TOPIC: How to Increase Volume

Hi again,
I don't want to wear out my welcome but I have another question.
I'm trying to increase the volume of a Preset but I've found that putting in a negative Attenuation in Presets does nothing to the level in Polyphone or when I play my Midi Keyboard driven by the bs-16i soundfont app.
Interestingly if I put a negative attenuation in Presets with Viena then the sound is louder when played via Viena but not louder when played by my bs-16i app so it seems some apps and programs don't respond to these.
Attenuation is already at or close to zero in Instruments and Instruments does not accept negative values.
The samples have already been normalized so there is no scope to increase sample volume as far as I can work out.
The problem is that the sound is just a bit soft compared to other sounds in the same app.
Any pointers in the right direction would be appreciated.
Thanks.

This is an interesting question that needs to be addressed.

First, you need to know that the values you specify at the preset level are offsets or multipliers for the corresponding values at the instrument level. For instance, if you specify 10 for the attenuation at the instrument level and -7 at the preset level, the final value for the attenuation will be 3.

Second, the sf2 specification doesn't allow negative attenuations, that would result in amplifications. This is why Polyphone and other software will not amplify the sound if the final value is negative.

The only thing to do is to amplify the samples or attenuate all other instruments / presets in order to have a good balance between all your instruments.

You can fill a bug report for Viena

Thanks for that explanation. I didn't realise the maximum was zero attenuation but I guess it makes perfect sense.