Strange pitch changes during music playback

Dorico
1

Hello to all,

a strange phenomenon happens when I play the music written in Dorico; the pitch changes abruptly for one or more instruments (sometimes we are at 455 hz and other times 415…). Moreover this phenomenon is random, because it does not always occur at the same place in the score and for the same instruments.
I checked that there was no “pitch bend” curve activated for each instrument.
Very strange and especially the music is inaudible.
I would also like to point out that this happens regardless of the sound bank used.
If someone has already encountered this problem … and solved it I am extremely interested.

2

455:415 is close to the ratio of 48000:44100, so I suspect something is affecting your sample rate. If you can reproduce the problem at will, please post an excerpt.

But first I would check what other audio software you have running at the same time. This sounds like two programs fighting over the sample rate setting.

Tech detail

(Playing 44.1K A=415 music at 48K would sound A=451.7)

3

Hi @Laurent_Bomont , for clarification: You say the pitch changes happen while you are playing back, is that correct?
Do you have other audio apps running in parallel?

4

Here is an earlier thread with a similar issue - xml export/import may have solved it in this case, I don’t know if that would help here, or not.

5

Hi folks
I just restarted DORICO by changing the sample rate to 48000 and then to 44 100 and I have no other music application open.
I still have the same problem when it was not doing it before…
Mystery.

6

Do you have a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI controller of some kind connected to your computer? If so, try disconnecting it, in case it’s somehow spuriously sending pitch bend messages.

7

Yes, that definitely sounds like random pitch bend events being sent. If it was a sample rate problem then it wouldn’t sound out of tune (unless you have perfect pitch). So I would suggest disonnecting any MIDI keyboards. Sometimes the pitch bend control can get some dust inside it, and we’ve had reports previously about keyboards that just send random MIDI events.

8

Everything is disconnected now, I’ve restarted Dorico without any other application but still have the same problem.

9

I just rebooted my computer before checking everything and setting the sample rate.
I only opened Dorico and the problem disappeared.
The solution was probably what Mark described.
Thanks for your help