Musesounds Percussion dynamics substantially different, now unbalanced, quiet dynamics inaudible

• Sep 26, 2024 - 22:54

I've been working on an orchestral piece for a bit in MuseScore 4, and was coming back to work on it today when I noticed I couldn't hear any of the snare drum or bass drum parts I had written for it, many of which were at mp or p where they should still be clearly audible given the nature of the thin orchestration and properties of how percussion is able to project from a stage. However, now at piano mezzo-piano, the snare drum is completely inaudible when paired with any other instruments, and adjusting dynamics upwards doesn't work as forte is extremely pronounced, making it impossible to use quiet dynamics for the snare drum in an ensemble context.

Not sure what was changed or why, but the prior concert snare drum balance in dynamics was substantially better. It's similar to the MuseSounds choir where dynamics below forte are completely imbalanced and have no projection.

These are fairly substantive issues with regards to the playback Musescore/MuseSounds attempts to provide, and I would guess part of the issue is incorrectly attributing dynamics to exclusively volume control, when in reality a lot more of it is in expression (e.g. in many VSTs, there's a control for volume separately from expression, where expression is the sound-quality of playing louder or softer, and volume is the presence in the mix). MuseScore/MuseSounds needs the output sounds to be far closer together in terms of volume in order to allow users to use the mixer to adequately adjust specific instrumental balance, especially insofar as volume automation and the like is not available.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.