For those of you who also utilize Musescore 4.5.1. I bought and tested the Vienna * Brass * plugin, so you don't have to. Check it out before you buy;

I took the liberty of writing a short composition to test the different capabilities of the new Vienna Brass sounds from Musegroup, in collaboration with Vienna Music Library. 

My first impression was that the French Horn sounds, all of them, were FAR too quiet. I was forced to add a compression FX to it, cranked up quite high, with a +3.0 Gain just to hear it through the rest of the ensemble. But I think I got the sound dialed in just right here for the video. Figured I'd do everyone a favor and make a quick demonstration and provide my thoughts on it. 

Overall, I'd give the plugin a 5/10, in it's current state. I know its still new, so updates are likely on their way at some point in the future. Attacks on each instrument, as you'll hear, are a bit odd, and sort of like there's an accent or marcato mark on each note, except not as pronounced? I hope that makes sense.. lol 

I also noticed that when using Accents, they're either flat out ignored at times, or, they're over accentuated, to the point the instrument plays a "blat" rather than an accented note. Or, at lower dynamic volumes, they will be played as if it was notated "fp" just underneath it? Weird.. 

However I must say, it's WAY better than my previous experiences purchasing sound packages from MHub. CineBrass from MSounds, and Berlin Brass from MSounds were ABSOLUTE TRAIN WRECKS when I tried them out, a couple months after they released. Buggy as all hail, would randomly pitch bend notes longer than a dotted half note, or just outright play everything completely out of tune. (I have a demo vid somewhere that even shows that issue, I think... Can't recall what I did with that, but all you needa know is that it was HORENDOUS lol... 

This is a vast improvement that brings me some hope for future additions to the MS Library store. 🙂

Thankyou for this "REAL-WORLD" review, as opposed to these current "Company paid reviews"

example : " Its Amazing...Its Awesome...Its a No-Brainer ". .................Yeah you'd have to have no brain to believe it.

Its only when you Trial these Personally, like you have............That you Discover the Real-World review.

Iv included a mini-Selection of Brass sounds, thats currently used in a Restricted Software,thats in Alpha/Beta testing

But most people know the difference between a Piano and Trumpet.....................its impossible to re-invent the Wheel.

Sounds like an articulation mapping problem.

  VSL will fix it, I'm sure. Product support is good, and they are intent on breaking into the entry level VST market....

I have continuously had a problem where it fails to recognize that I have the libraries installed, so I have to open their stupid MuseHub program for it to rediscover them.

The last time this happened about a month ago, the MuseHub site claimed I did not even have an account, so I suspected that now I may just lose access to the libraries I'd purchased. I emailed their tech support and got the most useless person in the world on the other side who I'm convinced wasn't even reading what I sent to him and was just throwing out pre-conditioned responses. Eventually, I took a gamble by going "Creating Account" and thankfully, it still had my information so that I could use the libraries until the next time it happens...

Anyway, I really like the long articulations in the Berlin Strings and Winds and I've been using them on my upcoming album. They are a much cheaper alternative to the Kontakt libraries of course, but they too are woefully imbalanced.

I have to crank the violas up in the mixer and turn the violins 1 down. Brass instruments do have some great sounds, but are rendered unusable by imbalances between articulations.

It's unfortunate that Musescore 4 has been fumbled so badly and they seem to just not care about improving what seem to me fairly simple things to fix. If their customer service is an indicator, it seems that apathy is to blame.

22 hours ago, UncleRed99 said:

My first impression was that the French Horn sounds, all of them, were FAR too quiet

Its not enough to just HEAR the music, youve also got to SEE the music, and im not talking Notation-Score.

Regarding the FINAL-MIX-DOWN , iv often thought to myself........... " Yeah that sound ok ".........Without even checking to see the levels-Balance.

in the example below:

1: The French Horns were 5-db OVER 100%

2: The Trumpets were 27-db LOWER 100%

3: The Trombones were 6-db LOWER 100%

The Final Result sounded imbalanced

On 4/25/2025 at 11:41 PM, FILMSCORE said:

Its not enough to just HEAR the music, youve also got to SEE the music, and im not talking Notation-Score.

Regarding the FINAL-MIX-DOWN , iv often thought to myself........... " Yeah that sound ok ".........Without even checking to see the levels-Balance.

in the example below:

1: The French Horns were 5-db OVER 100%

2: The Trumpets were 27-db LOWER 100%

3: The Trombones were 6-db LOWER 100%

The Final Result sounded imbalanced

 

Let me try something new. I believe the audio issues that you all are hearing with my uploads are stemming from my use of Dolby Atmos, external speakers, and equalized headphones. I don't have a Raw Audio output to proof listen-to after writing music. The Musescore mixer is also notoriously under-monitoring for gain and overload, as in muse mixer, it didn't indicate this at all. It indicated French Horn was much lower than Trumpet, among other inconsistencies

On 4/25/2025 at 9:51 PM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

I have continuously had a problem where it fails to recognize that I have the libraries installed, so I have to open their stupid MuseHub program for it to rediscover them.

The last time this happened about a month ago, the MuseHub site claimed I did not even have an account, so I suspected that now I may just lose access to the libraries I'd purchased. I emailed their tech support and got the most useless person in the world on the other side who I'm convinced wasn't even reading what I sent to him and was just throwing out pre-conditioned responses. Eventually, I took a gamble by going "Creating Account" and thankfully, it still had my information so that I could use the libraries until the next time it happens...

 

Anyway, I really like the long articulations in the Berlin Strings and Winds and I've been using them on my upcoming album. They are a much cheaper alternative to the Kontakt libraries of course, but they too are woefully imbalanced.

I have to crank the violas up in the mixer and turn the violins 1 down. Brass instruments do have some great sounds, but are rendered unusable by imbalances between articulations.

 

It's unfortunate that Musescore 4 has been fumbled so badly and they seem to just not care about improving what seem to me fairly simple things to fix. If their customer service is an indicator, it seems that apathy is to blame.

 

The way that musehub works best is if you have it set to launch upon startup. it has little to no impact 🙂
Also, the Musehub login is different from the Musescore.com / .org logins

On 4/25/2025 at 11:44 AM, Rich said:

Sounds like an articulation mapping problem.

 

  VSL will fix it, I'm sure. Product support is good, and they are intent on breaking into the entry level VST market....

 

 

 

 

 

I found a solution to it. I'm going to make a second post with an updated video to resolve some balancing/sound issues, and to showcase the reason why that was happening. 

To give you a summary, apparently I have to apply a soundflag to each part, and set it to "Classic Phrasing" to fix that... Who knew... lol

4 minutes ago, UncleRed99 said:

The Musescore mixer is also notoriously under-monitoring for gain and overload, as in muse mixer,

it didn't indicate this at all. It indicated French Horn was much lower than Trumpet, among other inconsistencies

.

The Levels-Animation above was not Referring to Your Music.

It was just an Example of something i did years ago......and taught me to SEE the LEVELS,

as opposed to just Trusting my EARS ?..........You cant always Trust your Ears.

2 hours ago, FILMSCORE said:

The Levels-Animation above was not Referring to Your Music.

It was just an Example of something i did years ago......and taught me to SEE the LEVELS,

as opposed to just Trusting my EARS ?..........You cant always Trust your Ears.

 

Oh, well... Too late, I already went and rebalanced the audio. Just came back to post it xD