Sibelius Playback/Soundset Issues

[Oguz Sehiralti]

Hello,

I have been using the VSL house style and soundsets for a while now, but I've been having serious problems with my last project. 

First of all, I started the project with the Dimension Strings (1 per section, i.e. 5 solo strings in total). I selected the corresponding Dimension Strings instruments and SoundIDs and everything was fine at first, but later I started getting mixed soundID switches, i.e. pizz. notes appearing out of nowhere, etc. I decided to try out with Special Edition+ solo strings (switched the instruments and soundIDs), and got somewhat better results, but the Solo Viola just refuses to switch articulations. Tried adding "ord." texts, etc. Is there any limitation within this soundset system that I'm hitting now? Are there any workrounds? I tried reinstalling the sound sets, relaunching the playback configuration, and restarting Sibelius and VEP multiple times but it did not work.

An interesting observation is that, there seems to be a delay of some sort in articulation switching. I.e., a pizz. marked note does not switch, but three notes later, an arco note gets played back as pizz. etc. Could there be some latency issue? Tried different buffers but did not help. The sad part is that, I was hoping to upgrade my Special Edition solo strings to the full library, but since I mostly work with notation, if this does not work for me, it probably does not make sense for me to make the upgrade.

Some details:

• Windows 10 (i7 4770k, 32GB memory)
• Sibelius 8.4.0
• VE Pro 5.4.15566

I hope someone has some ideas that could help. Thanks in advance!

[Bill]

I would always start by getting the latest version of Sibeious, 8.5.1.

[Oguz Sehiralti]

Unfortunately I cannot update my Sibelius at the moment (due to problems I have had with Avid). But given that these Sound Sets have been around for a long time, I would hope for another solution. But thanks for the suggestion!

[andi]

Hello Oguz!

Your problem can have different reasons. It's crucial that everything in the Sibelius setup and playback configuration is correct. I don't think that your problem has anything to do with latency or that you come to a limitation. Please go through the Troubleshooting chapter of the "Optimizing Sibelius Playback" manual. In most cases you should be able to find the reason and a solution for your problem there.
https://www.vsl.co.at/en/MyDownloads/Notation_Related

It's also possible to use our Solo Strings I and II collections with Sibelius. These collections won't solve your problem though.

Best regards,
Andi

[Oguz Sehiralti]

Hi Andi,

Thanks for you reply! I have read the document multiple times and tried everything I saw there. Here's what did not help:

• Reloading the house style
• Reloading the (correct) instruments and deleting the older ones
• Setting the instruments to "auto" in the mixer
• Trying out different libraries (dimension vs. special edition, with the correct sound sets)
• Adding "ord." before the problemmatic parts.

Is there anything else I'm missing?

[andi]

Hello Oguz!

The Sound IDs of the instruments in your score and the programs on the Sibelius Manual Sound Sets page have to match. Which instruments do you have in your score now, which sound set did you load, which programs did you add on the Manual Sound Sets page and which VI presets did you load in the Vienna Instruments (Pro)?

Best,
Andi

[Oguz Sehiralti]

Hi,

I selected the "solo" instruments from the VSL house style. The SoundIDs (programs) are from the solo string instruments from the "Special Edition Vol.1+" sound set. And the patches I used in VI Pro are from the Sibelius patches made for the solo strings in Special Edition Vol.1+. I can post screenshots when I'm home, but I'm fairly sure that they were correct. Also, the switching problems start appearing after a while in the piece; not in the very beginning.

[andi]

This sounds correct. If you want to, you can send your score and Sibelius playback configuration (xml file and files in the data folder) to support@vsl.co.at and I will take a look at them. On Windows computers Sibelius playback configurations can be found in the following folder:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Avid\Sibelius\Playback Configurations

Best,
Andi

[Oguz Sehiralti]

Hi Andi,

Thanks for the reply! I was just about to send you the files, but I came up with a debugging idea and figured out the culprit. There is (apparently a known) bug in the Sibelius playback system about the trill lines. I have been using the trill lines mostly as "fixed" with 1 half step, and they work well in that configuration, but in this file I had trill lines with larger fixed steps which made the playback mess up. Apparently, Sibelius keeps sending the trill soundID in those cases, even when the trill line is over. So, disabling playback of the trill lines solved my issues. If anyone with playback problems stumble upon this thread, I'd suggest checking that out. (And according to the release notes of Sibelius 8.5, this is not fixed there either.)

I found that adding the technique text "natural" to the end of the trill line somewhat works around the problem, but I still got some issues, so I'll most likely delete the lines and use written-out trills. However, if I would manage to solve this issue with the trill lines, is it possible to configure the trill line so instead of the trill1 and trill2 samples in solo strings, I would trigger legato or fast legato? It would be useful for the cases where the trill size is larger than those two. Also, has this problem ever been encountered here, or has anyone found another workaround?

[andi]

Hello Oguz!

The trill bug is known. I have talked to the Sibelius team several times about it. As you have already done, I would also exclude the trill line from playback, when the problem comes up. As a workaround you can send keyswitches as MIDI Note On commands as explained in the "Optimizing Sibelius Playback" manual, page 21 to trigger the trills. If you want to write out the trill and perform it with legato (or legato-fast), simply add a slur.

Best,
Andi