Oops, I take that back. I'm still having problems. My wind choir trills properly now. But, in a separate score for string orchestra, I still cannot get harmonics to play back properly. I did install the SE+ Soundset, and updated the performance Dictionary as told in the help file. I made sure my manual soundset was set up properly, plus I made sure everything in the Sibelius mixer was on the correct channel. But now, not only do the harmonics play the same patch as before, but I can't get anything except the first and second violin sections to play back at all (MIDI channel 1 and 2). The violas, cellos, and basses are not playing a note, even though they work when I hit the "Test" button in the Playback Devices window.

I haven't got a clue what is going on.

Can you tell me exactly what settings you made on the Manual Sound Sets page?
What output do violas, cellos and basses go to when you hit play?
For the orchestral strings you need the Orchestral Strings Programs (Violins Orchestral, Violas Orchestral, ...). Also don't forget that if you have one section more than once in your score, you will also have to reserve two channels for it in the manual sound sets page.

Andi 

@Another User said:

What output do violas, cellos and basses go to when you hit play?

That's strange. Do they really go to Vienna Ensemble? Can you check up the channels 3-6 in Vienna Ensemble on arriving MIDI signals during playback? You can see it in the "bull's eye" of the Vienna Instruments.

Andi

This sounds a bit mysterious to me. Please do the following things to follow the signals during the playback.
1.) Open the Sibelius mixer.
2.) Take a look which output AND which channel the instruments go to (before AND during playback)
3.) Take another look which channels are set in Vienna Ensemble. They should be the same as on the Manual Sound Sets page.

If everything is set up right and things keep going wrong, you could try to create the instruments again in Sibelius and then cut and paste the content of the old staves to the new ones. That might help.

Andi

I've about given up trying to get harmonics to work.  Even when I create a new score with one staff and one instrument, create a new playback configuration, create a new VSL configuration, harmonics still won't work.  No matter how I notate harmonics, the legato patch always plays.  So I want to go back to basics:

in the playback configration, i have:

Vienna Instruments AU

Vienna Ensemble AU

VSL VST

Vienna Ensemble VST

I am using Vienna Ensemble AU.  Is that correct?

In manual sound settings, under sound set, I have

VE Speical EDITION

VE SPECIAL EDITION PLUS

VSL Ensemble Special Edition

VSL Special Edition

Which one should I use?

All string patches are orchestral strings.

In the user library application support/siebelius software/sounds directory, I have two files:

VE Special Edtion (Sib 5.2).xml and

VE Special Edition Plus.xml

Hello Jay!

Yes, Vienna Ensemble AU is the one to choose on Mac

I took a look at your records. You registered the Special Edition Standard and the Special Edition PLUS Strings Standard.
This means you have the PLUS content for the strings and the SE content for brass, woodwinds and percussion.
As a consequence you will need the VE Special Edition sound set for the winds and percussion and the VE Special Edition PLUS sound set for the strings. This also means, that you need two activated instances of Vienna Ensemble when combining wind and string instruments in one score.

Harmonics are working fine on my machine. I guess you combined the wrong sound set with the wrong string matrices. Please use the VE Special Edition sound set with the normal matrices and the VE Special Edition PLUS sound set with the + matrices.

The sound sets "VSL Ensemble Special Edition" and "VSL Special Edition" are older sound set versions. You don't need them.

Best,
Andi

The problem seems to be with the VE plus sound set file.  If I load the VE special edition soundset, articulations change normally (except harmonics, but that's not part of that sound set, so I don't expect that to work.)  If I load the VE Special Edition Plus  soundset, none of the articulation changes work:  pizz, arco, harmonics, legato, etc.  For some reason the violins load a slap pizz articulation and that doesn't change throughout the piece, no matter what articulation changes are in the score.  If I switch back to the VE special edition soundset, pizz, arco, sustain, legato all work normally again.

I can't find the VSL Ensemble and VSL Special edition sound sets anywhere on my hard drive, but Sibelius still shows them.  I wonder if that could be mucking things up.

Jay

On Apple computers the sound sets "VSL Ensemble Special Edition" and "VSL Special Edition" are included in the Sibelius installation and can not be deleted. But they won't do no harm. ;-) Just use the newer ones.

There is no problem with the sound sets. They have been tested a lot.

Did you make the program and channel settings on the Manual Sound Sets page for both instances of Vienna Ensemble? Maybe you overlooked the second instance with the Special Edition PLUS sound set.

Please mind, if you change the sound set, you have to reassign the programs on the Manual Sound Sets page.

Andi