The Sibelius Forum

Hello. I have been using Sibelius for many years and have suddenly encountered this problem: Playback has just stopped working. The options under Play are available; the green line is visible and can be moved as normal, but when I click the play button nothing happens. Sound is working when input pitches, etc.
Any ideas?

thanks

You aren't helping us to help you by not including any information abouot your version of Sibelius and which tier you have (First/Sibelius/Ultimate) and no information about your machine - OS (Windows/MacOS/Mojave/Big Sur etc), RAM, Sound Card (internal/external) and no information about your drivers or about the setup in audio engine options and Playback devices. We aren't psychic.

Gosh, I'm afraid that I don't even know the answers to some of things you mention here! I am a musician not a tech wiz! OK, here are the details I can give:
- I am using Ultimate
- MAC Pro (Zarathustra) desktop late 2013. 3,7 GHz Quad-Cire Intel Xeon E5
- Big Sur 11.6. 32GB 1866 MHz DDR3
- RAM ?
- Sound card ?
- Driver?
- Audio Engine set up?
- Playback devices? (I just get Sibelius to play back what I have written in it's default setting)

Anyway, I have just restarted my Mac & reopened Sibelius (for the 3rd time) and Play back is working again, so I am back on trtack!
I think I must have changed a setting in Play which has caused the issue, but have no idea what!

Thank you for your time.

Please be aware that versions before ultimate 2019.6 will not run properly on Big Sur or later.
Look under File-->Help-->About

Today I got exactly the same problem, however with the exception that there is absolutely no sound at all with or without headphones.
I've been using Sibelius almost 15 years now and this is the 1st time I've encountered this kind of a problem.
I use Sibelius Ultimate (latest update Aug.2019)
Mac OSX El Capitan
have 4GB DDR inside.
internal sound card

When starting the program I receive the following message:

Cannot find (or activate) PlogueEngine.dll/bundle

My biggest concern is, that we were supposed to make a new CD of my new compositions in May. Now I cannot hear what I write or have written. I am accustomed to all kinds of things going wrong during or after recording/editing/printing CDs, but before all of those, that's a new one, indeed.

Unfortunately I'm away from home for a week so i have no sibelius to work on. However if you go to the official sib forum and search the enormous database of questions, you will find the answer. I know this issue has occurred many times in recent years, but my failing memory can't recall what it was!

Same problem:
When starting Sibelius under Mac OS 10.12.6 Sierra, the error message "PlogueEngine.dll/bundle cannot be found or initialized" appears. Sibelius can still be used, but music playback does not work.

The problem seems to have occurred after installing Apple's "DeviceSupportUpdate". Newer versions of this "DeviceSupportUpdate" (since September 2021) are apparently no longer adapted to Mac OS 10.12 Sierra.

The following solution worked for me: From the System/Library/PrivateFrameworks folder, I deleted the following files:
AirTrafficHost.framework
DeviceLink.framework
MobileDevice.framework

Instead, I installed older versions of these files from a backup in the same location.

For me, the error message did not appear after that, and playback in Sibelius worked again. But be careful, such changes in the system can lead to unexpected problems. Be sure to make a current backup first! To delete or change files in the system folder, the computer must be started from an external volume. Alternatively, the computer can be started in recovery mode and the System Integrity Protection (SIP) can be deactivated in the terminal.

Apple uses push updates and some of these have caused horrific problems for people using older 'unsupported' MacOS versions. I'd advise anyone on an older Mac to completely disable automatic updates. Some of the updates have totally destroyed any chance of using Sibelius without a full reformatting and reinstallation of the Mac.