thorrild wrote:There are other inserts that do things like ducking, mostly used in popular music. Surfwhammy can probably fill you in on those...
The specific genre is very important when one is pondering arranging, producing, mixing, and mastering strategies, and my general perspective on most
Orchestral and
Symphonic music is that the dynamic range tends to be nearly absurd, going from so quiet that you cannot hear it to so loud that it can be a bit painful, so when I listen to this type of music on the FM radio or a CD I run it through a compressor limiter to make everything always the same volume, which in part is based on the rule that if you cannot hear it, then it serves no purpose and basically just increases the background hiss and noise . . .
I fully understand that composers who focus on the aforementioned genres probably meet every so often in a coffee shop and share their experiences using vast dynamic ranges, which might be a bit like, "The oboe serenade was so quiet that I could barely hear it over my own breathing, and then they fired the cannon and it was so loud that I did a poop, which was awesome!" . . .
Awesome! 
As a general rule, the sampled sounds for
Orchestral and
Symphonic instruments are recorded with a lot of overhead, which maps to lower than what I consider to be normal volume levels, which is fine, but I put a compressor, leveling amplifier, limiter, expander, noise gate, or some type of signal processing plug-in on each instrument and use it very gracefully to get the recording level where in my view it should be, and I peg all the volume sliders to 0 dB and from that point forward use the more detailed settings of the signal processors to control the relative volumes of the instruments . . .
Panning is another very important consideration, and depending on the sampled sound library, it is often the case that individual instruments are recorded in the locations where they usually are placed in a full orchestra, which makes panning a bit difficult and also increases the background reverberation, hence I prefer to use sampled sounds recorded "dry" in a small studio, since it is easy to add reverberation and echoes but is difficult if not impossible to remove reverb and echoes . . .
Another useful bit of information is that when you listen to
Orchestral and
Symphonic music on FM radio, the radio station runs everything through at least one compressor, leveling amplifier, limiter, expander, or similar device which primarily ensures that the broadcast signal always is within legal bounds, where in the US this is determined and monitored by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and when radio stations do not follow the rules they lose their broadcast licenses . . .
Over the years, several companies have created a virtual festival of signal processors for this purpose, and some of these signal processors have quite amazing melodic properties, where they do the mandatory FCC stuff but in a way that does not destroy the original dynamics, sonic characteristics, textures, and so forth, and after a while producers and audio engineers discovered that these types of signal processors can be used in a recording studio to enhance various instruments and singers . . .
T-RackS CS Grand (IK Multimedia) has very accurate digital emulations of the most popular of these signal processors, and they are very nice, not only for my currently favorite genres but also for
Orchestral and
Symphonic genres . . .
THOUGHTSIt is important to understand that the volume sliders are logarithmic, as is the unit "decibel (dB)" . . .
In the respect, I agree that having a big difference in the volume slider positions for a few instruments is not the ideal way to make a few instruments louder, since what happens is that the big difference maps to the other instruments not being heard . . .
Lots of FUN! 
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 9:10 am