EUREKA !!
I’ve finally found what was causing the problem thanks to the “Edit Endpoint Configuration” window located at the very bottom left of the “Edit Playback Template” window. It is effectively very hard to find and I was totally unaware of its existence, despite the fact that it is mentioned once at page 663 of the Dorico 5.0.0 Manual.
It doesn’t allow much in terms of Endpoint editing, you can only change the name or delete an Endpoint, but it was a great help to figure out what was wrong, thanks to the info displayed on the left side of the window.
That’s how I discovered that each of my Endpoints relative to Custom Percussion Kits displayed the following entry : “Drum Set (Single Player)”
This is why Dorico would systematically load the endpoints of the first Percussion Kit it would find in the Playback Template.
The way to avoid this is to make sure before saving your Endpoints in the Play window “VST an Midi” tab that the top “group” track highlighted bellow is not routed to anything :
Only the actual instrument tracks should be routed to each their own dedicated and properly labeled VST entry :
Which bring us to the important fact that when creating Kits (except for Drum Sets) to use with VSTs that are capable of loading multiple instruments in one instance (Superior Drummer, VSL… ) … You are still going to need to load one instance for each single instrument of your Kit, except for Drum Sets. This is due to the fact that Dorico is instrument based where each instrument requires its own Endpoint, and kits are just a group of instruments with organisational features.
But beware, it seems that the best (only ?) and most efficient way to create the necessary Endpoints is by clicking on the “Save Endpoint Configuration” located at the bottom of the VST list :
Following those Guidelines I am now able to recall my Custom Percussion Kits flawlessly… which is a most welcome change !!
Alas… it is not true for my Drum Sets, for which I could in theory apply the same principles and have a VST instance per instrument, but this would be very unpractical since I would then loose many drum set functionalities from Superior Drummer 3 that can only take place within a single instance. Export all microphones to separated audio tracks being the main loss in this case.
So until someone comes up with a solution for this I will move the desired Drum Set Endpoint up the list before loading the Playback Template. This only needs to be done once per project and it only concerns the Drum Sets… so this sounds quite manageable.
I hope this might help others on their way to make the best out of this fantastic software !!!
