Hello!
I have recently switched to the latest version of Sibelius Ultimate after decades of sticking to 7.1.3. We have many orchestral templates using VSL soundsets and custom soundsets for other libraries.
When opening Sib7 templates with Sibelius Ultimate 2019.5, I found out that all a3/solo switches had stopped working properly. With woodwinds they stopped working entirely (e.g. adding "a3" to a flute staff has no effect), with brasses they switch randomly (e.g. adding "a4" to a horn staff may switch it to stopped).
My assistant and I made custom soundsets for other instrument librairies as well based on VSL's method as far as solo/ensemble switching is concerned, as everything created by the VSL staff is always top notch. In Sib7 it worked like a breeze. But now they stopped working, too.
I tried creating a small test score with only Vienna house style loaded and one flute switching to flutes a3, but could not make it work. I did various attempts to modify the sound IDs in the soundset (e.g. using "...flute.ensemble.3 players" instead of "...flute.ensemble" ; also removing the ".ensemble"), but to no avail.
I did some research and found out that Sibelius team have implemented support for a2, a3, tutti and all in Sibelius 2019.4. I quote:
Up until now, adding “a” numbers to a score, to denote the number of players needed for a passage of music, wouldn’t do anything in any sound library since Sibelius didn’t have a way to convert these to numbers of players. [...]
In 2019.4, Sibelius can interpret the number of players needed by reading “a2”, “a4, “a8” etc. into “+n players” soundID changes that any sound library, including NotePerformer and Sibelius Sounds, can interpret into changes in sound. For example, writing “a1” or “a 1” (with a space) or “à 1” into a score, will change the sound playing back to a solo instrument. In the same way, writing “a 8” will change the sound so you hear 8 players, and so on. Of course, the limitations will be in the sound library, so don’t expect this to work with everything.
For those interested, you can see how this works in the Playback Dictionary. Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see this:
^[aAà À][ ]?([0-9]+)
Those familiar with regular expressions will know exactly what this means, but those who aren’t, it essentially allows Sibelius to interpret any piece of staff text that starts with a, A, à or À that could have a space after it and then any number after that. It then triggers a sound ID change of +$1 players, where it takes the number entered in the staff text and forms the sound ID change to trigger the right number of players. Another change we’ve made is to reorder the sound IDs so the numbers of players have the same priority as .ensemble.
All in all, this has allowed us to support the following, which shows the sound ID changes that Sibelius goes through when playing this example. As always, these changes in sound will only be audible if your sound library supports them. If not, it’ll fall back on the best next sound.
URL to the sample image showing soundID changes : http://www.avidblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/n-players-with-sound-IDs.png
Emphasis is mine. That's when I got scared and decided I'd turn to you. And I guess I'm not the only one facing this issue. I'm afraid it calls for a global change in the way soundsets work. Or maybe I'm missing something? Maybe a new way to switch to ensembles is possible now, but we are at a loss. As far as I know, all my software and supporting files are up to date.
Thank you for your help with this!
Esther
My setup: PC with Windows 10, i7+64GB of RAM, VE Pro 7
Update: downgrading to Sibelius 2019.1 does not solve the issue.
