Hey guys,

I will try to be as detailed as possible.

It has been a couple years since I last used Sibelius 6/VDL. I already had a template and everything was set up and working. Now I am trying to re-learn the process and am struggling a bit. I believe I have everything to make me successful. My setup currently:
Win 7
Sibelius 7
Kontakt Player 5
VDL 2.5
Write Scores VDL 7.0a Template

I am currently writing the drumline book for my girlfriends band program. She has Sib 7. She has given me the source file. After a couple attempts of trying to get her Sib 7 file to work with VDL, I decided screw it, Ill just copy and paste all of the parts in the VDL template. So far so good.

I know my VDL is set up correctly (at least as far as I know). My Kontakt player reads fine in the audio engine as well as Sib 7 reading the VDL template. All of my sounds play correctly (now that it is in the VDL template), both with the winds being played via Sib 7 Sounds and the Drumline playing via VDL.

So my issues are this,

First, the volume of the upper battery. It is EXTREMELY quiet. The only way I have found to get around this is going into Kontakt player and turning up the Master Editor Volume knob all the way up. It was still too quiet so I had to go into the options for both Snare and Tenor and adjust the Midi Controller from 0dB to 12dB. Seems like that is a fix for now even though when the drums hit forte, they are too loud. It also is unfortunate that I have to adjust the Kontakt Player volume every time I open Sibelius.

Second, is the instrument changes in the keys section. I can not for the life of me figure out how to add Sus Cym to a key part. I got it to work by adding the part to the score and fiddling with the Kontakt player but then it cut the rest of my sound.

I definitely think the issue lies with me understanding how the outputs and channels work in Kontakt 5. I have tried the documentation but its not extremely clear.

Any help is appreciated. Email, Call, anything at this point to understand a bit more. Thanks for taking the time.

Hi sivtec,

Thanks for taking the time to spell out your situation so clearly. It really helps in diagnosing what's happening.

Regarding the volume issue, you're probably using an outdated version of the VDL Library. If you're using Kontakt 5 (which you'd require if you're in Sibelius 7), then I'd highly recommend migrating to the latest [url=https://www.tapspace.com/downloads-updates]Library Update[/url]. It should behave much better in Kontakt 5 than older versions.

Regarding your instrument change from a keyboard to sus cym, are you using one of the VDL sus cym instruments from the template? If so, you should have access to all the sus cym sounds on that keyboard staff, then when the sus cym part is done, do another instrument change back to the keyboard of your choice.

That's basically a template-specific question, so for more information on that, you can check with the folks at The Write Score, or if you haven't spent any time with the documentation that came with your template lately, maybe spend some time brushing up on that. It's quite detailed and can help a lot if you're getting back into this stuff! http://www.thewritescore.com.

Thanks Jim,

I am downloading as we speak!

As far as the switching of instruments, that worked fine. Both the switch and then back to (in this case) vibes. I'll check the Write Score forums.

One question  I would have regarding the Kontakt player, what is best when using 16+ instruments via VDL, create one individual channel for each instrument? Originally I had just the standard st.1 output and then the 4 aux's. Changed it to each individual, doesn't seem like it changed anything but I have a feeling that the sus cym output needs to somehow be tied with the same instrument line you are using (again in this case vibes). That might be a bit confusing. :P

If you're asking about [i]audio[/i] channels, just leave everything set to go out through St. 1. No need to complicate things by using more than two channels unless you're doing some sort of multi-channel surround sound mix or something.

What are you using the Aux's for? If you're using effects like reverb, it may be more efficient to just use the ";effects"; section of Sibelius's Playback Configuration area.

Wow Jim,

So glad we are talking. Things are sinking in a bit more. The Aux channels were setup by default. I just left them there.

Using the Write Score templates in Sibelius 7, you'll very rarely need to even open up the Kontakt Player. Anything you're trying to do (like add reverb, pan an instrument to the right, etc) would be best done using Sibelius's mixer and/or playback configuration settings. Mainly, this is because the way Sibelius's auto-load thing works, it's best to just conform to the way they want you to work. It's unusual when compared to other host programs, but once you conform, it can be a pretty efficient workflow.