@caign said:
So I will be testing Sibelius 8.0.1.40 first and then registering an issue with Avid. I'll let you know how that goes.
I sent Andi my setup and he was able to reproduce the problem - which appears to be a Sibelius problem, not so much a VSL problem. Here's what he said:
I can reproduce the delays with your score and Playback Configuration. Here's what I would do.
- Keep this Playback Configuration as a template.
- For every new project create a reduced Playback Configuration from your template that only includes the instruments and sound sets that you need.
This should improve the performance although you still might get delays.
I'm sorry to say that there's not much more I can do about it.
I also contacted Avid support because I believe the problem is squarely in the Sibelius court. Here's what they had to say:
From your comments, I'm assuming you have already explored the 'speeding up Sibelius' options in the first section below, but I'm including them here to be sure. The one I find most effective in such situations is the last, 'Focus on Staves', as it's easy to get in and out of this mode with the shortcut option-command-F.
Speding up Sibelius:
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In File > Preferences, do the following from the categories on the left:
- Display; untick Translucent tool windows. In Sibelius 7 and later, untick Smooth staff lines, barlines and stems.
- Score Position; untick Use Different zoom. For Flexi-time input, it also helps to untick Follow playback line.
- Textures; click both the Color buttons and click OK. This will change the appearance of the score and desk to be plain colors, which will decrease the load on your computer.
- Using the Focus on staves feature reduces the number of staves that Sibelius has to actively update, thus saving CPU time, and making Sibelius more responsive. It also allows you to focus on individual instruments which can make larger scores less bewildering and more easy to work on.
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It's really a threefold issue when this starts to occur with VSL and other complex VST setups in Sibelius.
Sibelius processes the score linearly whenever change is made or a note is clicked, so it has the previous information available to it in order to play the note correctly or apply any layout adjustment as required.
While this is useful for keeping everything in check throughout the editing process, as you've discovered, it creates an increased drag on processing the larger a Sibelius score gets, and it would take multiple iterations of exponential increase in computer processors speed to actually have a significant effect in reducing this.
As processor speed is no longer something that increases dramatically with the release of new of computer models, a 'newer faster computer' isn't really going to help much in most cases, if you're using a reasonably powerful computer already.
The use of complex VST's that make use of a lot of switching via the Sibelius 'Sounset' setup coupled with the issue mentioned above creates a further intensive processing requirement.
If you're finding this becomes too crippling, although such processing procedures and VST handling may be improved in Sibelius in future to make it more efficient under heavier loads, for the time being there are three practical options I tend to adopt when this becomes a problem in larger scores:
1. Switch to Sibelius 7 Sounds and see how performs with those by comparison (if practical - some VST's use vastly different 8ve ranges etc for their own internal reasons, so I understand it's not always easy to do this).
2. Switch to general MIDI (if practical as above) if it's only pitch-feedback that is really important at the time, and I can get by with this during the editing and composition process, without the burden of my complex third party Sound library slowing everything down unnecessarily.
3. If the third party library is integral to the composition process, consider shifting the third party VST to a Digital Audio Workstation Application like Pro-Tools or Logic, and connect sibelius to this via the use of IAC busses, which are essentially virtual MIDI connections you can use between applications in Mac environment.
The third option is a bit music-tech intensive, but if you do a lot of writing for the same type of ensemble, then you may only have to create a handful of playback configurations in Sibelius, and session templates in the Digital Audio Workstation that you can call upon to reuse as and when necessary.
More info on this is available here:
http://www.sibeliusblog.com/tutorials/route-sibelius-or-finale-midi-to-logic-via-iac-bus/
This essentially removes the processing burden of running the third party VST in sibelius itself. It's certainly not as convenient, but if it gets around the situation of suffering a 15 second delay on clicking a note and hearing it's audible result, while allowing you to use the sophisticated virtual instruments you require then I think it's worth a look.
Let me know how you go or if you'd like more info on any of this.
*I imagine you'll want to add your vote to this entry on Sibelius ideascale too:
http://sibelius.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Better-VST-integration/103400-22221#idea-tab-details
There was some additional conversation with Avid support about a computer's "linear processing speed". Basically increasing the number of cores and amount of memory does not really help to solve this problem, as it's the "linear processing speed" that determines the delay I have been experiencing.
Personally, I think it's a problem that could be solved by some clever software engineering within Sibelius, but I suspect it's not first on Avid's list of proirities to address.
In summary, there's no solution.
To work around it, I'm going to use shorter Sibelius scores and one configuration per score, using only the instruments I need. And continue to swap to general MIDI configuration 😞 And after I'm done with my short to medium term requirements to write in Sibelius, I'll use VSL more from within a DAW (MOTU Digital Performer), which gives you finely grained access to the entirety of your VSL library. Apparently this is the way to make really expressive music using VSL - see this post.
I'm sorry this is not more helpful. It's definitely an unsolved problem.
