Open Dorico, then Pianoteq, no sound from Pianoteq?

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:

  1. Open a Pianoteq as a standalone VST outside of Dorico.
  2. 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.
  3. Select one of the ports you created in your standalone VST, and another in Preferences / Play / MIDI Input Devices.
  4. 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.

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