I opened up a file the other night that I've worked on a few times, and got an error while loading sounds. The playback configuration I was using had one instance of Sibelius Sounds (through Kontakt) and three instances of VDL through Kontakt Player 4. Although the file's sounds has loaded fine previously, this time I got an error that there was not enough memory, the message involved the word ";PANIC";.

I tried again using a playback configuration using Kontak Player 2, but got a similar ";not enough memory"; message.

Knowing the score had been fine previously, last night I bit the bullet and just rebuilt it from a scratch VDL Template 6.0a. I added all of the appropriate instruments, correct number of measures, rehearsal letters, and tempos. Then I pasted all of the staves from the screwy file into the new file, switched back to the playback configuration that used KP4, saved, and restarted Sibelius.

Since then I've had no further problems. Whatever was screwy in the file went away. Hopefully this proves useful to someone else.

That's interesting, Joe. I'm not sure I've heard of this one before, but I'm glad you were able to work through to a solution. Thanks for providing it here. I'm sure it'll be helpful for someone down the road!

Spoke too soon and jinxed myself, apparently. Last night I opened the new ";fixed"; file and again received a memory error. So apparently my effort expended rebuilding this score was wasted.

I will try switching all available instruments to their LITE versions and see what happens.

Well, I changed the battery and pit instruments to the available LITE versions. Unfortunately I still get the same error. The full text of the KP4 error is:
[quote]PANIC: could not allocate enough memory.
Application is likely to become unstable.[/quote]

If I press OK to this error and then try to play back the score, some or none of the staves play back. This is a big score, so I'm not surprised it's putting a strain on system resources; there are full winds plus battery and 9 separate pit parts.

One thing I did try with limited success - I changed from Kontak Player to Sibelius player for the Sibelius Essentials sounds. After doing that and restarting Sibelius, there is no ";PANIC"; error. However, my wind sounds are all GM and not virtual instruments.

Then, just for the heck of it, I assigned the Sibelius Essentials to KP2, and kept the VDL soundset stuff in KP4. Restarted Sibelius, and this seems to have worked alright. So for now I'm sticking with this; we'll see what happens the next time I open the file...

Anyone thoughts from the experts on this? For a while now my hybrid KP2/KP4 solution has been working (Sibelius Essentials in KP2, VDL in KP4).

I had the same error and was able to fix it the same way (hybrid KP2/KP4) with another score, so it's something that is linked to my machine or my Sibelius / VDL / Kontakt installation(s), not a particular .sib file.

The ";Panic"; message was something I used to get before I had my DFD dialed in with KP2 and K2. With Kontakt3 and later versions, DFD was not a configurable option. I'm not a whiz when it comes to the inner workings on Kontakt, so I can't vouch for what changed in those regards.

Are you on 32-bit XP? If so, are you using the 3GB switch? Any program in a 32-bit OS only has access to 2GB of memory at any given time without the 3GB switch. A search for it on any search engine will produce plenty of result instructing how to do it. If you already have that in place, then I'm not sure what the problem might be. If not, that would be the first thing I'd try.

Before switching to Windows 7, then my current Mac, I was on XP-32 bit for probably 8 years. It wasn't until I started getting more heavily into full band scores (like the one you describe) where I hit a ceiling with regards to memory. Someone pointed me towards the 3GB switch and it solved my problems, mostly.