Basic orchestra balance

[GilP]

Hello,

I’m trying to make a score written in Sibelius sound as close as possible to what a real orchestra would sound (more in balance than in volume). VSL provides in MIRx a feature called « Use Natural Volume » that is trying to come as a base to an orchestral balance (for thoses who doesn't have MIRx, you can emulate it, please see the end of this post).

After reading many posts in the VSL forum (some are as old as more than 7 years old), I’ll try here to summarize what I think I understood.

Please note it’s a very basic « balancing instruments for real orchestra with notation software like Sibelius » starting point, so please consider as is.

Software used: Sibelius 8.7, VE Pro 6, VI Pro 2, Vienna Special Edition Complete, MIRx bundle.

Using VE Pro 6 with Sibelius is described in the « Optimizing Sibelius Playback with Vienna Ensemble » documentation.

After creating your VE Pro 6 instance with your instruments and setup Sibelius accordingly, here's how to set up things:
1 - Sibelius: set the espressivo style to « senza espressivo »
(2 - Sibelius: uncheck Live Playback) <- not sure about this one as setting it on enables the possibility to modify note velocities.
3 - Sibelius: set all Vienna Ensemble Pro instruments levels in Sibelius mixer to 100
4 - Sibelius: set Virtual Instrument strip to +6db
5 - VE Pro 6: for each Vienna Instrument, enable the MIRx reverb, checking Pre-EQ, Synchronize and « Use Natural Volume » buttons.
6 - VE Pro 6: as the volumes of the instruments are now much lower because of the « Use Natural Volume » volume diminution, raise the master bus volume button: I push it to 6db without any distortion.

If you don’t own MIRx, you can download its documentation, and for each of your Vienna Instrument, set its master volume accordingly to the last documentation page « Natural Volume Overview » values.

« Use Natural Volume » works better if it is set on for all your instruments.

Please let me know if it’s a good starting point or what can be improved or what is wrong!

Any comment from VSL people like Andi, Dietz, Herb or Paul is more than welcome!

Thank you!

Regards,
Gil.