Initially I went with HALion Sonic and the HALion Sonic Selection Content but I could not get any output from Dorico. No indication of any instrument activity during playback - neither any dots blinking in the HALion instances, nor any peaks in Dorico’s mixer lanes.
Then I installed NotePerformer, opened one of the files included with Dorico and applied the NP playback template. Here someting happened that I’ve never seen before: No instruments were created in NP. When I open the NP mixer from any of the instruments in play mode, NP is empty (and shows the default image that tells me to apply the NP playback template - which I had just done).
Any ideas? I’m completely lost here, as I have never encountered any of these complications up to now. The laptop has an i5 processor and 16 GB of memory, it should easily handle Dorico + NP.
It seems as if Dorico just did not want to talk to any of the virtual instruments. They are there, but don’t know that Dorico should be talking to them.
(BTW just as this is the first time I encounter such issues, I totally understand how much of a loss new users can be. The simplest thing like open a included file and play it back does not work, and I have not the slightest idea of what to do. And I’m not a novice with Dorico. This really is frustrating.)
Yeah, I know. And if I can convince my girlfriend (it’s her laptop) to ever give it a go again, I will do.
But I just felt left alone by the software. If this was my first encounter with Dorico, it sure would have been my last. No indication of what’s wrong, no guidance whatsoever.
(And to be honest, after two hours of frustratingly trying to find an error when everything looks good and should be working, I’m just done for today.)
Here is the diagnostics report.
We started Dorico, opened the simplest file that was shipped with Dorico (the Bach piano piece), selected the NP template, waited until Dorico was ready to play, started playback (nothing to hear). Then created the report.
I hope somebody can tell me what’s going on here. Thanks!
I’m not the expert on reading the runes of audio engine logs like @Ulf is, but it looks to my untrained eye that although the Steinberg Built-in ASIO Driver is chosen, no outputs are available. In Edit > Device Setup, click Device Control Panel and see whether you can enable any outputs in the SBAD window that appears.
There are two outputs listed: One being the regular audio device of the laptop, the other being the speaker built into an external monitor.
Both are selectable, but the result is the same for both: No playback, but also no visible error message. (The devices themselves do work, I can listen to YouTube videos on either one of them.)
Thanks. Well, as the local Windows idiot, I’m afraid I’m at the limits of my “expertise”. I’m sure @Ulf will have a better idea when he sees this thread.
Good morning, to be honest, that what I see in the logs looks all quite okay to me. The SBAD does “see” output ports and they are correctly mapped. HALion Sonic does also load, so I don’t see a reason why there should be no sound.
What I wonder though, it appears that Estigy also has a UR22C but runs it with the SBAD driver rather than the dedicated Yamaha Steinberg USB ASIO driver.
So please do once more, start Dorico and go to Edit > Device Setup and choose the Yamaha Steinberg USB ASIO driver (and make sure that the UR is connected). Then create a new project from piano template, and enter few notes. If you still have no sound, go again to the Device Setup and set a different sample rate. Apply and close, what does Dorico do then? Is at least the green cursor line moving?
And please post a new diagnostic report. Thanks
Very strange, because this is what I found in the most recent log file:
2025-05-13 20:09:49 : getCurrentDevice: Steinberg built-in ASIO Driver (samplerate 48000.000000) (blockSize 480)
2025-05-13 20:09:49 : (latency (in 480) (out 960))
2025-05-13 20:09:49 : addMapping O to Out (id 5)
2025-05-13 20:09:49 : => port UR22C Mix L (id 10)
2025-05-13 20:09:49 : => port UR22C Mix R (id 11)
2025-05-13 20:09:49 : => not all wanted connections were possible (0 from 2)
But at some stage you must have had a UR22C connected, otherwise it would be impossible to get such logging output.
What I also found in your diagnostics, 3 crash files of the audio engine; namely crashing in the SBAD. So if you do the additionally requested test, please also check that the VSTAudioEngine process is running in the background.
Thanks
I saw that, but wondered whether it was output related to having opened an example project, which would originally have been saved from my Mac, and I was almost certainly using a UR22C at that time (sadly no more, as it stopped working reliably and has since been replaced with a Focusrite Scarlett).
I started the laptop, fired up Dorico, created an empty file, added a Horn player, put in some notes and hit play.
(I made sure the NP template is selected, which it already was.)
The playback cursor actually moved along, there was just no audio output.
I then switched to play mode, selected the Horn player and opened the NP instrument. This is what I saw then:
It seems as if the NP instrument never was told to add a horn player there.
To answer your question regarding the VSTAudioEngine process: Yes it was running in the background, and it definitely was running while Dorico was “playing”. Later it vanished at some point (I can’t say if it was exactly when I switched to play mode oder when I opened the NP instrument), but without any error message. Shortly after that, the VSTAudioEngine process magically reappeared.
That looks like some sort of “first time” splash screen on NP. I can’t remember, but is there something you have to click through before you can actually use it? Also, as NP isn’t a Steinberg product, what happens if you apply the HALion Sonic Selection Playback Template to your New file with a Horn?
Thanks again for the new data.
But same to as it was before, I see nothing bad in the logs. So normally sound should come out, I see no reason why not. At least the metronome should make noise.
I start running out of steam…
Please have a look for ASIO4All and FlexASIO. They are both generic ASIO drivers and can be just downloaded from the web. If you install them and try out, any better?
I installed ASIO4all and encountered one strange thing that I’ve never seen before:
When I open the ASIO4all configuration, I get a list of installed components. The one I highlighted here is the one I would like to use, and in the MouseOver-Box it correctly identifies as 44.1 kHz.
But when I close this window and select the Realtek Interface in Dorico, I only get to chose between 8 and 16 kHz, which is a bit absurd as the whole laptop is right now running on this interface on 44.1 kHz.
