Something interfering with dynamic playback in piano part

Dorico
1

I’m running Dorico 5 with Noteperformer 4. In a piece I’m working on, there is something that is preventing the piano part from playing back the correct dynamics, and I can’t figure out for the life of me what it is. Here’s a link to the piece:

The section in question begins at m136. If you listen to the piano part there, you’ll hear that, in the left hand, certain notes are inexplicably playing back p or mp when I have them all clearly marked as ff (with accents, even!). But then, some of the notes in there are playing back correctly. All of the notes in the right hand are playing back correctly.

It seems to be happening somewhere other than in the notes themselves, because if I take notes that are playing back correctly and move them to the rhythmic positions of notes that aren’t, then the notes I moved start to play back incorrectly.

I’ve selected the notes and reset the playback overrides multiple times, to no avail.

Help?

2

We would probably need to see an excerpt of the Dorico file exhibiting the problem in order to see how your dynamics and voices have been set.

3

Try switching off Library>Playback options>Dynamics>Polyphonic Instruments… Automatic Voice balancing.
(I wonder if there is some interaction between that and NotePerformer’s algorithms)

1 Like
5

…which is why I included a link to the file in my post. You’ll find it right under the words “here’s a link to the piece.”

6

I agree with @Janus that it’s Dorico’s automatic polyphonic voice balancing that’s responsible for the softer dynamics of the higher notes in the left-hand staff. I think Dorico is interpreting those notes as part of an inner texture somehow. As Janus suggests, deactivating polyphonic voice balancing in Playback Options is the right thing to do.

8

Further to @Janus and @dspreadbury, the same thing happens in a piano part using all the default Dorico settings with the Yamaha S90ES if you add medium swing 8ths to the part. This is definitely not a Noteperformer problem.

In this example, the right hand suddenly drops to almost inaudible levels in the fourth bar unless the automatic polyphonic instrument voice balancing is unchecked or the swing setting is removed.
Piano Playback Problem.dorico (513.2 KB)

I have tried this both on an iMac using Sequoia 15.0.1 and Windows 11 23H2 and can confirm it is a problem on both.