Two orchestra files that started life as different flows of the same file don’t respond to playback activation and require me to force quit Dorico. I have tried downloading updates to sound libraries, etc. but with no luck. The problem does not affect all files–some play back just fine. I have attached both a file copy and diagnostic report and hope these help sort out the cause of the problem. I am on an M1 Mac mini using macOS 26.2 Tahoe and Dorico 6.2.
Debussy.La Mer 1.DR.dorico (3.9 MB)
EDIT: the diagnostic report was too large to send (5.6 MB) even in .zip format.
I wouldn’t think it’s anything you’re doing - it’s playing fine here under NotePerformer and it’s not so large as to bring Dorico to its knees. I have been having crashes myself lately in some circumstances and I’m making notes of where and when it happens to see if I can establish a reproducible scenario.
I blank-slated my PC three weeks ago and still have yet set up VSP, I’m not really in a position to really torture-test anything.
Thanks @SuperG. Based on your experience opening it with NotePerformer, I tried opening the file directly from my earlier post but as before, NotePerformer playback does not activate and I can’t close Dorico without force quitting. That suggests some setting is amiss in my Dorico but I have tried everything I can think of over several hours. It’s baffling!
I would be happy to do that but wonder if the is file good enough to meet @benwiggy ‘s standards. If so, the second movement of La Mer is also already done and I anticipate the third will follow. I am a retired amateur and enjoy studying how music I love is put together.
Hi everyone,
this is completely weird. Actually, it does open and activate here on my machine, though it takes quite some time. But now comes the interesting part, when going to Play mode it shows 4 NotePerformer instances in the VST Rack, but when I click on the e-button to open the editor window, what actually comes up are Vienna Synchron Player windows, and actually for all 4 of them.
Looking at the audio engine data of the project file it also says there are 4 Synchron Player instances and no NotePerformer. @Mike_Philcox , did you start with NotePerformer and later changed to Synchron, or do you have an explanation of how this complete change could happen?
@Mike_Philcox , since you can’t open your project any more, I’ve stripped the audio engine data from it and attached here. You can load that and apply the NotePerformer template again and you should be up and running again. Debussy.La Mer 1.DR.stripped.dorico (3.0 MB)
Just a piece of information for Steinberg, in case if it is useful.
When adding VST manually (not via applying playback template), it is often that switching to Write mode and Play mode, then clicking the “e” button, the window opens is not the VST I added. The index in the window title is wrong (with an offset of 1). If I add more VSTs manually, the offset sometimes increases. This happens to me since long time ago, may be from 6.0.10? Whenever it happens, I just delete all the instances with incorrect index (the problematic VSTs are always at the end) and re-create, then everything works again. But it still waste a lot of time, when I spent time in setting up VSTs within VSTs (e.g. instruments within Kontakt player).
Hi @sunnych ,
how consistent can you reproduce that issue on your machine? Does it happen with any kind of instrument or only particular ones? If you have a recipe by which I could reproduce that behaviour, that would be awesome.
Hi @sunnych , thanks so much, because you gave the decisive hint here and that is open a project created a long time ago. Because with that hint, I can now also reproduce the behaviour you described. It does not fully explain, yet, why with Mike everything is completely screwed up, but with this starting point, I think we will dig in and soon find the a solution to the whole mystery. @Mike_Philcox , can you maybe explain or give a rough estimation with how your Debussy project evolved, i.e. started in Dorico X with NP, converted to SynPly in Dorico Y. Please give us as much detail of the history as you can recall. Thanks
Thanks to all for your interest. Ulf, I have sent the diagnostics report via email as suggested and have also confirmed that I can open and play the file you stripped of audio data.
The file was started in June 2024 with a single flow containing the first movement of Debussy’s La Mer, probably with the NotePerformer library. I later changed to the VSL Prime library using both VSL’s own playback template and also NP with the relevant NPPE. I also downloaded a trial of Vienna Ensembles Pro in 2025 and experimented with it on this file but didn’t have help, didn’t thoroughly understand how VEP works and never got satisfactory results. After NP 4.5 came out I purchased the NPPE for VSL Prime and also went back and forth between NP 4.5.1, 5.0 and 5.1 and then 5.0 again in order to keep the NPPE functional. I later purchased VSL Synchron Duality Strings Essentials and downloaded a new playback template from VSL that used that library along with the rest of the Prime Orchestra. I also tried various combinations of VSL with NP, sometimes with the NPPE and sometimes without. Then last year I started on the second movement as a second flow and had it completed in one file but making any detail adjustments was very slow so I recently made a duplicate copy of the La Mer file and deleted the second flow in one copy and the first flow in the other and this is when the problems arose.
