Only noteperformer sounding

I have a file that is mostly noteperformer but also kontakt and pianoteq. When it loads it plays only the noteperformer tracks. Pianoteq makes a noise if you play the onscreen keyboard, but not playback. Diagnostic attached.
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (439 KB)

Hi Steve,

I don’t know how to read a diagnostic file so if it’s truly something related to the audio/playback engine, someone else will no doubt help you very soon.

But there are a lot of possible things that could lead to these symptoms (seemingly an infinite number, when I’m bewildered/frustrated that things aren’t working!) So just in case, if you haven’t already, it might bear fruit to double check that all throughout the chain, every assignment you made actually stuck, for example:

  1. Your Kontakt instances probably shouldn’t use the NotePerformer expression map. If you changed to a non-NP xMap but it failed to stick for some reason, it could lead to very unexpected results, including sometimes no sound.

  2. Your port & channel assignments need to match everywhere or it will fail – so for instance if you had a Kontakt trumpet on port 1, channel 7 in Play Mode, double check that the Kontakt instance itself reflects port 1, channel 7 – and also your plugin host’s channel, if you’re using such a host (e.g., Vienna Ensemble).

  3. I never played very much with this kind of setup (NP for some instruments, other plugins for other instruments), and I never could quite figure out the pattern, but I did notice that sometimes, certain channels seemed as if they were permanently “reserved for NotePerformer’s use” despite all attempts to unlink them. There were times I got silence, or strange GM percussion sounds, when using a non-NP plugin –– even though none of those non-NP channels were connected to an NP instance in any way (not at the plugin level, nor at the xMap/percussion map endpoint setup). May have been something wrong with the particular file I was using, but in case helpful, in my experience I needed to completely avoid at least channels 1 and 2 (possibly more) when using non-NP plugins in concert with NP. If this is the culprit in your case, it will be a very quick fix!

Re: Pianoteq, unfortunately I have only one idea, which you can ignore if you’re not using Vienna Ensemble: sometimes in VEP if you have an instrument channel inside a folder, sound will abruptly fail even though the MIDI activity and level meters light up. Restarting VEP and/or computer doesn’t solve this, but it can often be fixed by moving the instrument channel outside of the folder and then back into the folder – and if that doesn’t fix it, duplicating the channel and then deleting the first copy usually does.

One question: even though you don’t get sound, during Dorico playback are the Kontakt and Pianoteq instruments receiving MIDI, and are the level meters lighting up as if the plugin believes it’s outputting audio? (I doubt answering this will give me any more ideas, but it might make something click for others who are reading and want to help out.)

Hope you get everything fixed soon!

I’m not sure if this helps, but the only way I’ve been able to get NotePerformer to “play nice“ with other virtual instruments at the same time in Dorico is to: assign all NotePerformer instruments first (without any other virtual instruments besides NotePerformer loaded up in Play Mode), and only afterwards load in and assign any subsequent additional plugin instruments. The trick is to at this point NOT go back and re-assign any instruments back to NotePerformer as you continue to work, since if this is done then things will not work properly for some reason. Hope this helps -
D.D.

Could you please also provide the project file? If it is confidential and you don’t want to post it here publicly, please send it to ‘u dot stoermer at steinberg dot de’. Thanks

Thanks for help Sam. I’ve pretty much been through your list. The on-screen keyboard in pianoteq plays. But there is no sign that pianoteq or kontakt are receiving midi from Dorico.
Robjohn, that is what I’ve found. Which is why fixing it means a few goes of starting from scratch with noteperformer first again.
Ulf, I’ll email. Thank you.

Just a quick follow up: It turned out that the Muted property was set for the notes that Steve was missing in the playback.

I wish it was that. I have the same file open, same layout, not playing anything but NP, not muted.
If I reconstruct starting with NP, then pianoteq and kontakt it starts playing everything (most of the time), all without touching a mute.