Can you recommend a good-playback classical MS4 score file?

• Feb 19, 2024 - 11:52

It's been over one year and three months since I asked this question here: "Can you recommend a good-playback classical MuseSore score?" (https://musescore.org/en/node/336573)

It was before MS4 was realeased, great changes were coming and the anwer to that question could be summarised in these words by Marc Sabatella in that thread:

"Basically, you're asking at exactly the wrong time to really get much value out of this."

Now, however, a lot of things have changed. MS4 has been realeased and a lot of things have been added and improved upon.

Nevertheless, as far as playback is concerned, I must admit I am still struggling with it. For some reason the sound is as if the orchestra were sitting kind of too far away from me. I don't know how to change that.

At first I thought it was MS4's fault, but the other day I decided to look up the samples provided on MuseHub:

strings.jpg

and I realized that it is my problem because the sound on the sample was almost perfect.

So, I guess, I just need to repeat my question I asked more than one year ago: Can you recommend a good-playback classical MS4 score file? I need it so that I could open the mixer and educate myself on the point of how to adjust the sounds to make the score sound almost perfect on playback.

Comments

• Feb 19, 2024 - 20:37

Unfortunately, what sounds good to one person doesn't automatically sound good to another. If all your instruments sound far away, it may be because you haven't panned your score. If all your pan knobs in the mixer are center, that means that it will sound like all the musicians are sitting on top of each other in the center of the stage. Give them a break. Arrange them more like you might see them in concert. European style might be first violin section mid to hard left. Contra bases hard right. 2nd violins mid to hard right, Cellos right, Violas left. Spread out the other instruments in a way that sounds good to you. Aside from that, there isn't much sound adjustment to do. Play with different amounts of reverb. And what you write makes a difference. But you are the only one that can decide that. If you are writing for strings, you can't write the same way you would write for brass band.
Listen to recordings of orchestras. Try to pick out how they are spread across your headphones. And the type of things they are playing.

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