[SOLVED] Some instruments don't produce sound

[AberforthD]

Hello,

I recently migrated to a new PC and at first it seemed everything worked fine. But then I discovered that some instruments don't produce sound. I have a license for almost all VI (The Symphonic Cube) and most instruments work fine. The few instruments I discovered so far that don't work are:

Oboe II, Timpani A, and Timpani B

None of the patches for these instruments work. I can see that VI Pro receives a signal from the DAW, but the patches stay silent (even with Volume, Expression, Velocity all up). They are not shown in red, so it's not a problem with the license. I checked the directory manager and they are listed correctly. All instruments are located in the same parent directory and the manager finds all instruments correctly. I tried to remove everything and then add them again to the manager, but to no avail.

What is really odd is that most other instruments work fine. I did not check all of them, but the ones I use in my standard template are all OK:

Piccolo, Flute I & II, Oboe I, English Horn I, Clarinet in Bb I & II, Bass Clarinet, Bassoon I & II, Contra Bassoon

Dimension Horns 1-4, Dimension Trumpets 1-2, Dimension Trombones 1-3, Cimbasso, Tuba

Drums A, Snare A, Piatti A, Triangle A, Tambourine A, Glockenspiel A, Castanets

Orchestral Violins, Violas, Cellos and Basses. Harp I & II

Does anybody have an idea what could be wrong and what I can do to fix this?

Arnold

[Raymonde]

@AberforthD said:

Oboe II, Timpani A, and Timpani B

What is really odd is that most other instruments work fine. 

Does anybody have an idea what could be wrong and what I can do to fix this?

Hello Arnold: 

I have this problem fairly often and have memorized a check list-in addition to what you've already done. 

This assumes you are using Vienna Ensemble as a plug-in inside your DAW.

1. Be certain that VI player does not have the instrument located in a blank cell, something may have happened to move the matrix setting to a blank cell.  If that is the case; either load a patch to the empty cell or select a cell that has an active patch loaded into it. Also be certain the cell is not greyed out if a patch is loaded into it, as that means the cell is in a disabled state. Right click on the cell to enable. 

2. Be certain that the tracks settings in the DAW match the name of the instance (bank) and channel in Vienna Ensemble. Again, something may have caused the DAW to be connected to the wrong instance, or to the incorrect channel. 

3. As a last resort, delete the instruments from the VE instance where they were loaded and reload them.  If you have the patience, rather than reloading, try to find if any of the sliders in both the performance tab and slot editor have been changed so as to make the instrument inaudible. That's why I recommend discarding the instrument out of the instance and starting fresh-I've found that checking all of those sliders takes far longer than reloading the instrument into the instance again. 

Finally, be certain to watch all of the videos about VE pro and VI pro, I've watched some of them several times and they are always instructive. 

Respond back to the forum if you need to. 

Regards

Ray

[MMKA]

Hi Arnold,

Just an experience of mine.
I don't know if you are using Vienna Ensemble Pro, but in that case the Integrated Vienna Equalizer Pro can be the problem. When you are using that plugin (especially with using band 1 and/or band 8) on the silent instruments, probably you will get sound on that instrument if you disable Integrated Vienna Equalizer Pro.
VSL knows about this problem and is working on a solution.

Perhaps this helps...

[Raymonde]

@MMKA said:

I don't know if you are using Vienna Ensemble Pro, but in that case the Integrated Vienna Equalizer Pro can be the problem.

Thanks for the noting the problem as I was not aware and have often experienced mysterious, silent instruments, say one out of 15 in an instance. 

[AberforthD]

Hello Ray and MMKA,

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm using VI PRO inside VE (standard, not PRO). The patches are active and selected. It's also certain that the instrument is correctly connected to the DAW because I can see the green LED light in the instrument blinking when it receives a signal. Oboe II is on channel 6 of VI instance 3 and the Timpani are on channel 9 of VI instance 1.

The problem must somehow be related to the patches themselves because if, for example, I load a patch from Oboe II in another VI instrument (say Oboe I) it stays silent whereas the patches from Oboe I work correctly in that very same matrix.

I'm getting a bit desperate because even if I could live without Oboe II, I can't really live without Timpani A and B. As a temporary solution I use a pitch shifted version of Oboe I as a surrogate for Oboe II and I use the hits and rolls from the Processed Percussion Timpani (Fortunately they work!).

I would be very grateful is somebody has other suggestions. Thanks,

Arnold

[civilization 3]

My experience has been that several pretty different instruments can stop sounding at any time. I have had an instance of Kontakt that would sound on either 1-2 or another, eg., 7-8 until I got a group of VI instruments to sound on 1-2 or 7-8 in which case the Kontakt would stop sounding, and vice versa. It was insane.
Also, an instantiation of MIR Pro or the VS Pro Equalizer would stop a channel sounding, then remove and reinstantiate and now it would sound. I don't expect there's any rhyme or reason but that iLok cloud has a layer that's messing with a lot of aspects, including performance. I'm sticking with 1 stereo out per instance rather than guess at something that can't make sense.

[civilization 3]

This was all fixed in the latest hotfix.

 

although one of two instances in a Server project still opens with the default window setting (the last one focused on it appears. No problem, that's nothing.).