed this seems to be a problem with Dorico, not Noteperformer.)
-The mixer doesn’t seem to work… at all? Like, if I mute an instrument in the mixer, it still plays back.
-Improper articulations. Particularly string tremolos… the first slashes play back correctly (i.e. separated into 2 distinct notes) at first, but after the key change, it switches to an unmeasured tremolo sound. And that’s just Noteperformer… when I use Iconica Sketch, these slashes play back as a bizarre mix of proper, unmeasured tremolo, and regular sustain.
the first thing to do is go to the Play menu and “Apply default output level”. The levels of under -10db you’ve set in your project are far too low. I did that and loaded my NPPE BBC Core template. So far just about everything seems to play back fine. Dynamics are clearly being responded to (although NP is arguably a bit conservative in interpretation of hairpins so sometimes a bit of a boost is needed in the key editor).
The tremolos in general seem to work fine – however it’s important to realise that both trills and tremolos with NP don’t have a separate base switch, only an internal effect and that in some circumstances with gradual tempi changes, things can get messed up. That seems to apply to the specific example you’ve given because bar 108 is the beginning of an accel. This is a specific issue with NP in Dorico I’ve brought up before and the only real way round it it to rewrite the passage in full on a hidden staff (you use that for playback and disable playback on the notated staff) If you have any other specific examples of what you think may be improper artics, then please give examples so I can check in the project.
Finally, I assume you’re waiting for the BBC Core library to fully load? It can take several minutes after the final NPPE screen appears. I have around 22Gb in mine.
I should add one note to the issue of the tremolo not playing correctly. The same score running NPPE in Sibelius continues to perform the tremolo correctly through the accel. So it’s not the implementation of NPPE per se that’s the issue here and I’m really not sure where the fault lies. It should also be point out that NP natively behaves the same way in Dorico.
Thanks! I wondered if the gradual tempo change might have been behind the tremolo issue… it’s good to know, but weird that it wasn’t happening in Dorico 3.5.
Yes, I’m waiting for BBCSO to load before using it. Weird that the dynamics work for you, but not me. I’m on a slower system (SSD, but only 16 GB RAM), but that wouldn’t be causing the dynamics not to load, would it? And again, it worked fine on the same system with Dorico 3.5.
GENERAL QUESTION
Given that everything else seems to be playing back for others (and that articulations are an absolute MESS when I use Iconica), is it possible that my version of Dorico isn’t configured properly, or is missing some kind of library file? (Obviously I’m not too knowledgeable about what goes on under the hood, which is why I’m here!)
is that with the same NP version? I have a feeling that something in Dorico 5 -possibly connected with the new fermata or related settings may have something to do with NP misbehaving in this sort of situation but that’s mere speculation – we need some input from the team to shed further light on this.
I think the dynamic issue may just have been a result of 5.1’s weird dynamic curve defaults (pppppp to ffffff?) combined with NP’s conservatism with BBCSO dynamics, because the dynamic changes are audible now that I’ve messed with the dynamic curve options.
sorry, I meant to also get back to you on the issues of dynamics but got distracted. As you seem to have discovered, the default min and max dynamic level of 6 is probably too conservative for NPPE – however I now notice that you also have a dynamic curve power of 1.6 which is much less than the 2.5 default and would also make a sizeable difference. If you didn’t do so already, I’d suggest resetting that back to 2.5. As for the dynamic levels, in my NPPE projects, I often go for +/-4 for the dynamic level.
