Hey guys... thanks for the great samples. Obviously a lot of hard work went into the project.

I'm currently running a pentium 4 2.4 with 1 gig of RAM (the max for my laptop). My Drum Corps score for FINALE includes 4 vibes, 4 marimbas, timp, and aux. When the scoring gets thick, it is game over. The sound completely breaks up and FINALE struggles just to redraw. I am only loading VDL2 with lite vibes, lite marimba, lite timp, and aux.

Does this sound like a normal recipe for overload or should I keep working at it? What happens when I score for my entire winter percussion ensemble? This summer I'm hoping to jump to the top mac, but right now I'm stuck with what I've got.

Thanks.

There are a variety of things that you can do to help performance.

1) Are all four marimba staves (for example) going to ONE loaded marimba in VDL2? If so, you may max out that instrument's polyphony. You can raise that instrument's polyphony by clicking on the polyphony setting of 32 (it looks like a fraction like ";0/32";) and dragging upward to increase the value. Better yet, load different marimbas into different channels, and route each stave to a separate marimba. You'll achieve more realism that way.

By the way, you can monitor your polyphony results in the VDL2 player by viewing the top number of the fraction (0/32) while score is playing back.

2) Play with your DFD settings. By default the ";reserved voices"; field is set to 64 which will likely be too low. Set it to 248 and hit ";apply."; You might also find that selecting the ";small instruments"; preset might perform a little better. This is an area where you might have to play around a bit to find the best settings for your particular system. Remember, hit ";apply"; before closing the window or your changes won't be saved.

3) On any instruments with a ";release"; knob, you can try lowering it which essentially makes that instrument decay more quickly after the note is released (not sustaining quite as long). By doing this, it will clear voices faster than if instruments were ringing for the full duration. This is especially helpful on long sustaining instruments like vibes, chimes, etc.

Finale's redraw speed is something that used to drive me nuts when I used that program. I believe that process does call on the CPU, which (during playback) is pretty darn busy processing samples. So you might find better performance by setting Finale's playback options to NOT redraw. I've found Sibelius' scrolling much more efficient, however it can still struggle sometimes during large score playbacks as well. When this happens, sometimes I'll reduce the monitor settings to display less colors, thus helping the redraw process, and it seems to help a little. I could be totally wrong on the science behind that, but it's a theory...

Hope this helps a bit