Thanks to Bill for suggesting I reach out to Symphonic Riot. They responded quickly with a new version of Articulate Maps that is in "final testing stages". I installed it and it solved all of my issues - automatically loading VI Pro, expression maps working with VI Pro instead of VE, and Dorico no longer hangs each time I play a score.

Kudos to Symphonic Riot for being so responsive!

"The Symphonic Riot templates come programed to use the VI Pro instruments directly in Dorico."

I've read that in the manual. Yet it never happened for me, even pre-iLok. Further, since the expression map only works for me via VE Pro rather than VI Pro, I presumed it was a typo.

Thanks for your help. I'll reach out to Symphonic Riot and update here when I discover what I've done wrong.

One other point - when I load separate VI for each voice rather than use the VE server, while I don't get any effect from the expression map, the software does not hang.

So VE Pro + Articulate Map - expression maps work, but software hangs.

VI + Articulate Map - expression maps do not work, but software does not hang.

I believe that's what I've been doing. I'm fairly new to the software, so I may be mistaken.

In the Dorico VST Rack, I select VE for each instrument. This opens one instance of VE Pro with a channel for each instrument. I then select the presets supplied by Articulate Map for each channel. It plays, then it hangs.

If I select Vienna Instruments Pro rather than VE for each instrument and then use the presets, the expression map has no effect - I just get standard detache regardless of what is marked.

Windows 10 PC with 32 GB RAM and a 2TB SSD.

I'm writing for string quartet on Dorico. VST is VSL Solo Strings loaded with VIenna Ensemble Pro 7. Since VSL provides no expression maps for Solo Strings, I'm using Symphonic Riot's Articulate Map.

Vienna Ensemble and instruments load fine (although a bit slowly). However, when I use Dorico to either play or export the audio, I get the spinning cursor and "Not Responding" message. The score will play to completion, but the spinning cursor remains and Vienna Ensemble hangs. It also hangs immediately if I have to audacity to actually write anything in the score with this configuration. However, if I kill the VE process with task manager, Dorico will respond. If I reset my expression map and VST to Dorico's default Halion SE, things work fine.

At this point, I don't know which application is the culprit. This happens with Dorico 3.5, 4.0, and 4.1, as well as every VE Pro 7.X version I've tried. Has anyone else experienced this problem and/or have a workaround?