Note entry sound playback

Dorico
1

Hi, folks.

Is there some option I can activate so Dorico will play a sound on each and every note I input?

I type notes via PC keyboard. I do need playback to hear what I type in, but the fact that I type in faster than Dorico plays back and therefore I only hear eg. 2 sounds while I type in 4 notes makes me crazy. Again and again I have to look up to the monitor to check if what Dorico has received really is what I typed in and not what I heard while typing…

Thanks, Esti

2

I find Dorico doesn’t miss any keystrokes, and doesn’t miss playing all the notes at the same speed as it enters them into the score.

But then, playing church organs I’m used to real keyboard instruments with latency measured in seconds not milliseconds :wink:

3

Hm… That’s not what I experience.
When I enter notes quickly, especially if it’s the same pitch, I press c-c-c-c, and all I hear is 2 c’s. That’s when I have to look to the screen wondering if Dorico received 4 c’s (yes, it did) or if it was missing two of them (no, it wasn’t, it only played 2 of them). Quite confusing.

4

Dear Estigy,
I suppose you have already tried different values for buffer in Preferences > Audio Device > Device Control Panel… I find that, with a value of 32, it responds quite perfectly, but above 128 I “feel” the delay. And that is for a percussive instrument, like piano. If strings are involved, the attack envelope gives the feeling of a delay, whatever the value. But still more confortable with a small buffer value.

5

Hi, Marc!

I’m using the “Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver” with a manually set buffer size of only 10 ms. This is enough to play back a full wind band score of about 30 players, so I’d guess my sound setup is sufficient.

My point is that Dorico seems to not trigger a “play this note” event for all key strokes in the first place. It’s not an issue of delay (be it caused by buffer size or attack envelope).

I do have to different cases here:

  • One very big score: I press rapidly 4 keys, and Dorico takes its time to render the notes (which is ok, it’s a big score). Here I hear all notes, because it seems that Dorico plays the notes when it renders them. (Which to me seems sub-optimal; I’d like to hear them directly when I press the key, no matter how long Dorico will then take to render them.)
  • One very small score: I press rapidly the 4 keys, and Dorico is super-fast rendering the notes. Here i only hear 3 or even only 2 sounds. It seems that Dorico says “oh, there’s already a note playing? ok, then I will not play the new note.” which leads to my confusion.

Greetings, Esti

6

Could the quantization settings be interfering with inputting four rapid C-notes?

7

I think that is a question for Dr. Paul Walmsley :wink:

8

I assume you’re talking about entering notes via the computer keyboard? Currently this method is constrained by a number of factors that mean Dorico can’t echo the note until it had been inserted into the score. In order to know which pitch to sound, it needs to take account of things such as transposition, note input options, etc (there are at least 3 layers of transposition logic it has to pass through) and then it can pass the event to the audio engine and you’ll hear it. It can only start processing the next node once the previous one has been finished. By contrast, if you enter notes via midi then you may find that it responds much more quickly, as this does take quite a different path through the code. It’s quite likely we’ll be able to improve this in the future to short - circuit some of the logic.

Regarding disappearing notes - I’ve never experienced this or heard any reports of this prior to now. I’ll try this when I’m back at the office.

9

Thank you very much for this very informative answer, and soooo late on a Saturday night!

10

Hi, Paul!
Thanks for this detailed answer; really appreciated.
Yes, I’m talking about computer keyboard input.

What you describe explains the things I experience in my “case one”, the large score. But that’s not the case I am worrying about.
I worry about the case with the small score, where Dorico is fast enough for everything but doesn’t trigger sounds for each note.

Regarding “disappearing notes”: I never talked about notes not being rendered, that must have been a misunderstanding somewhere in this thread. All keystrokes are received by Dorico and rendered correctly. Only playback is missing out on every other note.

11

Yes, that’s what I understood. I spend most of my life in Playback Land and so ‘disappearing’ meant ‘not sounding’. One further question: did this happen for you if you enter a sequence of different pitches or just the same pitch?

12

For example I use pianoteq vsti. I input through MacBook Pro keyboard. I can listen all the notes but all are listened in delay even if the buffer in dorico is set to 32. On the other hand the buffer on the plug in (pianoteq) remain set to 512 and it cannot be changed. Any advice?

13

In attachment the problem. Dorico set to 32 but plug in remains fixed to 512. In cubase 10 all work, changing cubase to 32 plug in change to 32.

E1216A01-EB5B-4A93-95B7-2C3980A92C4D.jpg
E1216A01-EB5B-4A93-95B7-2C3980A92C4D.jpg750×1334 101 KB

14

Can you be a bit clearer about what the precise nature of the problem you’re experiencing actually is? When are you experiencing the delay, and how long is the delay?

15

When I press the computer keyboard I listen to the sound in delay. Around 1/4 second later(extimation). With other software and the same virtual instruments I haven’t problems.

16

If it can be useful I have found the same problems also with other VI (for example Vienna symphonic library). I don t know if the problems could be the fact that I have a MacBook Pro 2011 ssd with 8 giga ram (OS X Sierra) considering that dorico is a new Software (I think designed for new machines).