The Mixer - Roland XV-88 User Manual

5.3 The Mixer

The Sibelius mixer provides control over a variety of parameters associated with play-
back, including MIDI volume level, panning, plugin audio levels, effects, and sound
assignments. With the exception of sound assignments, all of these behave as you
would expect and allow for finer control of the sounds used in the score.
Audio and MIDI Levels and Control
An important distinction needs to be made between audio and MIDI levels as con-
trolled by the meters in the Mixer. For staff channel strips, the meters show MIDI
activity/level and are not indicative of the audio signal. The volume faders for these
channel strips are linked to MIDI CC7 and the pan controls to MIDI CC10. As
these are MIDI-level controls, their values can be altered by data in the score, such as
dynamic changes.
For devices that offer a secondary volume control (via CC11), the staff volume faders
can be used to set overall MIDI volume levels and the value will not change. If, how-
ever, the device uses CC7 alone, the value set in the mixer is subject to change when
different dynamics are entered in the score. Note that the display in the mixer will not
track these changes.
Although generally of little consequence, understanding how these faders operate can
prevent frustration when the displayed levels seem to be changing or ignored alto-
gether.
Unlike staff channel strips, the virtual instrument and master channel strips display au-
dio signal and control each plugin's audio output level, and the summed audio output
level of all plugins, respectively. The virtual instrument faders in particular are useful
when mixing libraries together that have widely varied output. By balancing the output
levels at the plugin stage, the staff channel strips can be left to mix each instrument at
the MIDI-level allowing greater flexibility and range.
Sound Assignments
Two types of sound assignment are possible using the mixer, device assignments and
patch assignments. However, with the exception of hardware MIDI synths, assigning
sounds and devices in the mixer is bad practice and is best avoided in all but a few spe-
cific cases (and even then, only as a last resort). Doing so can result in incorrect sound
allocation, cause articulations and techniques to switch incorrectly, or prevent them
from switching at all.
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