In Sibelius version 7.1.2, a bug was introduced on the Mac side whereby the ";auto-load"; functionality will tend to malfunction when multiple players are specfied in the Playback Configuration. If you are working with a big score (based on a template from The Write Score—[url=http://www.thewritescore.com]www.thewritescore.com[/url]) in which you need VDL sounds AND sounds from the Sibelius Player, and you are on a Mac, you may experience missing sounds or otherwise erratic playback behavior. This may be the result of Sibelius picking the wrong players for the task in the Mixer window.

To see an example of this, in the attached screenshot you will see a large score with many staves—both winds and percussion. For this score I have specfied a Playback Configuration of 1 Sibelius Player for the winds and multiple Kontakt 5 players for the VDL percussion sounds. By opening the Mixer window and hitting the button on the left that expands the mixer controls a few times, you can see the players Sibelius selects for each staff. You will see on the right side of the window that Sibelius has selected the [i]wrong[/i] player for the battery instruments—in this case, Sibelius Player.

The fix for this will be to manually select one of your Kontakt 5 players that you have in your Playback Configuration. You will do this directly in the Mixer window using the pull-down menus pointed out in the screenshot. In the example, I would need to select one of my instances of Kontakt for ALL 4 battery instruments on the far right of the mixer window. Once you start manually assigning these players, don't be alarmed if everything in the Mixer window blanks out. Just work on the staves in question and assign the correct players. Once you're finished, hit ";Play"; and Sibelius should now assign the correct players and instruments for those staves. This information will be saved with your score, so you should only need to do this once.

Be sure to have enough instances of Kontakt Player for this. I usually ensure I have one more than I normally need—that way I don't have to think about which of my instances of Kontakt to assign to any problem staves.

It is unclear whether this issue is on the Sibelius side or the Native Instruments side, and if/when it will be addressed in a future update given the precarious nature of Sibelius at the moment. If you are a Sibelius user, please take a moment to get up to speed on the current happenings with Avid/Sibelius and sign the petition at the following link:

[url=http://www.sibeliususers.org/updates/updates.html]http://www.sibeliususers.org/updates/updates.html[/url]

Hope this helps!

I do hope that there is a time in the near future when this information will be outdated - as in, when Sibelius releases an update. But in the meantime, very good info. Thanks Murray.

Hopefully you guys can help. I'm having a similar problem to the one you're describing Murray, but it's Sibelius Sounds that fails to load (most VDL 2.5 instruments load automatically, but a few need to be jumpstarted as you mentioned). I typically have no synth sounds, no low brass, and no saxes. It's hard to write with those instruments missing!

I thought it might be my installation of Sibelius, but I recently got a new computer and started from scratch (installed Mountain Lion on brand new SSD, didn't use Migration Assistant, installed Sibelius, Sibelius Sounds, and VDL from the most recent versions), yet I still have this problem. This problem happens both on older scores as well as new scores, as well as scores coming from other people for whom they work fine.

This is about month four that I've been having issues with this... and I can't figure out any workaround! I've been debating buying a library such as Garritan's Concert and Marching Band 2... Anyone using this combination successfully? Is it easy to combine the templates for the two(if it needs one)?

I'll do whatever is necessary, but I just can't stand not having half of the wind book playing back. Hopefully you wonderful geniuses can help get me back on the right track! :)

Thanks!

Matt,

What happens when you manually try to choose the Sibelius Player and instruments for those staves that have the issue? You ought to be able to manually select what you need for the affected staves in the Mixer Window, and then those selections should stay saved within that file. That means you should only have to do this once.

It's not ideal, as you shouldn't have to manually select these things, but that's essentially the same workaround discussed in this thread for the VDL side.

The problem still exists���the instruments in question show signal output in the meter, but do not actually playback. This applies to the instruments I mentioned above. This applies regardless of the instrument variety that is picked (Regular Tuba vs. FANFARE Marching Tubas both exhibit the same behavior). Hope that info helps.

Thanks Murray!

Are you for sure on version 7.1.2? Can you attach the score you're working on so I can open it up and try to reproduce? Also, please list the exact staves in question, as well as the player/instrument information you are attempting to manually incorporate.

Thanks,

Has there been any answers to this topic? Im in the same boat as Matt Jordan did on his lat post in 2012 and have found no joy in working it out. It seems that Sibelius works when it wants too. Any advice on how to get all my sounds to consistently play? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Marinedrummer - it would be best if you spelled out in detail what issues you are experiencing. This is quite an old topic, and in my experience Sib 7.5 does not produce these issues for me any longer. Spell out what's happening (what exactly you're attempting, the steps you took, the results you expected to get, and the results you actually got), and maybe attach your Sib file to see if anyone can reproduce the problem.