No Playback

Yes, that is the case, unfortunately. But because many people recently ran into this trouble, we are aware now and are considering ways of improving the situation.
Because it is pretty much a nuisance, if customer support or we in the forum have to help frequently on the same issue.

Even more annoying, there was one guy diddling around for 2 weeks with ASIO drivers and sound settings, until it turned out that he was missing HSSE and HSO…

Thanks. I’v done the installation. The playback works ok. I’m still getting “Some content could not be loaded” error messages but I don’t want to waste any more of your time on this. It works enough for me to trial it and see if it’s worth purchasing the full package. Although if I do, I have no idea if that will load properly! :open_mouth:

You’ll have exactly the same problem to fix if you purchase the “full package”. What you get when you buy the “full package” is a license - there’s nothing additional to install.

I guess the “Some content could not be loaded”-messages come from the old HALion 5 installation. You could post a screenshot again.
And it is true, if you buy the full license, you just receive a new activation code, but the software installation as such stays the same.
In any case, we are happy to help…

Isn’t the Installer programmed not to reload HALion pieces if you already have them installed?

Screen Shot 2017-11-05 at 18.37.45.png

Is the fact that it says HALion 4 significant?

Thanks again for the screenshot. Indeed, the Dorico license does not cover those sound packages. They come from a separate HALion or HALion Sonic installation where you do not have any license for anymore (I presume you had a trial at some stage.)
In order to get rid off that message, press the More Details button.

The fact that it says HALion 4 is not significant. HALion as such developed further, but from the factory contents point of view stayed same.

Thanks Ulf, appreciate your reply.

I’ve seen this before on a machine that only has a Dorico license (my other machine has a full Halion6 installed.) Any non-Dorico distributed libraries/vstsounds for HAlion (that is, any non HSO libraries) will trip the license manager. I resolved this by tracking down all the non-Dorico Halion libraries and deleting them from the machine without a Halion license. (Steinberg content can end up in several different places depending on the installer and options used at time of install…you may have to poke around to find where the unlicensed .vstsound files are hiding.) Alternatively, just erase all Steinberg folders on your machine (including your user directory) and reinstall a clean version of just Dorico and it’s Halion SE/HSO installer.

Hi team Steinberg,
I am trial Dorico for a month today… and I am not able to get a piano playback for my pieces yet. It’s the same for guitar playback. (Well, I know, I should post it earlier.)
Is it because I’m using a trial version that piano and guitar are not available in the HSO library ? Or is it simply because HSO does NOT contain piano and guitar at all ?
In order to verify this, I was looking for a list of included instruments in each Steinberg VST library (HSO, HSSE, H sonic 3…) but I did not find those details on Steinberg website.

If I buy separately HAL 6, HAL SONIC 6, The Grand 3, or even an other VST library, are they compatible with Dorico sequencer ?

The website could indicates that VST library are compatible with Cubase or Nuando… but nothing about Dorico. Maybe because it is not made for it.

Hi Ed-222,
indeed, you could have raised your voice earlier and we would have helped you with getting playback going.

True, HSO does not have piano or guitar sounds, but the HALion Sonic SE installer comes with appropriate sounds, so playback of piano or guitar pieces is possible straight out of the box, also in the trial version of Dorico.
Other HALion or 3rd party sample libraries are also compatible with Dorico, it is just a little more work of getting them set up in Dorico. By default Dorico assumes that the HSSE and HSO sounds are there and chooses from those. So without doing anything special, you get playback immediately with some decent sounds. Some people claim that the sounds from HSSE and HSO are awful and want something “better”. So it is up to them to install other libraries, but they then need to adapt and change from Dorico’s default assignment. More work to do, but possible.

We could send you another trial activation code and try to find out what is wrong in your setup that it doesn’t do. I suspect that you did not install HSSE, just HSO.

Dear Ulf,
Thank you very much for your answer.
It would be very kind of you if you can send me an other one.

I do have 43 different HSSE VST sounds in my program fils (including electric piano, electric and acoustic guitar, vintage bass…). So I don’t understand what’s wrong.
Well, it is maybe not linked, but maybe yes: I did install the update from Dorico 1.1 to 1.2 but Dorico still does not offer me the same possibilities as video tutorials. Honestly, I thought it was normal because I was using a trial license!
But now I really wonder if it does come from the same problem.

Ed, I’ve sent you a PM with a new trial activation code.
The trial license offers the same functionality as the regular Dorico, the only limitation is the restricted usage period, other than that all identical.
So I wonder what it is that you think is missing.

Regarding your playback problems, please start Dorico and from the main menu choose Help > Create Diagnostic Report.
That will create a zip file on your desktop, please send it to u dot stoermer at steinberg dot de. The contained data gives me some basic insight into your installation. Starting from there I can ask more questions or give further advice.