I recently lashed out and bought Hollywood Orchestra Diamond Opus Edition but I am finding it really quite buggy.
In particular I am getting stuck notes with Opus in Dorico 5 Pro and I don’t seem to be able to set up expression maps without getting stuck notes cropping up right from the application of the first expression map. Is there anyone out there who is aware of a solution or a reason for gettiing these stuck notes I would like to attach my project for someone to review but I can’t seem to see how to do even that at the moment
Are you using it with NotePerformer 4? Or are you trying to use it directly in Dorico with expression maps that someone else made?
No I’m not using it with NotePerformer 4, I’m trying to create my own expression maps from scratch without making mistakes.
I think from what I can gather the hanging notes I am getting might be coming about because of mistakes in the keyswitches of the expression maps. I found the expression maps I downloaded to be confusing to say the least because they referenced channel changes as well as keyswitches and I am not tpp sure how this works.
One thing to note is that Expression Maps assume a VST is configured in a certain way (patch x in slot y etc.), so applying them without knowing the VST configuration for which they were created can lead to unexpected results. Dorico allows you to save everything together as an Endpoint, which makes like much easier!
Julian,
Unfortunately, stuck notes are the rule with Opus. This is why I gave up trying to use the Hollywood Choir.
Mike
I get stuck notes all the time in all libraries including NP4. Random events, depends on the machine and seems to happen by hitting some piano keys funny. Happens on the iPad too! It would be nice if we had a Panic stop button - I have to hunt around and hit the exact key again to get it to stop.
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Yes, please.
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This thread may help…
Although I don’t maintain them anymore (I moved on to NPPE HOPUS), they could still be useful as starting point/reference.
I don’t normally get stuck notes with the Hollywood Choir but you can always use the Play software if you’re only having a problem with Opus.
I don’t intend to hijack this thread and make it about the choirs, but I’ll make this one post. Some of it (like tweaking Dorico’s Playback Options) might apply to the Opus Orchestra as well.
I’ve had pretty good luck recently, but one needs to get away from Dorico’s default playback options to smooth things out. Personally I go ahead and set ‘humanization’ to 0. With word builder, those few ticks can matter, and cause things to get kind of unpredictable.
I believe setting Default Note length a bit shorter helps. 95% or so.
Dail back legato overlapping as well…to something like 99% or 100%. If you need really expressive overlapping legato effects, it’s better to build those manually for the choirs using the key editor and CC lanes I think.
Personally, I believe the choirs run a little better in Play than Opus, though things should be improving for Opus with each update.
Another benefit to using Play at this time is that I think one can use MIDI RPN to tweak out things like pitch bend range, or do some custom tuning maps (not positive all this works for the choirs, but it should). I don’t think these RPN events work at all in Opus yet, and while some EW instruments have course and fine tuning controls, I’m not aware of a way to ‘automate’ them in real time via CC (And Dorico doesn’t yet feature VST automation). EW instruments don’t always have an obvious way to change the pitch bend range either. At least with Play, you can use the old school RPN method to establish your own PB range, master tuning, and custom tuning scales (Tested RPNs a bit with Goliath library and seems to work).
Put the phrase reset CC20 as an ‘initialization’ value in an expression map and one Natural node with the dynamics mode to CC11. These are the ONLY things I put in the expression map for these choirs. The rest (including manual adjustments to note velocity) I do manually with controller lanes. If I need ‘key-switches’, I’ll just add them as needed via technique/expression map, or even keep it simple and put them off in a ‘hidden piano stave’ where I can control precisely when it gets sent.
Don’t be afraid to use more instances with shorter phrases. I.E. At what one might consider ‘rehearsal points’ of a score, start a new Play or Opus instance with a fresh beginning for a phrase. This way as you are building a score you don’t always need to play the thing from the very beginning to make word builder reset and align the phrases. When auditioning things as you compose, you’ll always want to start playback from one of your ‘rehearsal points’ or things will sound a mess.
Personally, I’ve found using something like Bidule a huge help in working these choirs. I can more easily load and stage complete choir setups with loads of Play instances inside with a few clicks. In short, I can host entire choirs, with loads of ‘variations’ in what appears to Dorico to be a ‘single plugin/instrument’. Such setups are also quite easy to move over to other DAWs and Scoring suites as needed. Saves hours of ‘setup time’. Without Bidule, it might take 30 minutes to set up everything for a new ‘phrase or verse’ (by rehearsal points as mentioned earlier). With Bidule in play, I can quickly throw in a whole new ‘initialized choir’ and get back to work composing and building the vocal phrases. I can also more easily ‘swap among’ these different setups without needing loads of extra Players/Instruments in Dorico itself.
I’ll get back on topic and offer more about the Opus libraries later. I haven’t used these as much and haven’t run into ‘problems’ yet. Seeing the OP’s project and expression maps would be a big help though.
Try starting and stopping the transport.
