I have Olympus Choir Elements and love the way it sounds, when I can get it to work. Unfortunately I am a total beginner when it comes to sample libraries and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to make it work in a way that I understand.
In the attached piece I am listening to the diminuendo in bar 7 (as a stand-in for other dynamics).
If I set the endpoint configuration to MIDI CCs 1 and 11, as seems to be standard, I get the diminuendo, but all the voices are incredibly soft and I would probably need to add a gain plugin in the mixer just to get them to a listenable volume. (When I stop playback at the end of bar 7, the volume suddenly jumps way up for an instant before the sound goes away, which makes me think something is off.)
If I set the endpoint configuration to MIDI CCs 72 and 73, as the documentation suggests, I don’t get the diminuendo and the volume stays the same throughout the bar.
I saw on something old that the MIDI CCs were “switched to” 79 and 80, so I tried that too, but also didn’t get the diminuendo.
I’m using Dorico 6 on two different machines, one (old one) running macOS 12.7.6 and one (newer one) running the current version of Sequoia (15.6).
I’d greatly appreciate guidance — and if you could explain it to me like I’m 6, I’d be even more grateful!
The Dynamic Volume for Olympus is CC1 and CC11. If you think the dynamic range is too great, then you need to adjust the Playback dynamic curve settings in the Expression Map. (Under the Playback Overrides section – scroll down.)
You can get a feel for how the curve settings work in Library > Playback Options, (there’s a nice interactive graph that shows you what the results are); but it’s better to have them set in the Ex map, so that they only apply to Olympus instruments.
If I may: the huge white spaces between the systems are not ideal. I’d recommend changing the vertical justification settings so that the systems spread out a bit.
Thanks Ben — good to know CC1 and CC11 are correct. My other issue though is not with the dynamic range/curve (which I do understand), but with the overall volume being so low, surprisingly so. I can adjust it to some degree with the mixer but I’m curious why using CC1 and CC11 makes everything so much softer.
Regarding the vertical justification — this is the engraving of my first draft, so aside from adding some system breaks to try to give the whispered text enough room, I haven’t done any layout yet. That will come!
As I’m listening through the rest of the piece (after setting the dynamics to CC1 and CC11), I found something else curious. The final diminuendo to niente should happen over three bars, but the playback diminuendos much fast and is silent by beat 4 of the first bar. Any idea how to stretch out the diminuendo out to last the full length it should?
Bars 44-46 also have a three-bar diminuendo, but that one lasts the full length and seems to have a steady rate of getting softer.
I’m also still getting a weird jump up in volume if I pause the playback (no matter what the volume is). That even happens if I pause during the diminuendo to niente at the end — the playback is silent but if I stop it I suddenly hear a very short, loud G5 chord.
