Ok, that’s what I originally thought. So there’s no benefit with loading or switching between Dorico projects with the non-Pro version. It just loads with the project.
I get this:
The Ensemble app is open, with an instrument loaded. I don’t know if there’s anything else I have to do to make it work.
If you hit Connect, what does the next window look like? If it asks for the server address, I think it should be 127.0.0.1.
I just get the connection error message.
That error shouldn’t be coming up and you shouldn’t see the connect button there. That’s what you see with pro. Perhaps your Vienna ensemble needs to be reinstalled.
Regular Vienna Ensemble doesn’t have the ability to make network connections either. The screen that is appearing should not be.
There is a separate application to run the service. Perhaps he has to start it.
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@benwiggy On Windows there is a separate application called Vienna Ensemble Service. Probably the same thing exists on Mac. Try running that.
Bingo! So, in fact VE Service is the app I need to use: and then I can connect Dorico via the VE VST to VE Service. And the VE standalone app does very little.
(Christ, what a palaver!)
Yeah the Vienna Ensemble Standalone is not what you would want. It is for musicians on gigs. You could plug in a midi keyboard, play instruments in standalone and have the sound come right out. Ex, gigs where keyboardist has to play virtual instruments that the ensemble doesn’t have and a DAW is unnecessary bulk.
But there’s also the Synchron Player standalone!!! 
Right but if you’re at a gig doing a doubling part and have to switch between virtual harp and virtual celesta you don’t want to have to exit the harp patch and load the celesta patch. In VE standalone you could load up the harp and celesta simultaneously on different midi channels and simply hit a button on the midi keyboard controller when you needed to change instruments from one to the other.
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Vienna Ensemble is the VSL-only instrument free download via the Vienna Assistant which is more or less essential for managing VSL stuff if you don’t have Pro. As @mducharme has said, it runs from within Dorico and not as a separate application like VEPro. The Synchron player standalone can only load one instrument at a time so if you’re not using VE, you need countless instances (like with the BBC SO without VE Pro) and everything’s much harder to handle in my view at any rate.
Can you explain what you mean by this, because from what we’ve worked out, as above:
- Vienna Ensemble is a standalone application, seemingly just for live playing.
- “Within Dorico”, you can either use the Synchron VST for each instrument, or the Vienna Ensemble VST, which connects to the separate Vienna Ensemble Service app. This app can hold multiple instruments.
Sorry if I’m being dense. Anyway, as I only have about five Vienna instruments, I don’t think I need much in the way of complex hosting.
it’s possible that we’re overcomplicating things here. By definition, any VST service is different from the stand-alone application, just as Kontakt is. But I wouldn’t myself separate Vienna Ensemble Service and Vienna Ensemble Standalone – a Vienna Ensemble installation contains both (again just like Kontakt). Dorico obviously uses the VST service called “Vienna Ensemble”.
As we’ve established, VEPro is a separate app where you set up the configuration independently from Dorico – the VST in this case simply connects to a VEP instance.
Here’s my first attempt using the strings meaningfully. It’s my own Expression map.
There doesn’t seem to be much difference in memory usage between using separate Synchron VSTs in Dorico for each player, and using 5 Synchrons in VE Service; but I dare say it might be more noticeable with bigger and more instruments.
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Sounds good!
nice, and better than I’d expected. Which libraries, exactly?
There might not be much difference in memory, but what’s the difference in loading times? If Dorico just has to connect to VSTs that are already loaded in VE Service, it should be faster than when Dorico has to load them itself. Obviously when you use more than 5 instruments this should be substantially noticeable.
By VE, does Ben mean VEP or the other Vienna (non-server) config he was posting about recently?
He means the non-Pro Vienna Ensemble Service app.
That’s the Appassionata Strings that come with Epic Orchestra.
Ah good point. However, the Epic Strings are almost instantaneous on my setup.