The Sibelius Forum

Hello,

So, I've recently encountered a new issue: when I export audio from Sib files, the resulting mp3 (or WAV or AIFF) is silent. I'm not having any issue with playback (other than a need to reselect the virtual instrument I'm using, upon opening a file, before playback makes an sound). I thought this might be an issue with one of the virtual instruments, so I tried exporting using Sibelius 7 Sounds, Noteperformer, and General MIDI, none of which seemed to make any difference. I'm at somewhat of a loss as to what to try next. Many thanks in advance for any help!

(P.S. - I wasn't positive this qualified as Playback Problems, but it seemed the closest fit. Please let me know if I should move the question to another section).

This is a playback configuration issue, I think.

There are only 3 of us answering questions on this unofficial forum. I don't know the answer, so that leaves 2.

Better to ask on the official forum! https://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/helpce ... ?groupid=3

Thanks for the response! I'll try taking the question over there too - I appreciate the direction.

Are the .wav or mp3 files silent or empty (0 bytes)?

Are the tracks you are exporting muted or are other tracks (possibly without music) selected?

Thanks for the response.

The .wav/mp3 are silent, but not empty - 78 MB for .wav and 7.1 for mp3.

I don't have any tracks selected, and the playback on the tracks seems to be working normally in Sibelius itself. I also tried once unselecting the option for "omit muted instruments," and that didn't make a difference either.

OK.
Can you take screenshots of the following dialogs:

Play-->Setup-->Playback devices
Playback Devices-->Audio Engine Options two screenshots, one with the device selector closed (so I can see the entries in the boxes) and one with the dropdown list open.

The fact that you're having to reseelct your virtual instrument every time says to me there's some kind of issue with the configuration. If you have changed the sound player (NP/Sib etc) have you the saved it with a new name?

Thanks so much for troubleshooting this with me!

I'm attaching the requested screen shots. As to renaming the sound player - no, I'm pretty certain that I haven't done that. I was concerned that it was possible that I might have moved Noteperformer at some point (though certainly not recently) - so I tried reinstalling that last night, just to make sure that it was in the default position, which didn't seem to make any difference at all.

OK. That seems OK. Making recordings doesn't actually use the soundcard. Sib has internal algorithms that take care of converting the sib file to an audio file using wheichever sound library is selected for playback.

One thing I do notice is that your rewire repair button is active. it should not be. it should be greyed out.
Reset your machine.
Go to the Audio engine dialog and click on the button.
Restart your machine.

Repeat until the button stays grey. (You may only have to do it once or you may have to do it 4 or 5 times.)

Does this fix the problem?

No, unfortunately. I only had to do the rewire/reset once, before the button stayed grayed out - but it doesn't seem to have changed anything with the issue. Thanks for pointing it out though!

I did discover (in trying to export some other files, to make sure that the issue was not file specific) - that it still will export some of the voices in other files, so it's not actually not finding any of the sounds, just most of them. That said, I found a work around for now, since the playback is still working fine, it is possible for me to just do manual sound capture on the computer and use that.

Any other ideas on things worth checking? If not, no worries - and thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.

Can we verify your version number of Sibelius Ultimate and the operating system on the Mac please.

Older versions of Ultimate are not fully compatible with Big Sur (and any Mac O/S after that). Playback oddities like this are one regular symptom of such incompatibility.

Sure! My Sibelius Ultimate is version 2022.5 (build 1074, in case that matters). My operating system is MacOS Monterey, version 12.4. So, I think both of those things are pretty up-to-date -- I wouldn't expect compatibility issues there, right?

OK. Can you email me a file that does this? Maybe I can find something in the actual sib file. (Email in my sig.)