I have a keyboard whose instrument has been set to a bus on the Mac IAC Driver. Dorico still sends data to the driver even when the instrument is muted on the Play screen.
--Neil
Hi @nradisch,
(what follows may be wrong: in this case please someone correct me)
I think that the Dorico mixer manages audio signals, not MIDI signals. If you see the mixer sliders, there is no mute or solo for external midi instruments. The M and S on the tracks that use external midi instruments don’t have any function (about this I am not sure). The MIDI is always sent out; then you decide what you want to hear, of the audio that is produced by the VST plugins inside Dorico (or attached through an instance of Vienna Ensemble Pro for example).
If you want to “mute” the external midi instrument here some methods:
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you can use Suppress Playback (selecting the whole music material of that player in the score, and activating Suppress Playback override in the Properties Panel): this tells the suppressed notes to not send any MIDI out.
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Or you can, in the score, select more then one note on the instruments that you want to hear (not selecting any note of the external instrument), and pressing P Dorico will only playback those selected instruments, from the selection start.
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Or you could mute the external VST directly in its UI (every plugin should have a mute button) [or if it is a real keyboard put its volume to 0?].
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Another way would be to temporarily deactivate the IAC driver, unchecking Device is online in the IAC Driver Properties dialogue.
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EDIT: and another one:
Not sure if this is relevant, but you might check the Unused Channels in the mixer…
Sometimes I get sounds coming back on these.
That might be correct, but my keyboard doesn’t show up in the mixer unless I select “unused”, and their mute buttons do not activate when I mute the keyboard in the main “Play” screen (one would think they would be linked and activate / deactivate together).
--Neil
Are you saying that if you press MIDI in the mixer, no midi slider for your external instrument shows up (together with the MIDI sliders for the other VSTs)? This would be really strange. Here an example (the Treble Staff is my external instrument routed to IAC) :
And again, the Unused sliders are audio routings (which you can handle in the Endpoint Setup dialogue where you can set the Number of audio outputs to show in Mixer), and being them audio, their M and S buttons don’t stop the MIDI to be sent out (as I explained earlier).
I don’t have your keyboard, but could you upload a Dorico project with a minimal setup that presents this issue? To experiment.
Just a question: Dorico sends the MIDI out, through IAC driver to the MIDI in of your keyboard: is this a real keyboard or an external launched VST? If it is a real keyboard, where does the sound produced by it comes out? From the speakers of the keyboard, or you route it back from line-out of the keyboard into your computer line-in, somehow?
EDIT:
@nradisch
And I found this thread that discusses exactly this behaviour and confirms my assumptions 
The external instrument shows up if I select MIDI or Unused. When I select Unused it shows up with a mute button. When I select MIDI it does not have a mute button. I’m using the IAC driver to send the MIDI to a copy of MainStage running on the same machine.
I guess this behavior just strikes me as odd. Why send the MIDI out if the instrument is muted in the track list?
--Neil
Please, see the added link to a thread, which I just added at the end of my previous post.
Thanks. It is apparently as designed. Darn inconvenient.
--Neil
Yes but, waiting until the Team implements muting of MIDI via the m button, did you try the other several options (4 different methods) I suggested to not have that MIDI track producing any sound?
Oh and here a 5th method: go in the Track inspector of that MIDI instrument, and choose the three lines - - - to deactivate the routing.
Could any of those 5 methods work for you?
Yes they do work. I had been using some of those methods when it became apparent that the mute button didn’t do what I thought it would.
Thanks for the help
--Neil