As we have a new version of VE Pro and I never tested it with Dorico 6 I have once more tested if it is possible to use playback templates with VE Pro hosted instruments. Results are better than in the past but there are still some weird Dorico actions.
I created a template in VE Pro with a WW and brass instance both 3 ports and 16 channels per port. Not all used. I have one instance for percussion using the provided huge VSL channel set for the full SY Percussion library (6 ports x 16 channels). Plus the VSL provided channel set for Duality Strings.
On the Dorico side I added all WW and Brass solo instruments, the 5 string sections and 20 percussion instruments (so just a small extract of the full library). All with their EM and if required PM. All instruments are VSL SY Player based except two Orchestral Tools Sine WW instruments.
I created a playback template using the afore mentioned project setup with the 4 VE Pro instances WW, Brass, Percussion and Strings.
After loading the silence playback template and subsequently the newly created one all instruments connect to the correct instances. This is at least for me a huge improvement. This never worked in the past as many additional non connected identical VE Pro inserts to e.g. Brass where created in the rack and many instruments where connected to these rather than to the first one, the only one connected to VE Pro.
So that is good. Not good is that despite the correct instrument links, 5 additional percussion inserts of VE Pro are created in the Dorico rack below the valid one. Contrary to tests I did in the past they do not have any instruments connected to them in the track inspector. Very weird is that when you open one using the cog wheel, they do show all the instruments on the correct port channel combination as in the valid one.
So why are 5 none used instruments loaded in the rack which were never saved in the end point configuration? 5 is interesting as the valid one uses 6 ports. So 1 valid and 5 unused, total also 6. However Dorico does not open those unused rack entries for the other 3 valid ones while WW and Brass both have 3 ports.
I hope this test could help to finally make playback templates with VE Pro hosted instruments work at least for these simple playback templates without independent voice playback.
(I also tested independent voices but there you still get a complete mess with wrongly connected voices and dozens of unconnected copies of the valid instance with voices connected to them)
As you are aware, playback templates have never worked with VE Pro except in very limited usage cases.
The one problem that I care about is If you enable IVP for any staves, then it creates a duplicate instance in VE Pro for each voice.
This thread describes the reason for the IVP problem, and I’ve been tracking this since, but no progress has been made in this area. Still doesn’t work with VE Pro 8 as I would expect since it is a Dorico bug.
There’s a thread that describes a workaround if you are interested in modifying playback xml files that can work. But it’s tedious and if you make a change in instrumentation then you need to update the xml file every time.
There are other problems that I have not tracked closely, relating to divisi. I’ve seen lots of threads about this problem but since I don’t use divisi, I haven’t dug in to the reason for the problem. I suspect it is a similar issue.
Thank you for the links. The workaround is new for me. Yes I am aware of the problem and have also posted on it in the past However it was identified years ago (2022 probably even earlier).
That is why I wanted to give it a try again with a large but simple orchestra and without IVP. VE Pro is a tool used by many Dorico users. VSL has created EMs for Dorico and a directly loading playback template. VSL has now fully prepared channel set in VE Pro which can be used in Dorico. So it would be nice if a solution could finally be found to also use these in a playback template.
As I wrote there seems to be an improvement but maybe it is a coincidence. In the past I noted that applying such a template to a varying set of instruments part of the template not always resulted in exactly the same mess in the rack.
@dlb
I think if you avoid IVP, divisi, and anything else that puts more than one voice on a staff it should work.
Yes it does, quite nicely actually but it is very limiting. In particular not being able to independently route string or choir divisi is a deal breaker for me. My solution was to simply create a project with all the correct routing and just “Save as…” on a project-by-project basis.
@dlb I went through the interesting links you posted and opened the end point configuration with an xml editor and the playback template with a text editor. There does seems to have been some development since 2022 as they look a bit different as in the 2022 thread. I could not find any reason for the 5 dummy none used entries of the percussion instance in those files but I did find some strange references to other end points not used in this template. So I deleted the full playback template block and also the older referenced one and started afresh linking the percussion instruments in the inspector. I also deleted the percussion end point configuration but kept WW, Brass and strings.
I started with just 1 port and added linked some instruments and step-by-step to 5 ports making sure that each port had at least two instruments on the 16 available channel. I saved the percussion end point and recreated the playback template and now it works. Only one of each of the 4 instances and all connected correctly. Why? Maybe because some of the ports had no instruments connected yet in my first try. Or maybe just some legacy remainders of previous use of the same Dorico test project.
One of the reasons I revisited this topic is that I changed the way divisi passages are setup. I avoid using IVP and therefore a playback template combined with VE Pro comes into play again.
Instead of IVP with lower volume full section libraries, I now use two user created articulations divisi and unison. The first sets CC11 to between 64 and 70 and the other back to 127. The library uses velocity and CC1 or CC2 for dynamics and layering and CC11 is usually set to 127 but can be used for this purpose. So no more need for IVP for string divisi. Playback quality is good provided that you also set a dynamic marker to the bottom devisi voice. Somehow the velocities are not correctly adapted in that voice to dynamic marks set earlier in the score before the divisi section. Also just one at the start of the section in the middle does not seem to work correctly for me.
Someone probably also invented this trick and reported it in this forum some years ago but I never found any recent references to it.
The only trouble I have left now is that I also need IVP for brass as unfortunately not all libraries have a merged senza and con sordino preset.
Maybe not an ideal solution but I’ve recently built a similar template (VEPro/Dorico) and use lots of IVP so I can switch libraries by moving notes to different voices. I don’t worry about the ‘template’ functionality but simply open my file and Save As.. my new project name.
Yes project templates work fine also with IVP and you can also open projects with coupled VE Pro instances after just opening VE Pro but not loading a project. All instances load automatically which is very convenient when you open an older file and do not remember the VE Pro template which was used. On the other hand when you start with a project template, you first have to clean-up and remove the instruments you do not need from the flow or the full project and maybe add 1-2. It also does not work very well when you want to import XML or flows from other projects.
They work as long as you click “Preserve existing flows”. If you don’t click that, Dorico will create a new flow and all special IVP routing gets trashed. Same as if you create a new flow in a project with IVP. For that reason, I always use “Duplicate flow”, preserving all the routing and with a few clicks, the new flow is clean.
This is indeed not only affecting VE Pro 8 and not only related to IVP. I replied to a thread related to this issue, expressed my wish to get it fixed, and the only attention I got is “How?”. Then I realized I probably won’t see this issue get fixed before I stop using Dorico.
p.s. In that thread, I was using VE Pro 8 with Sine players.
I hope the whole system will at some point be reviewed and setup in a better way to get rid of all issues. IVP is great but independent of VE Pro, in combination with the whole voice management it really has a lot of small annoying issues which make you often lose a significant amount of time. All have been reported at length and are present since a number of years.