Playback templates

Dorico SE uses playback templates to allocate sounds from VST instruments and MIDI devices to the instruments in your project.

Playback templates combine the following information in order to obtain correct playback:

  • The instrument sounds, articulations, and playback playing techniques provided by plug-ins, such as VST instruments

  • The expression/percussion maps required to obtain those sounds

  • The endpoint configurations required for the sounds for each instrument

When you add instruments to players in a project, Dorico SE automatically loads plug-ins for them according to the current playback template and sets up expression maps and percussion maps as required. Dorico SE also automatically loads enough plug-in instances, as many plug-ins can only load a limited number of sounds in each instance.

You can override playback templates and make your own manual changes to the sounds used by instruments in your project, such as by changing the expression maps assigned to endpoints. You can then save such changes as custom endpoint configurations, which you can include in your own custom playback templates.

You can also export custom playback templates, for example, to share them with other users. Playback templates are saved as .dorico_pt files.

Note
  • Playback templates are available in all projects you open or create on your computer, meaning any changes you make to playback templates affect all projects that use those playback templates.

  • Dorico SE automatically loads sounds for any new instruments you add to the project, using the sounds included in the current playback template. Therefore, we recommend that you always include a factory default playback template at the bottom of custom playback templates as a fallback to ensure that all instruments are assigned sounds.

  • Any changes you make within plug-ins are saved when you save the project but are not communicated to Dorico SE, which can lead to unexpected low notes sounding in playback because Dorico SE is still using the expression and percussion maps for the original sounds. If you make changes in plug-ins, you must manually assign the correct expression and percussion maps to the appropriate endpoints.