Dear Anyone.

I'm a complete and utter newbie with the technology involved in creating a piece of music, though I flatter myself the tracks are OK if only I can make the finished item sound more professional! So please, if you suggest something tell me how to do it, or where I get the information - hopefully detailed - on how to do it!

Comp. specs. WIN XP Home edition, AMD Sempron, 1.8ghz processor (overclocked to about 2.4ghz when I bought it off EBAY!) M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard, 80gig hard drive spare, 1gig ram, room for more ram (2 slots empty). YAMAHA MU-80 Sound Module. CUBASE, EDIROL Orchestral.

I'm routing the sound from the comp. out through a hi-fi system, the idea being that that way I'll be hearing what others will be hearing when they listen to the CD(!)

I'm disabled, can't play anything, use Voyetra Music Write to put notes into place with a mouse. The masterplan being, to use Voyetra and the module as a sketchpad, then when I like the idea, to save it as a MIDI type 1 and import it into CUBASE to use the superior EDIROL sounds on the finished item. Why not use CUBASE for the MIDI creation? I just like Voyetra better, I find it a lot more intuitive to use, I can really go-with-the-flow on it. If Voyetra's the problem - I do hope not - just tell me. I know there's a new version out, just trying to solve this problem first. Anyway.

The prob. is, getting any volume out of anything!!! I've got all the sliders in the M-Audio mixer panel on full. I've got the hi-fi on full. Yet the only way I can hear the sounds is by having the Voyetra audio between 100-127 on everything and the velocity settings round about 100, which makes all the instruments sound like they're being struck too hard. This aside, the overall volume is still only that of a very quiet MP3.

Which means when the sounds hit the mixer, the poor mixer just doesn't have enough sound to play with! Everything's nearly flatline, and I can't get any volume for the finished item. I know I can mix it as a sound file then boost/reboost/re-reboost until it's audible, but things start sounding distorted by the time you've done all that reboosting.

If it's any help, if I download a professional MIDI file it hits exactly the same problems. And I had a Soundblaster Live 5.1 soundcard before I moved from Win 98 to WinXP Home.

I'm sorry for the woffle and lack of techie info. If I knew any more techie stuff, I'd probably be able to fix the prob. myself! If anyone wants to know any more, please just tell me what it is and where to find the information you need. I just want to get so I can hear my stuff on normal volume, so I have a decently audible bunch of sounds to mix together!

Any help would be gratefully accepted, because then I can do a course on how to mix properly! Right now, I can't get enough sound to mix.

Yours hopefully,

Christopher Burke

I pretty much stopped reading when you said something about superior Edirol sounds..... Get Garritan or EastWest instead, and you will mock Edirols silly amateurish sounds.

Then I skimmed ahead to your actual question..

As far as the levels, make sure you set the hardware setting correctly of your audiophile (under the Hardware Settings tab in the MAudio control panel) set them properly. I believe the settings are +4, consumer, and -10. Play around with those.

If you are still having problems, you are simply needing to set the Edirol output higher, OR some setting in that other program you use.