I firmly believe that compressors are the devil. 
Seriously though, I try to avoid compression signals because, well, they sound compressed. Dynamics tend to get lost and performances start to sound stale. When used sparingly, compressors can be a good tool, but when used in excess…well…no thanks … I will now jump off my soapbox 
I think the OP was asking about volumes as they relate to different songs being louder or quieter. If so, a volume pedal is a bit imprecise, but it will work; a better (but pricier) option is something like a Pfeiffer Leveler: http://www.pfeifferelectronics.com/products/leveler_volume_pedal.aspx
Joe
Just tried out beat buddy for the first time last night on a quiet restaurant background gig, I do solo piano, vocal with left hand bass, it’s a bit of a pain to take one of my hands off to access fills, etc. Most of the fills were distracting and much too loud. The jazz swing grooves were busy and distracting. The ones I programmed myself worked much better. each kit had extreme volume differences. I have a kick cajon pedal, where I use a heel toe, groove, which I ended up going back to, until I can even these things out,
The latin grooves are great, but they are also very busy, wish there was a way to access the latin percussion with a normal drum kit.
The only kits with reverb are the ballad kit. The endings are a bit strange on first use. It’s much better than other things I’ve used in the past, but this will require much edits on my part to make it work. Tried the Neil Young, “Harvest Moon” groove, sounds like a bad drummer who’s never used brushes before.
You can adjust the indivual instrument volume by goin to the drum kit in question and turning down the volume of say the tom in the specific kit by right clicking a window will open u where you’ll see the volume adjust .Be sure to save the change,I had a problem with the toms being way too loud and you cant just use a volume pedal because it would turn everything down.The problem is i think what you are saying is the relative volume of when the toms come in or the cymbals are way too loud in relation to snare kick.
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A quick review of the Pfeiffer Leveler -
This is a pretty cool stompbox. If you’ve ever used a clean boost like the TC Electronics Spark or the various EP Boosts and clones thereof, this box does what those do. but it does it better and at 8 graduated stepped settings. The settings range from 0 through 7. There is an overall volume knob, that little silver thing right above the G that defines your unity setting. Power on the box, set it at 3 or 4 and adjust to the volume you want. If you get to a drum kit that’s too loud, tap that down arrow once or twice to reduce the level. If it’s too soft tap the up arrow once or twice. In effect, it’s a combination boost and pad. It keeps the sound clean, and does not introduce noise.
What is does not do is automatically control the output level. In that sense, in works like a volume pedal, but you have 8 fixed stops.
At $169, it not cheap. But, 8 Sparks would cost a lot more. I’ll probably put this on my pedal board in place of the Spark. And really, if you rehearse with your BB you could note which songs need the boost or cut, and note the settings, so it could be real functional for that use. Again, its not a cure-all; it will do nothing for the single loud piece in a kit. But, it can be used to adjust volume settings to fixed levels to deal with the loud/kit soft kit issue.
This is definitely an issue, at my gig last night everything was fine till I kicked in the blues swing beat and BAM wayyy too loud…club was a little miffed…lol. I think putting a basic volume contol function/save in BB Manager would be the best. Not too big of a feature
Agree with Phil Flood - wasn’t aware of such a thing as the Spark. It would be a useful (but pricey) live tool in addition to (in our case) a stereo volume pedal which is only for fade outs, for example to fade back then up for a phrase or end a song gradually. As pointed out by Shawn and others volume pedals are too imprecise. As Phil suggested I’ve found, after with some experience with a given drumkit, for a given song you can visit the Drumset Maker and click on the name above left of the fields and change the overall volume. Granted the new level might not be correct for all songs so better to make a modified version of a kit.
Sounds like a good idea 
Hello, it’s now March 2018! I’ve not been able to confidently bring the BB out in public. The fluctuating volumes from song to song are not professional. I don’t want to buy extra gear (volume pedal) and don’t want to spend hours programming. Has anyone found a simple way to take out the harsh sounds and control the different volume levels from kit to kit? Thanks
So there is a way to raise the overall volume of a song? Without going in and changing the individual velocity of each instrument?
Internally to the BB, no, not that I am aware of. Externally, sure, add a clean boost.
There are probably too many variables here to deal with on any kind of firmware related basis. Drum kits are not all recorded by the same people, and will, therefore, be at inherently different levels. Likewise, songs are not all constructed by the same people, so again, there are going to be wide variances in velocities used that then translate to variances in overall volume. I don’t know how one would tackle that within the confines of an already built pedal, especially given that it was originally designed for just drums, and just Singular’s drums at that.