I hope this helps.
@Ulf I just realized I somehow missed this response. Yes, I did start with NP and then moved to VSL Prime and eventually VSL Prime with Duality Essentials strings. However, the first movement has a part for solo violin at bars 59 to 63. As neither of my VSL libraries includes solo strings I added NP to the bottom of my VSL playback template so NP could play the solo violin part.
It appears clear that the mix of NP and VSL Synchron is causing problems, though. This morning, before noticing this particular response from you, I played back the file with no problems using a template with only the VSL instruments. Then when I switched to the template including NP for the solo violin part I once again got no playback and had to force quit Dorico. Everything functioned fine though after re-opening the file and switching to the VSL-only template. When I checked, the solo violin had been assigned to Duality Strings as a 1st violin section but otherwise played back fine.
EDIT: On reflection, the problem appears related to the reality that the playback template assigns both VSL and NP to the solo violin; VSL because that company has assumed (???) users would rather hear section players than no sound at all and have programmed their playback templates accordingly, and NP because it is the first and only library in the template with a solo violin instrument.
2nd EDIT: For interest I opened a string quartet and applied the VSL Duality Strings playback template. In this case none of the section strings were assigned to the solo instruments and there was, as expected, no sound on playback. This raises the question whether VSL section strings are assigned to solo instruments in an orchestral context but not otherwise. Confusing stuff!
Hi @Mike_Philcox , I think we are just at the tip of the iceberg at the moment. Actually, do you remember when loading that LaMer project, it takes a really long time until playback is ready, right? And even though Dorico shows only 4 NotePerformer instances in the VST Rack, the audio engine instanciated 61 (yes, 61!) Vienna Synchron Players and 1 NotePerformer instance.
So tomorrow I will do some more testing on my end and try to figure out more.
One question though: When you started with that LaMer project, did you use your own default project template file, or did you start from scratch?
@Ulf, yes it does take a really long time until playback is ready when loading the La Mer file.
I have never made any playback templates from scratch but instead use those prepared by others, usually the companies behind the libraries I want to use (mostly Steinberg, Wallander/NotePerformer, and VSL via their “Dorico Wizard”). When I want to use instruments from different libraries I make a duplicate of an existing PT and add additional manual or automatic entries (the automatic ones are usually NotePerformer) in appropriate order so that each instrument plays back with the desired library and expression map. I have made 10 or so different templates in this way although I deleted most when I was having the present playback problems.
I don’t recall with certainty but am confident that when inputting La Mer I would have moved back and forth between the NotePerformer template with and without the NPPE for VSL Prime, VSL’s own template for Prime and later the VSL template for Prime and Duality Strings together. Even one movement takes me a number of days and throughout the process I listen to the playback of newly entered material, often switching between PTs to hear differences.
An additional factor may be relevant. At first I most often used NP with the NPPE for VSL Prime. Then when NP 5.1 disallowed use of the NPPE I would skip between NP alone and VSL Prime and Duality Strings. I later realized I still had my downloaded installer for NP 5.0 and downgraded NP from 5.1 to 5.0 so I could still use the NPPE. More recently I moved back to NP without the NPPE and mostly stuck with VSL Prime and Duality Strings for this file, sometimes adding NP to the bottom of the playback template to play the solo violin part.
One more factor to be aware of: I used independent voice playback for the strings and this increases the number of Synchron Player instances (each of which works on one voice only) but there still shouldn’t be anything like 61 instances.
I hope this helps—I appreciate that your latest response came on the weekend—thank you!
Hi @Mike_Philcox , thank you so much for your explanation of how your Dorico project evolved. Unfortunately, it does not help me reproducing your issue. That what @sunnych described earlier I can easily and consistently reproduce , however, I’ve still no clue on how a project can go completely astray like in your case.
Actually, it is a known issue that we have since early Dorico versions, got worse with Version 3/4, but rarely reported in D6. And since we can’t reproduce it, there is also basically no way to fix the issue.
For that reason, I have a kind request to you: When you continue working on that piece or also when starting new ones, please watch out for unusual things that happen. You can always send me new Diagnostic reports, just make sure that the project is loaded while creating the diagnostics.
I know, it’s not very satisfying. We know there is somewhere a bug but cannot tackle it, is very frustrating. I hope one day - with your help - we’ll finally get him.
