Can't reset audio anymore?
In Musescore 3, if audio stopped playing back properly, I could reset it under Edit->Preferences->IO. Musescore 4 doesn't have that reset button, but I still have the same kinds of audio playback problems. In Musescore 4 I have to completely exit and restart to reset audio, which, given the frequency of audio problems, is not very fun. Is the reset audio button hidden somewhere, or is it truly gone? Can it be brought back? (Preferably on the main interface?) Or, even better, can audio be reset every time playback stops? Or (best option) can the playback problems be eliminated?
Comments
No reset button that I know of. What kinds of audio problems are you having with MU4? The playback engine in MU4 is completely different. If properly setup there shouldn't be problems.
In reply to No reset button that I know… by bobjp
The symptoms are the same as I usually experience on musescore 3. Playback becomes slower that indicated, and samples don't play correctly. They sound garbled and echoey.
In v4, nothing I do restores clean playback. I can change audio interfaces and try other changes, but once the problem begins it is unrecoverable except restarting musescore.
I'm not sure everything that can cause it, or what you mean by setup, but certainly the process of changing VSTs and VST settings seems to cause it.
Making such changes also seems prone to crashing Musescore entirely.
So I just tried switching from one VST to another. I have an electric guitar track and I switched from a VST to a Muse Sound to anther VST.
I'll walk through how that's going.
In reply to The symptoms are the same as… by a101010atlast
In reply to When musescore comes back up… by a101010atlast
In reply to When it comes back up, it… by a101010atlast
So, it seems very likely that it's the VSTs that are causing a problem. I don't know whether there is anything you can do to recover from their bad behavior or not.
I played around with things a bit more and VST A once again caused audio playback problems. No audio, except one note on pause and play. When I switched away from it to a Muse sound, playback resumed, and when I switched back to VST A it crashed musescore.
In reply to So, it seems very likely… by a101010atlast
Guess it's time to name names.
VST A is SampleScience Clean Electric Guitar V2
VST C is AugusHardiman.TV MONSTER Guitar v2.2022.09
VST D is Spitfire LABS
The effects VST is BIAS FX 2_x64
I'll add to this if I find a good reproduction path for the initial problem I was seeing.
In reply to Guess it's time to name… by a101010atlast
By 'setup' I mean your audio device settings. They can be very important in MU4 I can't speak to your VST's. Except to say that I'm not surprised that constant changing causes problems.
In reply to By 'setup' I mean your audio… by bobjp
So, when you say "I'm not surprised that constant changing causes problems" I fee like you are trying to minimize a situation that's very unstable. "Constant changing" basically describes "using software". I'm describing a situation where every time I change a VST there is greater than 25% chance something serious happens. That's not very robust, and it's a frustrating user experience.
Since posting this, about every other time I've launched musescore 4 it has crashed. I'm pretty sure it's the VSTs that are at fault, and I'll follow up with those developers.
But it would certainly be a better user experience if musescore 4 was built in such a way that simply loading a jenky VST couldn't crash it on start up. It requires a bit more careful isolation of plugins to prevent that sort of thing, but it can obviously be done, No promises, but maybe I'll try building musescore and see if I can come up with some plugin isolation that's useful. This is a frustrating situation.
We've diverged a lot from the original question of being able to reset audio, these other sources of instability are a lot worse than I had originally thought.
In reply to So, when you say "I'm not… by a101010atlast
Hey, sorry, that's sounds pretty arrogant. "No promises" is sincerely meant, and it would be better if the people who know what they are doing try this. I certainly won't have anything to show for it for many months, sometime next year at the earliest.
But the theory is straightforward if someone else wants to try. Basically, the UI and plugins have to execute in separate processes, and only communicate with messages and very carefully shared buffers. That way a jenky plugin can't take down the main process and the main process can either carry on or attempt to reload the plugin and try again. The challenge is communicating efficiently enough to allow realtime playback.
Unfortunately there isn't really a better way to deal with unreliable code not under your own control.
In reply to Hey, sorry, that's sounds… by a101010atlast
What about your system? Does your computer meet the specs. Is your sound device set up as best as it can be?
Yes, you are supposed to be able to use the software. But it seems to me that if you have a particular VST that is a problem what does that tell you?
In reply to What about your system? Does… by bobjp
Yes, my system meets the specs. My sound device (a focusrite scarlett solo) seems to work fine, although I'm not sure what 'as best as it can be' might entail.
As far as what my VST problems tell me, all I can say is that I might think they were the problem. Except that they all run fine in Reaper. I can switch between them, turn them on and off during playback, and load Reaper and save projects with those plugins, all without experiencing crashes or anything like the symptoms I've described.
Given that, I have to suspect Musescore. (sorry!)
I should have tried this first. It's true that it would be nice to tolerate jenky VSTs, but after trying them in reaper and experiencing no problems I'm guessing the VSTs are fine.
I suspect musescore is not interacting with those VSTs correctly.
I guess that means it would be better to focus on debugging the specific causes of those issues rather than trying to protect musescore against misbehaving VSTs.
I will try building musescore and see if I can make any progress but it will be a few weeks.
In reply to Yes, my system meets the… by a101010atlast
OK. Notation software is not like any other software. I also have a Scarlett solo. I also run Sibelius. And for it and MU4 the Scarlett has to be setup a little differently. You might not be able to just plug in the Scarlett and go for it. Do you know about "Exclusive mode"? Or Bit rate.
I'm not interested in defending MU4. There aren't many VST's that sound very good in MU4. Even using a vst adds layers of complications to a program that is still not quite ready for them. It is indeed a work in progress.