Staccato Inconsistencies at Different Tempos

On violin, the staccato behaves inconsistently. At 120bpm, the staccato behaves as it should on quarter notes but, at 108bpm, it treats it as normal note. This is further confirmed by the key editor reading “staccato” at 120bpm and “sustain” at 108bpm. Staccato works perfectly well for eighth notes at both tempos, it’s only being weird on quarter notes. How should I fix this? (I don’t know if it’s important or not but I’m using the Berlin Free Orchestra).

Check Playback Options → Timing:

EDIT: I should add that the reason I suggest this is that in this thread, tempo somehow influenced this setting (I don’t know why) and toggling this setting fixed it.

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If the playback option Maximum duration for staccato playback technique is activated and set to a quarter note, the following chart shows the combinations of note values used in the score or part and tempos specified in quarter notes per minute which generate the staccato playback technique:

Edit: The original description of what this chart depicts was wrong and has been corrected.

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Thank you! I’ve disabled that toggle and it seems to be working really well now. Thanks!

I had no idea it worked like that, thank you. I’ve disabled the toggle for now but, if I enable it again, I’ll definitely use this chart. Thank you so much!

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Of course, my understanding of the purpose of this setting (and its wording) is further muddled by that chart. :confused:

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Note the mention of tempo when this option was introduced in the Dorico 4.3 Version History:

Staccato playback techniques. A new option Maximum duration for staccato playback technique has been added to the Note Duration section of the Timing page of Playback Options. This allows you to specify the maximum notated duration, when considered at a tempo of 120bpm, that should use a staccato playback technique, if one is defined in the current expression map. For notes that are longer than this maximum duration, Dorico will instead shorten the note by the amount specified under Staccato notes a little further up in the dialog; for tied notes, this applies only to the duration of the last notehead in the tie chain. The advantage of this new option is that it will consistently trigger a recorded staccato technique for notes of a particular duration, regardless of whether they are written as a single note value or using a tie chain.

Edit: Also see this topic.

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I remember that one :grinning_face:

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I think we can both agree that the wording of this option in the Playback Options dialog could be improved, since it makes no mention of tempo.

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Thank you very much for this notification! When I disable “Maximum duratinon…” the legato-staccato is played correctly.
WB