Perhaps this has been asked already. I couldn’t find anything.
If I open Pianoteq first, then Dorico, I can disable MIDI input in Dorico, play on Pianoteq, and notate in Dorico. That’s great.
But if, for whatever reason, Dorico was open first, and then I open Pianoteq, I can’t find any way to get sound out of Pianoteq.
Any help appreciated!
Mac? PC? Sound card? Minimal example file?
Sorry, but this is certainly not an expected behavior, and I have been using PianoTeq for quite some time now as my primary keyboard VSTi, and I have been reading this forum. The situation you describe is bot usual. First thing that strikes me : why would you want to open PianoTeq — I suppose you mean the standalone app — when you’re using it in Dorico?
Good questions, I should have been more specific:
Windows 11. Built-in sound card.
I’m not actually using Pianoteq for playback from Dorico. I’m just using it (the standalone app, as you say) to try out ideas before notating them in Dorico, where they’ll be played back usually by orchestral instruments.
So I just want to have Pianoteq working and available for messing around, and then to notate any ideas in Dorico.
And as I say, it works fine if Pianoteq was opened first, but if Dorico is opened first, no sound reaches Pianoteq.
I’ve tried turning MIDI thru off and on in Dorico preferences. Doesn’t help.
I guess it sounds like some sort of MIDI routing issue, but I’m not sure what.
I think if you go to Edit>Preferences>Play>Midi Input Devices and de-activate your keyboard, it will route to Pianoteq.
But I have to ask myself why would you work that way? Just add a Piano to your score and route it to Pianoteq. Mess around there to your heart’s content - record stuff into that instrument and copy/explode it across to your other instruments as the mood takes you.
Is dorico set to singularly control the sound card?
Deactivating the keyboard doesn’t help. Still no sound comes out of Pianoteq.
I prefer to work this way because (a) It avoids needing to add a piano staff to each piece; (b) I don’t want Dorico to notate what I’m playing, even by accident; but mainly (c) I have very low latency with the standalone Pianoteq instrument. When it goes through Dorico, latency is much worse.
I’m not sure how to check that.
Well, after more research, it seems that the generic Windows USB MIDI driver is single-client only ( Cubase & Dorico Simultaneous MIDI issue | VI-CONTROL).
If I open Pianoteq first, it captures the MIDI input of the keyboard and Dorico, so I can play piano and notate in Dorico (with the mouse or computer keyboard).
If I open Dorico first, it captures the MIDI port. For some reason, enabling MIDI thru doesn’t help.
If this analysis is right, a solution for me would be some way of telling Dorico not to capture the MIDI port at all. I don’t need Dorico to use the MIDI port.
Is there any way of doing that?
Hi everyone,
the problem here is really Dorico. On startup it opens all MIDI ports it can find and keeps holding a handle to all of them, thus, apps that launch thereafter can’t get hold of a handle.
This behaviour was already complained about in several threads, but I can announce that we solved it in the upcoming version of Dorico.
Until it gets published, yes, the workaround is to start Dorico last.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Hi Derrek: Thanks for the instructions. But it was already unchecked. And also, from the research I’ve done, it seems that the generic Windows USB MIDI driver is exclusive-mode only in any case, and no application can change that.
That’s good news.
The generic Windows USB MIDI driver is exclusive-mode only.
Will there be a way to tell Dorico not to get a handle on any MIDI drivers? Or to relinquish its hold?
Yes, in the Preferences dialog you can do that already. The reason why that did not work as expected was a hidden device called “All MIDI in” (Cubase user know it) which kept open all handles. We removed that device from Dorico and so handles will get released if you tell it to via the preferences.
This issue comes up a lot and I work this way too. Just in the last week there are posts here and here. Basically cutting and pasting from one of my previous posts …
It would be great if we could specify a default input sound in Dorico, but we can’t. Here’s how I do it though:
- Open a Pianoteq as a standalone VST outside of Dorico.
- Use a software MIDI router to route the MIDI signal to both Dorico and Pianoteq simultaneously. You can create virtual MIDI ports with a freeware program called loopMIDI. To route the signal to the ports I use Bome, but last I checked the ancient free program MIDI-OX still works too.
- Select one of the ports you created in your standalone VST, and another in Preferences / Play / MIDI Input Devices.
- Now that Dorico and your Piano VST are receiving the signal simultaneously, you no longer need to hear the input signal in Dorico, so go to Preferences / Play and uncheck “Enable MIDI Thru.” You should now only hear Piano when inputting, but of course hear the full complement of loaded VST sounds when playing back.
As I know there are others that work this way too, it would be a nice feature if Dorico could support this automatically within the program, but it’s still not too hard to accomplish.
Hi @Ulf,
I got hold of the great Dorico 5.1 update, which has a lot of goodness baked in, but this particular issue seems to remain.
Again, to restate the issue: If I open Dorico first, then the Pianoteq standalone instrument (to play the piano on it), Dorico hogs all MIDI and Pianoteq fails to register any incoming MIDI signals. And you mention above that it’s already been solved.
Is there a setting I’m missing somewhere?
Hi @Pete_the_Musician,
well, it does work for me:
You see, I have both Dorico and the Pianotech standalone app open and playing on my Roland piano, MIDI does arrive in Pianotech (red keys in the screenshot).
In Dorico I went into the Preferences dialog, and on the Play tab I deselected the Roland:
So I dare say it is a matter of your setup.
… and you opened Pianoteq after Dorico? (Because it works fine if Pianoteq is opened first.)
Anyway, I disabled my USB driver in Dorico, but Pianoteq still doesn’t respond unless it is opened first. I’ve only got one driver, a generic USB MIDI device.
Yes, I first opened Dorico.
What if you don’t use ASIO within Pianoteq but instead DirectSound?
Or, open the Control Panel of the Generic Low Latency Driver and uncheck the option at the top of that window which says something about ‘allow exclusive access’.
I’m actually using “Windows Audio” rather than ASIO or DirectSound in Pianoteq because Windows Audio seems to give the lowest latency.
And I don’t know how to open the Windows Audio control panel (or even if it has one).
I just have a basic home system, no external sound cards installed, just Dorico and Cubase, plus an ancient Korg X5 keyboard that has MIDI out. I bought a conversion cable that converts MIDI to USB and use that to connect the Korg, since I don’t have MIDI connectors on my computer.
The driver that runs the MIDI is some sort of generic MIDI driver (2006) that Windows installed automatically.
Stop press: it seems to be working now.