I still believe the audition phrases are recorded with some secret settings that Yamaha don't want the competition to know about.

It's no secret. If you like what the auditions sound like - then play at those velocities. If you can't achieve those velocities then make adjustments one way or the other. Probably the fastest adjustment to make is to set your velocity to fixed and set it to 127 (or between 100-127) and see how that sounds you. You will probably be in the ballpark of where the audition rests. There's "better" (less global) ways to do this - but this is the fastest.

I would take a look at the auditions as they play using a connected PC and a MIDI monitor. This will tell you the velocities used.

@Frederick it's tricky.

I've fiddled for ages. And it's basically impossible to get a good dynamic range with the MODX and pianos without hurting your fingers, because of the limitations of the keyboard and the odd manner it's programmed for pianos.

These issues, as you've probably noticed, don't show up with the other sounds.

It's just a pianos thing. And maybe a few of the old DX-7 type sounds.

Head on over to SoundMondo, and try out some of the heavily worked on pianos from there, to get a good feel for starting points on what to do to somewhat get the louds without losing the softs, and without hurting your hands.

I've never made a piano setting I'm happy with for dynamic range in live play on the MODX. Don't remember having this much trouble when we had a Montage. But that was another country, another era.

@Andrew @ Jason,
Thanks for your response. Very helpful. I will check out your recommendations.

@Frederick, just so you definitely don't think you're imagining what you're experiencing, here's an entire video about this exact issue:

https://youtu.be/8VbMzParso8

So technically, if I'm reading this right, when you hit audition it changes the scenes and such so the sound is as they recorded it. Then afterwards the instrument will sound exactly like the audition. Technically, could we save the preset as "overwrite current performance" and the instrument will sound like it every time? I'm away from my keyboard or I would try it.

Sort of. I mean - Audition can itself press any button and change scenes and turn knobs. And if any of this is important to the sound - you can "see" most of it by looking at LEDs on the Montage or perhaps by moving to a menu that shows you the position of knobs, etc on MODX. However, that doesn't describe the whole picture. As is mostly the complaint in this thread is that Audition also is recorded with the notes played at a certain velocity. And this velocity is the thing that those who are struggling matching the audition are having problems matching. The velocity is recorded at very high values and it is unnatural and difficult with standard settings to achieve these high velocities continually. If you want to make it easier to achieve these higher velocities - then adjustments need to be made. Some global (system wide) through local (Part .. element).

The differences that are attributable to scenes, knobs, ribbon, etc. are real. And mostly you should be able to stop the audition and you can save those off. If the ribbon controller or aftertouch or other items that automatically "reset" are involved - then those would be missed. Ribbon is one that doesn't really have a place where you can go and "look" to see what the ribbon value is while the Audition is playing.

And, since this is a MODX category - MODX doesn't have the ribbon to use as a controller even though Audition can change the ribbon controller values.

Not to belabor the ribbon point but ...

There are other ways to tell if ribbon on MODX could be any part of it. You could edit all of the Parts and look for ribbon as a source controller. If it doesn't exist anywhere - then this Performance doesn't utilize Ribbon. If it does exist - you can "disable" the assignment by forcing the ribbon to always output the current value. You'd have to learn what the current value is (it can be done) then use a hold curve so no matter what audition tries to change in the ribbon - it always outputs the same value. This would "tell" you if ribbon was anything significant. I say to do it this way instead of deleting the assignment because deleting could give you the wrong value (different from the default value) due to biasing going to "0" instead of possibly 64 when the ribbon is set to "reset" vs "hold".

Probably too much focus on ribbon here - but the main point of my response is that yes - there are some settings auditions change and these may be important. However - the bulk of the discussion here is focused on velocity which is not something you "save" it's something you "play" with your fingers. Therefore, your method wouldn't affect that since not all differences are related to dynamic setting changes.