Some legato patches can be controlled by both CC1, velocity and CC11 (e.g. : Spitfire’s performance legato).
Using CC1 as main volume dynamic and velocity as secondary, one must manually adjust CC11. Using CC1 as main and CC11 as secondary, default’s velocity value is too high* and needs to be manually adjusted.
Having a third dynamic controller in xmaps would help a lot in this situation.
Anyway, being able to choose a default value for velocity could be a very useful feature (even if insufficient in this precise use case).
*Therefore it triggers unwanted legato transitions : one may prefer to use fingered as default (velocity < 84) instead of bowed one (velocity >= 84).
the general principle with dynamics control in Dorico is that if a controller is assigned then the value, be it velocity or CC, corresponds to the score dynamic with 64 in the middle, in other words mp =52 and mf = 76. if it is not assigned then it is set by Dorico to 100. Typically longer notes where you can modify the dynamic during the course of the note use a CC for control and shorter ones or percussive instruments including the piano, use velocity.
With libraries like Spitfire or CSS, this tends to be the modus operandi (although in some libraries like VSL you can use only CC’s throughout). With patches like legato, velocity is not allocated as a dynamic controller because it has other special functions like enabling portamento in range 1-19 or, in your case, bowed or fingered legato transitions for above or below 84. Therefore velocity will default to 100. If we accept the Dorico rules as they are, then indeed enabling velocity as a third dynamic controller is the correct and logical step. This way, you can choose whether the velocity value is in step with the CC controllers or is scaled in some other way.
Obviously you can manually adjust the velocity lane and I don’t find that unduly burdensome. But that doesn’t invalidate your point, I think, provided of course you understand what you’re doing!
Exactly ! And while there are some special cases where you do not want velocity to be linked to dynamics in such ways (e.g. : a f legato with portamento), I’ve found that for Spitfire’s performance legato, this third dynamic controller would remove lot of manual tweaking needed in most of the cases. Indeed, for long notes it would trigger portamento (e.g. with ppp) to bowed (e.g. with fff), and for shorts it would trigger proper dynamics, which is usually desired. A default value of 100 is too high for either shorts (always triggering a high dynamic) or long notes (always triggering bowed legato).
And selecting all velocity values to reduce them under 84 seems insufficient to me : while this allows a default fingered legato for long notes by default, it is overriding playback decisions and therefore does not prevent you from manually adjusting velocity everywhere else (e.g. : triggering portamento for small dynamics, adjusting velocity of every shorts to trigger proper dynamics), unless I missed something.