Essentially, what are requesting is a live normalization circuit. A limiter might work but that’s not going to be inside the pedal. If a kit has a universally too loud component, it’s volume can be reduced. It doesn’t take hours. It’s more like seconds to do that on a kit once you realize that it’s crash is always too loud, or it’s snare is always too loud. But trying to get songs to all be the same volume, A) I don’t know how to achieve that. B) I don’t know that I want that. It reminds me of a local drummer we had who only knew how to play very loud. He was at the same volume all the time, but it really didn’t work from song to song.
Honestly I think it’s not as complicated as it’s being made out to be. In the editor (when you right click on a midi) and where you can already raise and lower velocity of individual instruments, why is there no interface on the left hand side or something like a slider to respectively just boost the entire volume lol. It seems like overkill to tell people they need to buy yet another piece of hardware. I definitely don’t need any more pedals. Anyway, I am already working on a solution myself.
Yes adjusting kit velocities is a bit of a nightmare ,I use different kits for different situations.Like I have a cafe folder and a club folder and a rock folder all using different kits and instruments in those kits.Therefore I cant just transfer the patterns I have in rock folder using ludwig kit to cafe folder using say jazz kit.I tediously have to start from scratch and do 80 new beats for the cafe gig , and even with the jazz kit the instruments velocities are not relative.Adjusting the volume on the pedal doesnt work because the toms will still be painfully louder or visa versa then the snare.I’ve just basically now made my own kit from scratch.Also learned to realise less is more when creating a pattern.
Less is more, love it. That’s all I’m looking for! Some of these fills rattle the house
You know I’ve been thinking about this and I completely agree that changing the velocity changes the sound. However, wouldn’t this only apply to kits that use multiple .wav files per instrument?
For example, let’s use @Phil (not Flood) Vintage Ludwig w/Bass kit. This kit does use different .wav files for each instrument in the drum kit therefore changing the velocity would in fact change the sound of the instrument. In other words changing the velocity changes the .wav file that’ll be played so that would change the sound.
Now let’s use one of @Phil Flood kit as an example. To make room for all the instruments he can only use one .wav file for each instrument in the drum kit.
So my question is, would changing the velocity actually change the sound in these kits? I would think you will lose some dynamics (you can still raise/lower volume of each note) but do you actually change the sound of the drum instrument?
Reducing velocity does reduce volume on my single sample kits. Any song I have with a fade-out uses velocity reduction as the means to reduce volume. I am well aware that velocity and volume are two separate things. What happens in effect with a multi-sampled kit is for example at a velocity of 115, you are give the instruction play sample x, which was originally played at a velocity of 125, at a velocity of 115. This works very well. But with a single sample kit, with a low velocity, you get the instruction play sample x, which was originally played at a velocity of 125, at a velocity of 28. You will get a volume reduction, but is is not as realistic since you are just getting a softer struck, hard struck drum. So no, it does not change the sound of the drum. It can’t. But it does change the resulting volume of sound leaving the B.B.
Yes if I understand correctly that’s precisely what I was thinking.
So essentially when we use single-sampled instruments we do have some dynamics control due to volume changes but we also lose the sound of, say, a full hit on a snare as opposed to a light hit on a snare. I guess we’re stuck with this dilemma until the size limit of kits is done away with. Btw I can tell a sound difference with nothing else going on like in my practice room, do you (or anyone else), think it impacts the sound that much in a live setting? Personally I can live with it.
I can live with it. It’s a little more drum machine like, but the crowd knows you don’t have a drummer up there. And, apparently the size limit is hard wired into the BB. We’re not getting rid of that until a BB version 2 comes along.
Hi everyone, I found this thread because I’m in a similar situation to the OP, during a gig you’ve got louder songs and softer ones based on style and your playing technique. It’s also very difficult/awkward to switch volumes using the BB dial between songs reliably. In my case a volume pedal is not a solution as I use the BB at the end of my guitar signal chain most of the time and the pedal would affect the entire signal. Sadly, I usually can’t separate the chain due to a lack of available mixer channels. So… Would it really be that hard to add a default volume to each song in the BBManager along with the default tempo and default drum set? Perhaps something that starts at zero and you can either adjust + or - depending on the requirements of the song? I don’t want to get into editing drumsets b/c I often use the same set on louder and softer pieces… I’m not a developer, so maybe I’m missing something, but it seems like a very useful feature request for those of us who use setlists…