Not happy: Playback Start Offsets are being reset every time - bug

Daniel and all, sorry but I’m extremely unhappy with this. Your swing playback basically just doesn’t work and Dorico doesn’t reopen scores in the way that you last saved them.

Every time I close Dorico and reopen my score, all of the Playback Start Offsets get reset to “straight” for those notes to which I had applied a Playback End Offset to shorten the duration for my swing notation.

When I enter the Playback End Offsets, as discussed earlier, Dorico forces the off-beat notes back to the 50% point, making them straight. To get rid of this, one has to toggle Playback Start Offset on and off again for those notes (or for a whole passage). This makes the position go back to the swung position and results in proper playback. This toggling is a nuisance but not the end of the world.

What is the end of the world is finding that closing a reopening a score obliges one to start all over again and toggle all the notes’ Start Offsets.

This is the equivalent of Sibelius forcing a zero to “Live Start Positon” for every note that I put a “Live Duration” value to, every time I reopen a score. Which it doesn’t do, thankfully.

Michael

As per the “Keep It Tidy” section of the Guidelines, please keep threads contained.

In a little over 36 hours you’ve created five new threads that are ostensibly about the same thing.
A. For those of us that are following along in real time, it’s difficult to keep track of what’s already been discussed, suggested, and where.
B. Daniel has made it clear in the past that he opens each thread in a tab within his web browser. He then leaves the tab open until such time as he has the chance to follow up the thread. If you edit or reply to an existing thread, that thread will update in his browser automatically (and in any relevant tab open in anyone else’s browser.), plus that thread will automatically be pushed to the top of the “Latest” list.

Posting lots of new threads won’t get you answers more quickly.

Thank you.

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Michael, you are relying on an undefined behaviour to obtain the result you want in the first place. As I’ve explained in the first of your many related threads, if notes have either a start or end offset, Dorico won’t play them swung. The fact that it temporarily does so if you toggle the start offset property on and then off again is itself a bug, rather than something intentional that we intend to be the means by which you can get the result you’re after (which would be an absurd state of affairs).

What you’re wanting to do is simply not supported at the moment, I’m sorry to say. But changing the end offset of a note while retaining swing playback will be supported in the next major version of Dorico, when it arrives later in the year. Whether we can also attempt some automatic modification of played note length to shorten off-beat notes in that version, I cannot currently say.

I also share with Leo in asking you to please continue existing relevant threads (e.g. in this case you really should have continued your first thread) rather than opening a new one. If you’re having problems finding your existing threads, you can see them if you go to the Activity page, which you can access by clicking on your user avatar in the top right corner, then clicking the little person’s head icon in the pop-up that appears.

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I can’t see anyone clarifying that after toggling the Start Offset on and off again, the result would be undone if the score was closed and reopened, intentional behaviour or otherwise. Wish I’d spotted that sooner.

I bought Dorico quite some time ago, finally getting round to learning it recently . At the time, I’m sure I asked John about my playback needs and was told that Dorico would handle it more or less. If I had known the answer was less rather than more, I probably wouldn’t have.

The other proposed solutions to the issue are a bit too Bodgy McBodgeface and not quite versatile enough.

Half the fun is having reasonably good playback whilst entering and editing the music, and it makes a big difference to the whole experience to know that the tool is accommodating your peculiarities rather than fighting them.

If someone were so kind as to drop me a line when that next version is out, I’ll be back to pick up and carry on where I left off. Even better if there is also a plan to do a small portion of the suggested automation of durations in 2022 and beyond - although I recognise it would be a messy task to implement all of the things I suggested.

Regards,

Michael

Edit: I’m also happy to beta-test things at any point in the future. A constructive exercise whether for my own needs or a much wider set of users, can be a satisfying exercise.

Might there be another way of shortening the notes, such as in the Expression Map: you can change the % Length of a note. Combine this with the Conditions for different note lengths, and you might be able to achieve what it is you want.

There’s also the Playback Options (and their overrides in the Expression map), which contain settings for note length.

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And indeed, edits to the playback window will save with the project.

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