On the whole, you want to be able to freely select your own styles or factory styles without worrying about volume jumps.

So matching them to each other makes common sense. Remember, the total headroom of the final output doesn’t just take the style’s output but also whatever you want to play on top of it as well, so jacking the style up reduces overall headroom…

However, remember that a sound’s perceived volume is a combination of how loud the volume is set, PLUS how much velocity each note is set to. You might want to take a look in the edit window of a factory style at what range the velocities of the parts tend to fall into, then look at your styles and see if they are similar. Perhaps you have a very light touch, perhaps a very heavy one… You might find yourself needing to either drop the volume or raise it from where the factory styles are if the velocities differ by much.

Comparison by ear is the only real way to get a match… and don’t forget, a nice quiet ballad style will probably need to be a bit quieter than a heavy rock style! Otherwise, you are back to having to grab the volume or balance knob if you are selecting styles on the fly!