Sudden playback problem in Finale 27

[DariusB]

Mac OS Monterey, Finale 27.
Did a whole day's work on a score two days ago, everything working fine. The next day,(yesterday) nothing would play back (this is via computer audio not MIDI). The green line moves, and all settings for audio are as they should be. Then Finale had to be forced to quit. Second attempt, and very occasional sporadic distorted sound, (this continued after hitting 'stop' on playback controls, weirdly). Force quit necessary again. Opened other scores and all had the same issue. Dragged Finale 26 out of the bin and opened it with that instead, didn't work yesterday but seems to work today. So am sticking with Finale 26 for now, but has anyone else had this?

[miker]

Did you restart the computer? Refresh the preferences?

[DariusB]

Thanks for replying. I did restart the computer but no luck. The OS audio preferences seemed fine and didn't change. The Finale ones also appeared OK but pressing the 'test' button resulted in an almost inaudibly quiet and slightly distorted sound. But I checked the sound in other apps and they were all fine.

[jazzpan1995]

I have had that crop up several times with mine. It also just happened with an arranging student. I went and switched all his sounds from Smartsynth to Garritan in the score manager and it fixed it. I suspec it has something to do with the Smartsynth library.

[oldmkvi]

Finale needs access to your computer's mic, I don't know why.
Check the Security Prefs on the Computer, make sure it grants access to the Mic for Finale.

[bvstudios]

Hope someone is still about and monitoring these pages.. I have a slightly different problem, though it may be related.

I was scoring a copy of Bolero for a full amateur orchestra, which necessitated changing some of the voicings to match the reality.

Everything was going swimmingly, instruments were playing back from my GPO5 (plus a few from JABB and WORLD) until last night.

Suddenly, all playback went dead silent. Notes sounded when entered, but when the piece (or the section of bars) was played back- nada.

Checked the Aria player- all seems normal there, though all the volume controls had mysteriously reset themselves to 0. Ran them all up again... no help.

Made sure the output was still as it had been - I use Bluetooth headphones for writing and Mackie Speakers for the mixdown, but the headphones run through the default.. It gets better..

Opened another project, one which is just about as complex, but is complete. It loaded all the instruments from GPO5/JAZZ etc and it played back as always. leading me to think it must be something I did in the Ravel piece... but I can't find it. One thing I did find-

If the Ravel piece is loaded and allowed to default to the basic Garritan sounds= it plays. Not well, but it plays.

What the heck is going on? I've checked Score Manager, laboriously hand-loaded the orchestra twice, made sure the correct sound and midi pointers match everything else in my collection, and still all I hear on playback is the sound of silence.. I even re-created the piece on a blank document and copied over a couple of measures... same silence.


Is there a switch I've missed somehow??

I came to Finale from an environment that includes Microsoft Office. Often the template (normal.dot) in Word would corrupt and a simple fix was to delete/rename the template then restart Word... I don't know if there is such a default template in Finale nor how to delete/rename it, but if there is, the fact that other .musx files all open, load Garritan etc properly and playback ok leads one to think the template (if that's what it is) is ok..

So I've come all the way around to "What did I do to this one piece to mess it up?"

[motet]

Have you rebooted your computer?

[bvstudios]

Yes. Several times, in fact. Here are the settings that seem to be in play:

Audio Setup
Audio Driver - Direct Sound (Asio doesn't play well with Win 11 and my built-in sound card)
Output Source- Speakers (C-Media Audio) (on headset, it picks up the bluetooth phones I use)
Buffer size 512

VST Banks & Effects
Bank 1- Aria Player
Bank 2- Aria Player (both loaded from Garritan products)

Simple Entry Options
Use MIDI device for entry

I don't see anything amiss.....and Finale still plays other pieces perfectly.

[motet]

Look at the Score Manager and make sure things aren't muted.

[bvstudios]

No, none of the instruments are muted (or soloed)

I just tried a "new from scratch" tune, making up my combo from a blank template (organ, drums, bass, piano). Assigned all staves to Garritan JABB instruments, saw them pop up in Aria, and heard each note as I entered some random thoughts on the paper.

Used Score Manager, set each stave to it's own MIDI channel. Opened Aria player from within Finale and noted the default "Garritan Instruments for Finale" were now in the slots. Swapped them back to the JABB/GPO5 that I wanted to use and hit "save"

Playback? Soundless.

Reset the instruments to the defaults that came with the app, and... sounds. Not great sounds, but sounds.

It's beginning to look like I need to reload or maybe re-point Finale to the proper Garritans, but how?