The NotePerformer 3 mixer is “white” (see the image Mixer_2.png), not as it should be (see the image Mixer_1.png). Not usable, that is. Even after several reboots etc. Display drivers are updated.
NotePerformer plays nicely anything I throw to it in Dorico. But it DOES NOT STOP whatever I do, but goes on playing the piece all the way to end. Dorico 2 itself seems to stop when asked (the cursor stops moving), but NotePerformer 3 (trial version) doesn’t.
Everything works just fine on this Windows 7 (64) computer, including Dorico 2 Pro itself with Halion. (Yes, I know that Windows 7 is not officially supported, but as I said, everything works fine on this PC.)
I think you’ll need to contact Arne for support with the NotePerformer display issue: perhaps NotePerformer won’t draw its window correctly on Windows 7, I’m not sure.
Thank you, Daniel. I am writing with Arne about the mixer thing. Here’s what he said about playback not stopping:
The issue with Dorico not stopping is a verified Dorico issue. It’s not something we can control unfortunately, but you would have to ask Dorico support on how to resolve it.
It’s something that I’ve only ever seen a couple of reports about. It’s something that we haven’t seen in-house. Does it happen with the default HALion Sonic SE configuration too?
I have the same problem, but only with very big scores, and only with NP. With Halion sounds everything is normal. Arne told me also that the problem was in Dorico. I sent John Barron a score I had the problem with, he said it was ok, but he is on Mac, I’m on Windows 10.
I have this playback not stopping problem with any score, any size. Which, of course, makes NotePerformer unusable. Pity, now I am losing the NP trial period.
For reference, the “white background” issue will be fixed for the first NotePerformer 3 maintenance update.
The other problem, with playback not stopping, is unfortunately not something under our control (I’m guessing Steinberg are looking at this). Although NotePerformer is different to other playback devices, fundamentally it just playbacks MIDI notes at the request of Dorico. We cannot control the state of playback, or whether the MIDI notes provided to us doesn’t match the current state of the notation software.
I think yours are the only reports that we’ve had of this issue. We’re trying to work out what the commonality would be as you both have different Windows versions. John passed on Alan’s score to me and I can’t reproduce the problem on Windows. It only happens with NotePerformer and not any other plugin, and only on Windows.
What soundcard are you using? Are you using the ASIO driver or the default Generic Low Latency driver?
Does the playback line follow the score (with an accuracy of about 1s)?
When you press stop, does the playback line stop straight away? Does the Play/Stop button on the toolbar reset back to the Play indication straight away?
Can you open a score, play back for about 10s, then stop. If the score carries on playing then please go to Help and choose Create Diagnostic report, and attach here. If playback does stop then do this a few times until it starts going wrong.
I have the same phenomenon here; but it only plays on for a note or two - a bar at most.
The diagnostics report I sent you overnight in connection with the ‘great greenline scandal’ ( ) should display/illustrate it.
I’m typically Option+Shift+Space starting (sometimes with P from a highlighted note/notes) and always stopping/pausing with Space. the green playback head always stops immediately - but the sound continues for a few seconds. Not a huge worry, in the grand scheme of things .
Hope that helps.
(I hesitate to say this, but it’s a new phenomenon since I’ve been using NP; and I don’t think it’s connected in any way with the greenline gremlin.)
In regards to the playback not stopping with NP3 I found the following:
Dorico sends the command to stop playback to the audio engine, but it somehow gets stuck in the queue. If you wait just long enough, eventually it will get through and playback stops. This may happen after a few seconds or a minute or two, you can’t forecast.
However, what I also found, if you close all NotePerformer editor windows (or even just minimize them) then the stopping just behaves as normal, i.e. depending on the chosen audio buffer size, the stopping takes place within a second or so.
So it is somehow NotePerformer that is getting in the way and makes the internal message queue getting stuck. We have to analyze this further and find a solution. Until then - as a workaround - please minimize all NotePerformer editor windows (or be patient enough for the playback to eventually stop
I’ve given this some thought and have made some changes to how NotePerformer processes graphics and utilises custom WinProc messages. It will be in the next NotePerformer update, which may possibly resolve this.
This is just a hunch, but I’m thinking that maybe you’re processing WinProc queued messages one-by-one (by priority) rather than taking out all messages from the queue in a single go and process them in order? So if plug-ins queue their own custom WinProc messages, that would mean a low-priority message could be stalled.
Our VST graphics engine uses custom WinProc messages to improve idle/redraw rate in some VST hosts that clamp WM_TIMER to being low resolution (we use hardware OpenGL so it’s not an audio or graphics performance issue) but we can turn this off for NotePerformer because neither Dorico or Finale seems to require it, and Sibelius doesn’t use the NP mixer.
) should display/illustrate it.