mid-staff instrument changes keep adding mixer entries

• Nov 18, 2018 - 22:07
Reported version
2.3
Type
Functional
Frequency
Many
Severity
S3 - Major
Reproducibility
Always
Status
duplicate
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project
MuseScore

I use sfz fonts.

When I change instrument mid-staff, a new instrument is added to the mixer.
There seems no way to revert to the previous instrument without adding a new entry to the mixer.

Is it possible to toggle 2 instruments mid-staff without having to deal with dozens of mixer entries?

The reason for me changing instruments mid-staff is a workaround for limited dynamic range of sfz fonts.
For example I make violin-loud and violin-quiet with different volume settings in the mixer. This strategy expands the dynamic range of sfz fonts. However, toggling 2 instruments mid-staff creates dozens of indistinguishable mixer entries which is a major annoyance.

Having 2 instruments on different staffs allows "toggle", but then the orchestral score looks monstrous...

I consider editing sfz files to allow different volume settings, but cannot find documentation.
Can you help?

Comments

• Nov 18, 2018 - 22:12

This isn't a bug, it's just the way it works. Instrument changes weren't designed to be used for that purpose so it was never expected to have so many on a staff; instead, staff text to change between a fixed number of channels is the better way to go (you'd need to create a custom instruments.xml for those instruments).

But see #42301: Instrument Changes: add ability to change back to a previous instrument; some day perhaps there may be a way for instrument changes to re-use existing channels.

Not sure what you mean about limited dynamic range in SFZ soundfonts, though - might be good to ask on the Support forum about whatever issues you are having that are causing you to resort to this.

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