Hello, I'm working with an older version of Finale, so please forgive me. I'm also using an outboard Synth rather than any virtual sounds. So yeah, call me old-fashioned.

I've just been trying to set up some orchestral templates for playback and so far so good.

The instrument sounds in my synth are not really balanced and any "base" volume so I went through the mixer and basically balanced all the winds, brass, and strings as best I could by ear. Basically I made some orchestral Tutti part and sat here and muted and soloed various instruments and combinations to see if I could hear everything coming in and out and everything seemed balanced, and that seems to have worked.

I was able to store those level settings (which are basically CC7 Volume messages) in my Synth. Finale sends them before playback, so I didn't need to but I figured I'd go ahead an write my patch that way just as a backup for the numbers.

When I engage Human Playback, I notice that - for example when I made a chorale style part for winds alone, the top staff (Flute) remained at the preset volume and the remaining staves all dropped about 3 units. I put in some Dynamics and wedges and I could watch them all increase, but the lower 3 staves all were 3 or so units below the Flute.

This tells me part of "human playback" is to "emphasize the melody" by making the top staff a little louder.

It appeared to do this in the Brass as well. So I don't know if it does it by group, or where I put an "empty space" in the setup.

Obviously, with Brass, the uppermost staff, Horn, does not always have the melody - Trumpets more often do.

Of course, I'd be writing in a Dynamic for a melody or solo type passage.

But it kind of irks me that it does this. Is there anyway to over-ride it? I notice it doesn't happen when I use the non-human playback (Playback Window Closed, Spacebar-Click a measure) so it's something going on in the Human Playback.

But I don't see any settings to adjust in there (under Dynamics).

While I'm here, there are a lot of presets for Garritan, which I'm not using, some of which are CC messages that could throw my Synth for a loop - like I've got CC81 changes Strings to Pizz, so I don't need it to do whatever it's set to for Garritan.

So should I just pretty much disable anything "Garritan" related since all the sounds are coming from the Synth? Or are there some of those features to keep?

The 3 unit decrease in volume for the "non top line" instruments isn't horrible or anything, but After spending all that time balancing them I wouldn't mind them staying that way. I like a lot of the tempo and expressive elements the HP adds (despite any flaws) so I don't mind using it as a quick way to give it a little more life than the "basic" playback or having to drop it into a DAW and add all kinds of CC11 data...