Synchron - Sibelius Midi Channel changes when using Marcato

[BigAl123]

Hi - I'm seeing this strange behavior and I've isolated the problem to using marcato, with either technique text or keypad symbol in Sibelius 2019.7.  Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

To test this, I have created a simple playback configuration with 4 instances of Synchron Violins, Midi 1 through 4.

I normally "manually" assign channels to match the VEPro7 Server project configuration.

Everything works fine when I audition from Sibelius using the speaker icon in the mixer channel strip.  Channel 3 or Channel 4 activity is seen in VEPro7.  That tells me the channels line up fine between Sibelius and VEPro.

If I specify marcato with either text or keypad symbol in Sibelius, then Sibelius appears to change the path to another midi channel for that staff.   In this case below, the second staff plays out of VEPro channel 1 instead of 4.  Most of the time, it plays on the channel one less ie, instead of channel 3 it plays on channel 2.

I'd appreciate any advice to help me to fix this.

Thanks - Alain

[andi]

Hello Alain!

Such a problem can have different reasons.
Generally it is recommended to leave the output device and channel settings in the Sibelius mixer alone. Making settings there can mess up the playback. If you have already made settings there or are not sure, reset all outputs in the Sibelius mixer to (Auto).

On the Manual Sound Sets page, the "Synchron” programs only work correctly when the corresponding "[VSL Synchron Strings]" instruments included in the "Vienna Symphonic Library" House Style are loaded from the Sibelius "Add or Remove Instruments" menu.

Does that help?

Best regards,
Andi

[BigAl123]

Hi Andi

I had tried your recommendation and I just confirmed again.  The two staves in my sample are in fact the Synchron Strings as you mentioned. I had imported the house style based on the optimizing document for VE/Sibelius.  I also selected VE Strings soundset as per the manual.

I changed the two mixer settings back to "auto" and that didn't correct the problem.

I had a thought.  I know the Sibelius Mixer is finicky.  My original problem had to do with force routing Sibelius to the correct channel in VEPro.

I was manually assigning the channels so that I can ensure the staves point to the correct slot in VEPro.  I don't know how to ensure the 2nd violins go to the channel where I've loaded these in VEPro because the VE Strings soundset only has "Synchron Violins".   It gets mapped to SoundID "strings.violin.ensemble.synchron".   If I leave it to Sibelius to automatically do this, then it normally picks the wrong channel and inteferes with random instruments or it defaults to 1 on the left side channel and increments to the right for each instrument.

It's then that I noticed that Marcato was causing midi channel changes.

Is there a recommended procedure to ensure 2nd violin parts in Sibelius find the correct midi channel?

Alain

[andi]

Hello Alain!

If you have two instruments of the same kind in your Sibelius project, Sibelius assigns the first appropriate MIDI channel to the first instrument and the second MIDI channel to the second one. This can only work, if you have applied the same program on the Manual Sound Sets page to two channels. In your example the first violin should play on channel 1 and the second violin should play on channel 2. In my experience making manual channel settings in the Sibelius mixer always makes things worse.

Marcato doesn't trigger a change of MIDI channel here.

If you still can't resolve this, you can send your Sibelius project and Playback Configuration (xml file and files in the data folder) to support@vsl.co.at and I will take a look at your files. I will return to the office on Monday.

On a Windows computer, Sibelius playback configurations can be found in the following folder:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Avid\Sibelius\Playback Configurations

Best,
Andi

[BigAl123]

Andi

The problem is solved.  You pointed me in the right direction and I discovered a Windows 10 recent update that was causing the problems.

For anyone else that may suddenly experience really strange problems with soundsets, or playback configurations.  This is not a new problem and it has been reported that in some cases the Win10 V 1903 update can fail and leave the user profile in a semi updated state.

For instance, look in your "user" folder and verify that your profile looks correct.

Mine looked like this below.  Note the "username.000" instead of simply "username".  It's supposed to be a temporary step during the update but if the update fails to complete, then your system gets stuck that way.

C:\Users\username.000\AppData\Roaming\Avid\Sibelius\Playback Configurations

If this happens and you don't notice it, then the soundset installer will install the latest soundsets to this incorrect path and everything else will still point to the original path like this below.  This really confuses Sibelius, especially when creating or editing playback configurations.

Correct path...    C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Avid\Sibelius\Playback Configurations

It's a real pain to fix by the way and there are other things that could break such as your computer incorrectly being modified to be part of a domain instead of a simple workgroup.  For further information check here.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-update-1903-renames-user-fiolder/050a0bbe-a9b1-4a16-8239-7b7a9852022a

Thanks again Andi