Hi all,

I am having a similar problem with VE Pro 7 and Sibelius Ultimate 2020.1. Woodwinds and Brass have stopped switching from solo instruments to ensembles in scores that used to work fine. Here is a section of a sibelius file and the playback configuration.

I have tried updating and resinstalling all software and reinstalling the soundset.

Any help would be appreciated.

Best,

Nick

Hello Nick!

Such a problem can have different reasons. Did you check out the Troubleshooting chapter of the "Optimizing SIbelius Playback" manual? I would go through this chapter point for point. If you can't find a solution there and want us to look at your file, please also include your Vienna Ensemble Pro Server project and let us know in which bar and instrument you have this problem.

Best regards,
Andi

Hi Andi,

Thanks for your speedy response as always. Yes I've checked the guide and rebuilt an instance from scratch. Tried just a single flute line, tried reimporting a variety of house style (including of course the latest Vienna). No dice. Here is the server project. I posted an extract of the compostion in the previous post. The a2, I. and solo switches in the woodwind are not changing the channels.

Best,

Nick

Hello Nick!

I can reproduce that the "a2" command is not working correctly for the woodwinds in your project. This may have something to do with your playback configuration which includes different sound sets that include the same instruments (like VE Woodwinds+Brass and VE Special Edition). In your case I would edit the Sibelius Playback Dictionary entry Staff Text/a2: Remove "+2 players" from the Sound ID field. This should resolve the problem.

Best regards,
Andi

Hi Andi,

Unfortunately this time your helpful workaround has not solved the problem. :-(

I tried : 

Editing a2 in playback definition as suggested. No change with "+ensemble -divisi" or "+ensemble"

Editing I. in playback definition. No change with "-ensemble +1 players" or "-ensemble +player1"

Swapping VE Special Edition Plus. No change with "VE Special Edition" or "General Midi" or "VE Percussion" to avoid conflicts. No change.

Any other ideas?

I have the same problem when I rebuild an instance from scratch with only the Flute solo ansd Flute Ensemble.

Best,

Nick

Hello Nick!

That's odd. I tried the solution I suggested here, before I have answered your post. It solved the problem with your project here.

Did you now try it with a different project?

Best,
Andi

Thanks Andi. No, same project. I am also having problems with the horns, trumpets and trombones not switching. And I discovered yesterday that if I use div. with dimension strings, then unis. does not switch them back. All very weird. I tried updating all the software. Then I tried downgrading to VE Pro 6. No change. Before I rebuilt it, my server project was crashing whenever I tried to delete a channel. I tried various workarounds (from this forum) disactivating MIR Pro, resetting channel output etc and finally discovered that if I duplicated the channel I could then delete any channel. But when I deleted them my project (which had 176 channels) jumped first to 250 then 350 channels with duplicates of various parts of the orchestra. I patiently deleted them all and it seems to have stabilised, but maybe the vienna server instance is corrupt? But then again an new empty project with only 2 channels for flute solo and ensemble wouldn't switch either. I'm about to try manually replacing the Vienna House Style and soundset...

Probably a fresh reinstall of everything might help but I'm on a deadline for a project...

Best,

Nick

P.S. Happy Easter. Hope you and family are safe and well.

Hello Nick!

If Vienna Ensemble Pro crashes and a crash report is generated, please send us this crash report. Then we can take a look at what might have gone wrong.

The keyword "unis" doesn't generate any sound ID with the "Vienna Symphonic Library" House Style loaded. If you want to switch back to unison playing after a divisi passage with Dimension Strings, please use "ord." and "tutti" (or "a2", "a3", "a4", ...).

A complex setup like yours that uses sound sets that include the same instruments (like VE Woodwinds+Brass and VE Special Edition or VE Strings and VE Special Edition) can sometimes bring up seemingly erratic behaviour. I didn't anylyse your playback configuration in every detail. Maybe you can make a playback configuration that only uses the sound sets VE Strings, VE Woodwinds+Brass and VE Percussion.

Best regards and happy Easter,
Andi

I've just noticed Nicholas' reply and to further tell our side of the story here: the files that used to work in Sibelius 7 no longer were switching correctly to "a3", "a4" (depending on the instruments), but the commands "tutti" and "solo" still were working fine, so we used those instead. Nonetheless, this is a less elegant solution than the proper a3 or a4 traditional scores require.

After minute investigations the majority of instruments were still working properly, only some of the brass and (maybe?) woodwinds were problematic, I think. The lockdown makes it hard for us to check the files right now.

The template in question is also rather large: 3-3-3-3, 4-3-3-1, with many percussions, harp, piano, dimension + chamber + solo strings, with a chamber ensemble playing alongside a larger one. I must also add that we were using the "VE Woodwinds & Brass", "VE Percussions" and "VE Strings" soundsets with the full versions of the instruments, not the Special Editions soundsets, and we took care to avoid having two identical instruments in the same instance (flute 1 and flute 2, violin 1 and 2, and even strings of different VSL librairies are each on their own separate instance).

I hope this helps!

Esther

Hi Esther,

Thanks for your reply. I couldn't get this workling. Similar problem with a file that used to work fine. I noticed other problems and rebuilt the Server Project and the score (cut n pasted into an empty doc). This solved some of the problems but not all. Finally I upgraded everything to Synchron and stopped worrying about it.

Best,

Nick