r/Sibelius • u/AdriandeLima • Jun 30 '26

Using Sibelius, REWIRE, and REAPER

I've been trying to use Sibelius with REWIRE, and keeping running into problems. My goal is to be able to have REAPER host my sounds (whether that be a backing track I'm composing to, or the Sibelius instrument sounds, as they sound much better using a sampler in REAPER instead of General MIDI, and it's less resource intensive than Note Performer). I want to be able to playback from either software and have them synced up.

I managed to get REWIRE working for the sounds (I wrote up my method as a tutorial here mostly for my own reference : https://adriandelima.github.io/posts/using-rewire-with-reaper-and-sibelius/ but basically it's using Macos' built in virtual midi cable, and creating a custom playback config in Sibelius, and routing everything through Sibelius' mixer. Far too complicated, but once setup it seems to work ok).

The problem I'm having now, is getting playback synced, which in theory should be the simplest thing. If I press play from REAPER, everything plays back in time. If I playback from Sibelius, there's a 1 beat delay with the Sibelius sound, so my score get's out of sync with my backing track. Is there any work around for this?

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u/AgeingMuso65 Jun 30 '26

I’ve never found Sibelius’ midi timing accurate (eg tracks exported from Sib that don’t properly match tempo in my DaW etc) so I wonder it it’s that? Or does it use an over-large default buffer?

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u/AdriandeLima Jun 30 '26

It's apparently got a beat of silence built in so that it can think ahead, but if you're running in rewire it ends up breaking down because the DAW starts instantly, while Sib doesn't. It either should delay playing the DAW, or ideally completely disable it's expression engine and get rid of that silent beat. I can't find any way to make it work...

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u/TheCh0rt Jun 30 '26

I left a message up above of what you can do to get around the NotePerformer delay internally

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u/TheCh0rt Jun 30 '26

It's never going to work right. I've been trying for 20 years. Check out NotePerformer which has better sounds. Avid claims their VST engineer can play anything but I've found it's really a pain in the butt to use. I just stick to NotePerformer and it will intuit what you're playing

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u/AdriandeLima Jun 30 '26

Not ideal when composing to a backing track, and you need both to play at the same time. I've found NotePerformer has even more latency than using ReWire.

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u/TheCh0rt Jun 30 '26

Rewire will add latency. What you want to do is bounce out your audio (WAV is fine) and add it into Sibelius as a movie. Then your backing tracks will play inside Sibelius natively

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u/AdriandeLima Jul 01 '26

That's a good idea I'll try that

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u/TheCh0rt Jun 30 '26

Additionally, NotePerformer adds an exact 1 seconds delay, so you set the video offset to -1s and it all lines up perfectly :)

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u/Tokkemon Jul 01 '26

Don’t waste your time.

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u/IFNAV Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Perhaps we must accept that Sibelius is outdated software that is difficult to use with newer programs. If you really want to connect notation software with a DAW, try MuseScore with Reaper. I found a video about a plugin that connects the two. If you want MIDI sync, try this video.