Greetings,
I posted stuff on this forum as a newbie in summer of '16, and now have a LOT more experience grappling with Finale Human Playback and VSL (and other) libraries. I've made much progress, but still have much to learn.
I use a combination of libs from VSL (if I could do it over I would get ALL VSL - VI Pro and VE Pro are exponentially better systems than any toher library has), Spitfire, Orchestral Tools and a few others.
I use some VSL SE patches, and, more and more, some standard and occasionally full libraries. I always make my own matrices, and I've worked out a pretty comfortable way of dealing with the X and Y axes. (basically: I program keyswitches for HP Preferences only along the X axis, and I use the Y axis to put in special, less frequently used artics and techniques (sul pont, snap pizz), which I activate via midi tool and controller data.
So that all works out, for the most part. (where problems exist, they're not with VSL).
What I continue to struggle with is to hone in on the best way to deal with volume. Since my other libraries tend to default to using CC1 for dynamic crossfading, I set up HP Preferences to control volume with velocity plus CC1. I then just set the volume (cc7) and/or expression (cc11) settings of those insts where I want them in the general global mix.
With VSL I remain a little confused about the velocity crossfade function. I know how to set it up and turn it on, but I'm not sure what the best way to set this w/ my overall setup is. I have been experimenting with setting Velocity xfade to CC1, and alternately setting expression to CC1, or leaving it on CC11 and just using it globally as with the non-VSL instruments.
I have to do more experimenting. In the early going I've found that having both vel xfade and expression set to CC1 (with vel xfade turned on) seems to work well with brass patches, but less well with strings.
Not sure if I so much have a question as a solicitation for advice. I've also read, here and elsewhere, that there are bugs regarding CC1 within the Finale's HP system, and that CC1 is better avoided. (I could conceivably change to another controller, though Finale only lets you choose between 1, 7 and 11 in the prefs - and the general consensus seems to be that a lot of extra CC info is sent via Finale, even if unwanted).
If someone has devised the ideal way of handling volume globally, using multiple libraries in conjunction with Finale's HP preferences, and in particular, has comments about the relationship between velocity xfade and expression in this process, I'm eager to hear it. It always seemed to me that, especially with samples that have numerous velocity layers, it was better to achieve dynamics through velocity crossfading than expression adjustment (my understanding is that "expression - cc11" is just another volume knob).
I'll stop now!
