Default playback speed ignored in simple sample

Discuss playback problems, including VST, Garritan, MIDI, etc.

Moderators: Peter Thomsen, miker

GarryW
Posts: 59
Joined: Fri Dec 22, 2017 9:13 am
Finale Version: 2014.5 and 26
Operating System: Windows

Post by GarryW » Thu Mar 15, 2018 9:05 am

I have been through the archives without finding help.

What I've got is a simple playback tempo on a simple sample that's being simply ignored...

I've boiled a problem in a much longer work down into a test file; please see attached. Open the file. Set the Playback Controls tempo to "quarter note = 400". Play it back. It should play back fast - and on my machine it does. Change the tempo to 20. Play it back. Playback should go slow now, of course. But on my machine, at least, the playback still goes fast.

Why?

There are no explicit Tempo Expressions...

There is no MIDI data that I know of... (I go to Tools / Selection Tool; then Edit / Select All; then Edit / Clear Selected Items / None / MIDI Data / OK.)

Human Playback is turned off... (I go to (playback control) / Playback Settings / Human Playback / Human Playback Style; I see that it's set to "None".)

I am running Finale 2014d.v5030 on a PC.

Thanks much for any help!


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Peter Thomsen
Posts: 6603
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:47 pm
Finale Version: Finale v27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu Mar 15, 2018 11:08 am

Perhaps it is just a matter of the playback “buffer” remembering the previous tempo?

Try this:
Open the document.
Play it back.
In the Playback Controls, change the playback speed.
Save.
Close the document.
Open the document again.
Play it back.

When I do so, I hear that the playback tempo has changed.
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

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zuill
Posts: 4418
Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2016 9:35 pm
Finale Version: Finale 2011-v26.3.1
Operating System: Windows

Post by zuill » Thu Mar 15, 2018 1:29 pm

Odd file. Playback was set to start at bar 2110. What? When I changed that to 1, it still didn't play back properly. So I changed to Standard HP and it worked properly. I then changed it back to None and it still worked properly. Maybe the fact that this was created in version 3.5 is part of the problem. Finale has changed a lot in 22 years!

Zuill
Windows 10, Finale 2011-v26.3.1
"When all is said and done, more is said than done."

GarryW
Posts: 59
Joined: Fri Dec 22, 2017 9:13 am
Finale Version: 2014.5 and 26
Operating System: Windows

Post by GarryW » Sat Mar 17, 2018 7:56 am

Oops. I think I vaporized my reply here, via the "Save As Draft" button. Let's see if I can reconstruct what I said...

Mr. Thomsen... playback changes when the file is simply closed and opened?
Zuill... playback changes when HP is simply switched over and back again?

Well, we've got two different work-arounds here!

Thanks. I will work with that.

And I'll add a gratuitous editorial comment, on the subject of Finale code + saved state information => possible programming chaos...

Because the above sounds for all the world like bugs in the Finale code. Again. In this case, I guessing that the Finale engineers must be saving quite a bit of state information, to get things to play back cleanly, rather than just computing things from scratch, as needed, in the obvious sort of way. Why they do this I don't know. Saving state makes your programming way more difficult and buggy. Perhaps when the world was raw and formless upon the void, like, in 1990 or whenever, the Finale engineers had trouble getting things to play back fast enough. So they started pre-computing "state info"... and they never removed the cruftiness.

For example... I noticed recently that they actually exposed some state information in the way repeats are handled. See Repeat Tool / Repeat / Check Repeats. The sequence of measures created by the repeat markings is all laid out there, computed in advance, all nice. Problem is, if you use the "Go To Measure" repeat notation, computing the "sequence of measures" is no longer nearly as simple. Especially if the playback is started somewhere in the middle. And, sure enough, the "all nice" "Check Repeats" turns completely wrong, and bizarre playback chaos starts happening, sometimes hundreds of measures away from the actual "Go To Measure" that triggers the chaos bug.

Oh well. Finale is what we've got. I can't afford, in time or money, to switch to Sibelius... (not that I know that they're any better.)

Thank you both for the help.

PS: yes, the source file my snippet came from is more than 2000 measures long. Simple stuff (fiddle tunes & harmonies), but quite a bit of it... 3,492 bars and counting. And yes, a predecessor version of the file probably really was written with Finale 3.5! Years ago.

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