Weird VST behavior

Having an issue where one voice (Tenor) will drop out in my VST. I’m using the same VST for all 4 voices. I map Sopranos to one VST rack item, and so on. If I click on a Tenor note, I get sound. If I play the whole section, it sometimes plays the Tenors and sometimes not. Suggestions?

Are all four voices definitely assigned to unique channels in your VST plug-in? Or are you using a single-channel VST plug-in, in which case have you definitely assigned each track to a separate instance of the plug-in?

Yes - each voice is mapped to its own VST rack item, e.g., Sop = 02 - Opus and Ten = 04 - Opus.
What’s weird is it comes and goes. Without changing any settings, the Tenors sometimes sing. SAB always sing. I even reloaded the Tenor VST, etc.

EDIT - I even mapped Tenors to a Piano VST that is pretty solid. Still no sound. If I walk through each note manually with left and right keys, it plays each note just fine. But not in full play mode.

One more edit… I happened to notice that the MIDI data was “lighter” in color relative to the other voices. I double-clicked on a midi data point and the data point changed to more regular color and now it plays! But then it happened again - so not sure why those Midi horizontal bars are turning more translucent???

Is it possible you have been using the “suppress playback” property to silence notes in the tenor part?

Maybe (inadvertently!) - but why would they sometimes play and sometimes not? How do I turn off “suppression”? Can’t find it in help.

I reset playback over-rides - now even opaque looking notes aren’t playing back. Totally randomly (it seems).

There’s not anything random about which notes Dorico plays back. Try saving a copy of your project under a new name using File > Save As, then in that copy try switching to the default HSSE+HSO (Pro) playback template, and see whether playback is reliable then. I know this means you will temporarily not be using your preferred sounds, but I think it’s worth a try to see if the unreliability persists when using the built-in sounds.

I’m guessing that resets things- seems to work better now. But what command would trigger notes being “suppressed”? Thanks.

You would need to select them and activate the Suppress playback property in the Common group of the Properties panel.

That’s strange - b/c I only see the properties in the Engrave mode (?) and I never used that mode yet.

Hang on – you mention Opus which suggests to me you might be using an EWQL choir. If that is the case, it could be that you need a separate instance for each section and not just a separate channel, particularly if you are using Wordbuilder. Perhaps you could confirm exactly which choir you are using?

Yeah using separate instances - not just separate channel.

I’m quite happy to look at the project or a section of it if you’re using Holywood or Symphonic Choirs. I don’t remember ever having had behaviour with just one part like the tenors behaving in this way.

My guess is that actually you’re experiencing a bug that was reported last week here:

If I’m right, then you have in fact got multiple instruments assigned to the same endpoint, i.e. to the same channel on the same instance of the VST instrument you’re using, and edits you make to one instrument will then cause the other instruments that are currently routed to that same endpoint not to play back until Dorico recalculates the playback from scratch, which it does when e.g. opening the project. We have fixed this bug internally so it will be resolved in the next update, when it comes, but in the meantime, check that you really do have each voice part routed to a separate channel (or a separate instance) of your VST instrument.

1 Like