I setup some songs with shared instruments as templates to copy to othersongs, so far so good.
Unfortunately, when I duplicate the instrument layers to different songs, things like mute state or song-specific insert FX in their mixer channel also seem to be shared, I thought this was independent per song? Other things like different keyboard zones or volume settings seem to work fine.
Not sure if I can follow.
There are Layers which can share their Instrument. If you copy or duplicate a Layer, of course all of its values are copied as well. Nevertheless, the Layer is not shared, only the Instrument is. Layer controls are independent.
Create a new Layer and set its Instrument to a shared Instrument, the Layer will not change.
Does that help?
That’s the way I understood it, too - I will try to reproduce the unexpected behaviour on Monday or Tuesday …
Check that the shared levels have the same volume in the settings
OK, managed to reproduce the behavior in a a very simple project.
Created an empty project, one song, one part, added a layer with default instrument Halion Sonic (added manually as I have “no default layer set” in preferences)
Created a new song, copied the single layer from song 1 part 1 and pasted it “shared” into song 2 part 1
I can now change the settings for the layer (Mute, Volume) in the layer controls for both songs independently
However, if I when I go to the mixer tab, things are different - I can still change the mixer volumes for the layer independently for the layer in both songs. But when I change the “Mute” state in the mixer, it now changes for the mixer in both songs
Could be coincidence, but now the layers in both songs now have the “blank” insert/send slots described by me in Issue - Insert FX lost and Bug with Inserts/Sends section
When I save and reload the project, the insert/send slots reappear, but the shared “Mute” behavior is as before
When I now try to add an insert FX to one of the shared layers in the mixer, the same FX appears in the other shared layer’s mixer channel, too - is this expected? I would have thought the sharing of the layer would be for the VST instrument to save on resources, but that I could use the shared layer copies with different inserts FX in the mixer for different songs.
The “Shared MIDI/Audio Controls global” settings are “Off” in the preferences.
“Shared Audio Controls global” was off. Same behavior when it is on
You are correct, this must be a bug. We are looking into the issue.
Thanks a lot, because of your step-by-step description, it was easy for us to follow!
It will be fixed with the upcoming prerelease version, thanks again for your support!
Great, will test as soon as it’s available. Thanks to you for the quick fix, excellent support.
Retested with 1.4.8.847 - different, but not really fixed . changed / wrong behavior marked in bold:
So unfortunately not much improvement in 1.4.8 …
That depends on the “Shared Audio Controls global” preference.
While that is not true, there is indeed still something wrong with the shared volume and mute settings, which is a different issue. We are investigating, thanks again for reporting!
Of course only regarding this issue, lots of other fixes and improvements as usual 
As for the Mute issue, you are correct, it is not working as it should, and we’ll check.
That is correct. The audio channel belongs to the Instrument, not to the Layer! If the Instrument is shared, so is its audio Channel.
As an exception, Layer Audio Volume and Pan can be saved and restored individually when “Shared Audio Controls global” is disabled in preferences. It works as intented, however there appears to be a bug such that it doesn’t work correctly when that preference is activated; that we’ll check.