Coming here for advice because my general experience with Dorico playback is not only good, rather excellent.
Assuming a minimal amount of tweaks, cello (solo string) and piano is excellent, full orchestra is gorgeous … then I don’t understand why this same piece that plays well as cello and piano gets the soloist totally buried by just the strings.
This is a piece that has three versions: cello & piano, cello & string quartet, cello & full orchestra. I am using a single Dorico project and muting what I do not need.
Cello & piano sounds good, as said.
Cello & string quartet has the soloist completely buried in most of the piece. I went to NotePerformer dialogue and changed the patches to string sections, and it is now better but not at all ideal.
When the soloist has F or more all is generally good. Anything else is inaudible. Perhaps there is something I can do with the dynamic curve?
Changing values in the mixer (either Dorico’s or NP’s) has very little effect.
Sure, I can go to the key editor and make massive edits throughout, but… should I?
What is your experience with audio in solo + orchestra scenarios?
Thank you!
These are absolute guesses, but:
- is it possible that the mere presence of the other parts — even though muted — somehow affects the playback? Have you tried making a copy of the project, eliminating all of the parts other than the quartet, and reapplying the playback template?
- Does NP try to interpret cello + string quartet as a quintet, automatically leaning into the upper voice?
Hi @MicheleGalvagno , it would be interesting to look at (Dorico file) a couple of bars of the projects that present the issue, if you would like to post it.
Anyway, I made a quick example with different dynamics in NP (duplicating the flow twice, and unassigning/deleting the unwanted players) and tried to crank up the solo cello in NP mixer and lowering all the other instruments in all NP instances to 85%. Here the result (with some incredibly banal music 
):
dynamics soloist and various ensembles.dorico (666.6 KB)
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I will work on @judddanby suggestions and attach a stub project in the morning. Thank you for your patience.
“Cellissimo” all the way through, with it maybe being a bit lost in the mix (though not egregiously or entirely unexpectedly) in the final orchestral ff. There go my theories…
Nice sleuthing, @Christian_R!
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Ahaha! Nice example!
As a certain cook would say… “put the cello to full whack!”
Now it’s even too much, but it seems that the basis works as you would expect.
At first I had thought that the pitch-contour emphasis was causing the issues, since this solo cello part continuously goes up and down.
Will experiment as much as possible, and get back with a cut-down project if I still cannot get something acceptable.
The sure thing is: with mixer volumes all at 100 (default), and with dynamics equal in soloist and accompaniment, the soloist is being buried if they do not play long notes.
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