I think Dorico always sends CC123-0 to all end points when the ‘stop’ button is pressed. For instruments that recognize this, it means ‘ALL NOTES OFF’.
I ran some tests with a utility that spoofs what Dorico is sending to plugins. It is sending CC123-0, plus resetting some other things if the transport is going and the stop button is pressed.
CC123=All Notes Off
CC121=Reset All Controllers
CC64=At 0 mean Sustain Pedal Off
Pitchbend gets zeroed
I opened Dorico’s floating transport controls while the transport was NOT playing, hit the stop button (also key combo equivlents), and it did NOT send CC123. Bummer. As you say, it’d be nice if we could just reach up and tap stop, or a panic button of some sort to send CC123.
Maybe there is a ‘panic button’ buried in Dorico we’re missing, but I haven’t found it yet either.
I do keep an all note off panic button on my MIDI-Keyboard-Controller (CC123), but that only gets passed through to whatever stave/endpoint is active.
Doesn’t work in my experience, nothing but hitting that note again.
Interesting. Is this just for Opus, or do you get it with any other ‘plugins’?
Yeah, I bought the same a couple months ago and just started using it in earnest and have found and reported a host of bugs in OPUS. It IS quite buggy, especially for the price. I really expected more and I’m quite disappointed. Lots of just weird behavior where the UI isn’t updated correctly or at all after changes are made. When it works correctly, I do think the sound is incredible.
I have also experienced stuck notes, but only once, and strangely, it just started playing out of the blue when I wasn’t even in the instrument. Weird. This was in Reaper (I bought Cubase Pro 12 about 6 months ago, but no longer use it).
+If you are looking to purchase HOOPUS, you might want to wait until there is (hopefully) an update to fix some of this. One of the most aggravating issues I have is that sometimes an instrument gets flaky, and the only way I’ve found to fix it is to replace the instrument, which destroys your Mix settings, program parameters, and anything else you may have tweaked for the sound you wanted. It’s a setback. If you can, create presets of it all, and recall them, but what a pain.
Like I said with lots of different ones, including iPad. I haven’t carefully studied it but it happens not infrequently, and I have found that hitting transport doesn’t always fix.
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Too bad, EW unfortunately has always been a buggy provider. Play was bad, so far OPUS has been ok.
I’ve been working with EW Support and they can’t replicate what I’m seeing. They had me do a clean reinstall of the app and in my initial tests, it seems to have remedied this particular problem. Fingers crossed.
Seems like every time I launch Installation Center lately there are updates. Hopefully our bug reports are helping and fixes keep rolling in.
One thing that’s giving me fits is the move on Composer Cloud. Something they did was meant to give us more for the same price, but for me it’s leading to compatibility issues in older projects.
Something we had before (I forget all the subscription plan names) was only for the Gold level stuff. This new one goes to diamond level or something like that (more mic positions?).
Now I get all sorts of issues (no license for the gold stuff that was on my system). I had to download the upper teirs to get past the ‘license popups’. Old projects go nuts until I ‘manually’ change them to point to the new version(s).
As you say, loads of settings get lost in the move. It’s a real bugger for older stuff done in wordbuilder. If I’d forgotten to ‘save the phrases’ independently, all that stuff is lost if I can’t find a way to get the ‘gold level’ libraries back long enough to ‘export the phrases’ from the instance. Ugg…
Fortunately, I didn’t have too many word-builder projects going, and the few I did needed a lot of tweaking and refinements anyway.
If I’d had fully ‘finished’ projects of considerable size, I’d so be on the phone looking for a way to get my gold libraries back and running.
Strange indeed. I can’t say I’ve had many ‘sticky note’ issues with Dorico unless I was doing weird/experimental stuff with a dodgy plugin configuration beyond the scope of Dorio’s ‘intentions’.
There were however loads of exceptions with Opus and Play up through something like Dorico 3.5. I found some ‘work arounds’ and ‘kludges’ via Bidule (Play/Opus were expecting some messages that Dorico didn’t make at the time). Some of it seemed to be problems with Dorio and VST3, and some of it seemed to be the fault of Play/Opus. I don’t really know, but Uwe and people at EW were ‘communicating’ and working together to sort it all out from both ends.
Most things are far better now. I’m still missing a bunch of signals from Dorico 5 on the VST3 end that’d be very helpful (Such as the ASIO sample count). Oddly enough, it’s there for VST2 plugins.
I associate stuck notes with my first laptop which was underpowered. I didn’t get stuck notes with the gaming laptop afterwards, but I couldn’t get anything bigger than 8 GB ram, so switched to desktop which has plenty of processor power and more ram. No stuck notes there. I’m getting no stuck notes with Opus and NPPE. NP4
Now I get stuck notes trying to use the virtual keyboard with Dorico for Ipad. I have a strong feeling it’s due to processor power for my ipad. I have a Ipad pro, but not the latest chip. Missed it by a few months. Maybe it works okay with that one.