No Upgrade from 3.0 to 3.5?

Dorico
#1

Hi

just purchased the upgrade license from 3.0 to 3.5. All good
Just activated it, got asked to choose which license to upgrade. Chose my Dorico 3 license. Upgraded. All good.

Went into Steinberg download manager.

No upgrade option.

Downloaded the 3.5 installer. Ran it. No upgrade option.

Really? Force me to upgrade my license, but I have to manually clean up the old Dorico? Please please add an upgrade option, I don’t want both versions on my computer, and I don’t want everything in new paths, and all the headaches that comes with that.

#2

Headache No 1. NotePerformer doesn’t work any more. Seems to have the templates, but not the modules. Can’t get any sound, or any NotePerformer UI when I click on the e under VST instruments I don’t see my familiar NP mixer. I dont’ get any NP splash screen either. I guess it doesn’t know where NotePerformer is any more. Or something.

Please, giving us these extra headaches really detracts from the experience of upgrading. Most software companies offer upgrade options which keep all settings and keep everything working. I really don’t feel like spending all day debugging problems caused by this.

#3

I know things are hard and all with the virus etc. But clearly not enough testing was done with NP integration. So many people having trouble with this. I’ve followed a bunch of steps, and can get the NP UI to show up now. But no sound.

This is very frustrating, testing should have highlighted these issues before release.

#4

OK, some projects work (one that it upgraded from a DP 3 project plays). Some don’t. I have no clue what might be the issue. This one was one imported from XML.

#5

OK, I changed playback template to Halion, then back to NP.

I noticed on the NP panel it said “playback from beginning to get Dorico to assign sounds”. Sounds like that needs to be fixed.

#6

I’m noticing quite a few Z-order problems as well. Often the plugin UIs are coming to the back of the Z-order and are invisible. Even starting Dorico itself the Steinberg hub will often go behind something even though the splash was on top. This just makes it look like it disappeared. Then you stumble on it when you e.g. close your web browser and find it hiding there.

Windows 10

#7

To the first point, there have been a few threads mentioning a few issues with NP. There is advice in those threads to troubleshoot the issues. No doubt a patch will be issued on either side in due course.

Issue 2: new dorico versions never uninstall the old. You can always use the old version if you want it for some reason as your higher license also suffices for the older version. Just uninstall 3.0 if you don’t want 3.0.

#8

Thanks, I’m always worried running an uninstaller like that that it will remove something that the new version needs. It should be possible for the 3.5 installer to offer an option to do this safely. Many products do this as well - give an option.

Yes, I trawled through the NotePerformer + DP3.5 threads. I guess there are often problems introduced with new software, but it seems like this one should have been flagged in testing. I hope from now on, now that Steinberg knows how many people are using NotePerformer, that they put some more significant testing in for that. I’ve never had a problem updating Sibelius.

#9

Since NotePerformer is not a Steinberg product, neither is it a native app to Mac or Win, I don’t understand why you should expect that.

Even if they did the testing you want(and we have no knowledge one way or the other), there’s no reason to expect Steinberg to delay a release because a non-essential 3rd party app has problems with the latest version. Especially as in this case, when NotePerformer’s prime directive (to borrow a metaphor) is to work with Sibelius. Dorico and Finale are its second and third priority.

That’s not how these things work.

It’s likely that patches or upgrades will happen, hopefully sooner than later. I own a copy of NP, too.

#10

NP doesn’t have any “problems with the latest version of Dorico” for the majority of users.

My suspicion is that the “problems” are actually left-overs from upgrading a previous version of Dorico, which needed a “non-standard” expression map for NP until an upgrade for NP was released, and everything became compatible again.

In other words, a minority of users managed to create some sort of non-standard installation of NP which “worked” with Dorico 3.1, but the 3.5 installer can’t understand it and it fails to migrate properly to 3.5.

#11

adrien, I’m sorry you have encountered problems with NotePerformer in Dorico 3.5. We do of course test with NotePerformer internally, and we did not uncover the problem that some users have experienced with NotePerformer being blacklisted during our testing. This problem has occurred on a few occasions before – normally in connection with graphics card drivers – but that doesn’t appear to be what’s going on here. Thousands of users have updated to Dorico 3.5 already and no doubt a good number of them have NotePerformer, and everything is continuing to work correctly for them, just as it has done in all of our internal testing throughout development. But of course here on the forum you will see only those users who encountered problems. I am sorry to hear that you are one of those users.

At the moment it appears to be sufficient for most users to click the ‘Clear Audio Engine Cache’ button on the Play page of Preferences and then restart Dorico. If that isn’t sufficient for you, please let us know and we will of course be happy to investigate further.

#12

Actually Microsoft for one spend an enormous amount of effort testing with popular applications when they made changes to Windows. That’s because they realise that breaking apps for people is not a good thing. So it’s not without precedent.

Daniel has since stated they do test with NP, and I’m glad to hear that.

#13

Thanks Daniel. I got it working in the end. It was a combination of modifying the blacklist XML file, running the audio engine again (I could see it finding NP at that point). Clearing the VST cache (couple times) didn’t do anything. That got the module loading, so I could see the actual NP GUI when I clicked on the e.

Getting sound was a matter of loading a few different projects, then it started working. Very weird.

I saw a few other strange things in my travels today in Dorico. Some Z-order issues (I was able to drag the NP GUI around the screen but it would stay behind Dorico - had to drag to second screen to see it). Some other Z-order issues with starting Dorico, where the splash loading screen would show at the top of the Z order, but the Steinberg hub would pop to the back, so any other open app would obscure it. I know Windows 10 has created a few Z-order issues with a bunch of apps since Windows 10 1903. Such a pain chasing MS update-induced problems.

#14

The main Z-order weirdness you’ll see in Dorico with regard to plug-in windows is that all plug-in windows are owned by the separate VSTAudioEngine process, so plug-in windows cannot be interposed in Dorico’s own window Z-ordering at all: either all visible plug-in windows are behind all Dorico windows, or vice versa.

#15

I guess that’s a limitation with a single module architecture for VSTs. We had a similar issue with WinGate, so we had to build an architecture to allow for separate processing vs UI modules which communicate over a virtual circuit. Allows for remote management. That sort of approach would allow interesting things for something like VEPro.

One other issue I saw, was my horns were playing back as piano. I could see in Dorico mixer they were horns, but in the NP mixer they showed as piano. Trumpets were showing as piccolo trumpets too for some reason. Luckily there’s a way to override the instrument in NP itself, but I couldn’t find a way to change it from Dorico’s side.

#16

I would hope that, provided those instruments are the correct type, simply resetting the playback template would sort that out.