Post by thehouseofandersen in BBC Symphony Orchestra Pro comments

Viewing post in BBC Symphony Orchestra Pro comments

Hi, I'm having a couple of hurdles, I hope you can help :)

Firstly, my sounds are loading but playing very clicky and gurgly. They sound ok individually when testing in the Spitfire keyboard but not when playing back the score.

I have set my ASIO buffer to 2048 samples (the max). I am trying to increase the preload size in Spitfire but Sibelius seems to be hanging after I hit Save. Is there a way to set the preload size as a default so all the instruments choose this when loading?

Secondly, I've tried creating a new playback configuration that has just the instruments I'm using in the piece I'm working on. But when it loads the second time, all the instruments are different to how they are listed in the configuration. Trombone is actually loading the Bass Clarinet sample in Spitfire, for example.

Interestingly, when I first Show the Spitfire VST, some of the instruments are appearing in Spitfire as "Sibelius - Bassoon 1 (Pro)" (or other instruments, for example). Have you come across this before?

I'm running BBC SO Pro & Sib 2024, installed just a few days ago, with 64GB ram and an AMD Ryzen 4900H. My BBC SO samples are running from an SSD in a USB C enclosure.

thehouseofandersen1 year ago

A third interesting thing just now is that when I closed the Playback Devices window in Sibelius, Windows seemed to unload all the RAM and then load the samples back in while Sibelius waited for it with a rotating blue circle... Is this what you meant in the notes about Windows wanting to reclaim the RAM?

Sibelius Services1 year ago

It might be, though it didn't used to happen immediately. But did this coincide with your playing with preload sizes? It's bad news when this happens, it really corrupts the sound.

Sibelius Services1 year ago

I think I put all my warnings about BBC SO Pro and its resource usage in the instructions. I've stopped actively developing sounds sets due to lack of support (both from Sibelius, sample library companies and the wider community). I will willing to devote my career to it, but people couldn't have been less interested. That and things like 8Dio and Orchestral Tools' engines being monstrously inefficient and Spitfire's being flaky...

As I remember, preload amount is not something specifically associated with a patch, it's something you'd set in the Spitfire UI before you actually loaded anything. BBC SO Pro is monstrous in terms of RAM though: for some reason it uses double the RAM of BBC SO Core.

Given that I last touched this some months ago (and it worked when I shipped it!), it's difficult to know what changes Spitfire or Sibelius made that might have caused issues in the mean-time: though I know Sibelius fixed the bug that meant house styles were corrupted when you loaded more than one of them. God knows what problems Spitfire have introduced though.

My own advice would be to use BBC Core (which is included in Pro, I think) for getting stuff done and for realtime playback (you've got a hope of getting that to perform decently in 64Mb.

> when I first Show the Spitfire VST,

You mean when my playback configuration is loaded? Each playback device is loading a preset, but it's entirely possible for Sibelius to get confused when re-saving as a new playback configuration and re-load in with the wrong instruments.

The whole thing is utterly brittle and maddening, and frankly I'm a little relieved I can now just program Golang for a big company without having to bash my head against it...

Look, if you want a refund I'll give you one. I don't think I've withdrawn the money or anything. None of this is really my fault, but then it's not your fault either...

thehouseofandersen1 year ago

Thanks for your reply, I fully understand the maddeningness! I can only imagine the hair-pulling trying to get these two completely separate things to talk to each other in a meaningful way.

I don't need a refund - I'm going to use your house style to export midi to then put into reaper, which should still save me a whole bunch of time :)

I've tried this with one movement of the score I'm working on now, and it seems to work excellently, though I haven't used any special articulations (expect pizz) yet. As far as you know, it should still send the right CC messages as per your articulation chart exporting from your house style?

Sibelius Services1 year ago

It should do, it's a complete implementation :) Sounds like you're using it the right way (it sends a combination of key switches and controller events, depending on context. It works really well for instruments where you can address all the articulations on one channel.

itch.io

Viewing post in BBC Symphony Orchestra Pro comments