Musescore 4 the worse version ever

• Dec 23, 2022 - 12:55

The worst of all!
What a joy that version 3 has remained installed! nothing goes in version 4 that I use with windows 10 only for an hour with my I7 Laptop
- Poor quality display
- sound also (and lagging)
- the program is very slow when writing a score and lagging too
- there is no more control of midi channels
And I’ve only been using it...

Comments

• Dec 23, 2022 - 17:27

I'd have to disagree with you on almost everything that you've brought up here.
1. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "display", but the general design and layout of 4 is considerably better looking and functionally more helpful than 3 and if you're talking about bad screen resolution then I'm afraid that's an issue on your end.
2. The playback is one of the most improved areas of Musescore 4. Undoubtedly there are a decent number of issues with the new playback, but you mentioned none of them here. All you need to do is fiddle with the settings a little bit and it will sound great. I'm also experiencing zero playback lag.
3. I have no idea what you're on about with the program being slow. My pc also has an i7 and it rarely hits 20% usage. It also doesn't go above 1gb of RAM and has negligible GPU usage.
4. I don't use the midi channels so I can't comment on this.

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• Dec 23, 2022 - 17:32

I think you just need a 'good' computer. I have a bunch of computers. And Musescore4 only works acceptably on my newest one.
I am not a fan of using all this computing power for a notation program, BUT it is a massive improvement you can't deny that.
With that said I am waiting until sometime next year to move everything over to the new version. However, I am sure they will work out all the problems and in a few more months it will be good.

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• Jan 10, 2023 - 21:24

With the experience of having notated over 6000pp of music in Musescore in the last few years, I observe on a 6 year old WIndows 10 laptop and a new Win 11 laptop (both i7 16GB SSD although varying i7 generations) that for notation entry, Musescore 4 on the faster device is much slower than Musescore 3 on the slower device both from a UI interaction POV and the response time of the software.

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• Dec 24, 2022 - 09:27

MIDI channels are controlled from the mixer, which can be shown/hidden by pressing F10, or by way of a button right in the middle of the menu bar. I wasn't aware of that feature in version 3. Apparently it was there, but much less functional than it is in 4.0. They probably just haven't been able to find the new shortcut.

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• Dec 24, 2022 - 09:10

Does your laptop have a mechanical hard disk or solid state, (SSD) ?
How much RAM do you have?
Does task manager give you any clues as to where the problem lies?

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• Jan 10, 2023 - 19:16

the same on Macs,
Cursing 4.0; Unfortunatelly I´ve already written some pieces in the new format - but I´ve returned to 3 with relief. To the other poits I wand to add:#
- no tabs anymore (confusing, if working with more pieces at the time)
- Can´t open a file by dobble click
- stupid chord-names like Be10d instead of Bb
- the exzerpts can´t be combined as freely als before (e.g. voice and piano)

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• Jan 11, 2023 - 20:31

I must agree that MS 4 is very clunky. It jumps around, has plug in corruption problems. I think the channel strip should be removed.
Before you "Ad hominem" me, I'm running a 16GB DDR3 Mac on Monterey so my Mac is well up to running musescore. It has zero issues running Logic Pro which is far superior and processor hungry.
Why does musescore 4 have a channel strip when it's obviously not up to running complex algorithms?
I use musescore3 to write score and if I want it sound good send midi to Logic and add real plug ins and have a proper channel strip that doesn't hiss at you when you add one effect (musescore 4)
Playback is a crap shoot now and sounds different each play because of the channel strip inconsistencies and major dynamic randomness.
I write orchestra so you have to split your scores to playback because it just can't play more than 10 channels. People complained about the sound, now they have ruined a great score writing tool for a crap version of Logic. If you want a good sound you have to pay for it nobby!

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• Jan 26, 2023 - 20:20

I was first very happy about MuseScore 4 which seems to have very nice idea behind.
But when using it, I lost already 2 scores which are not anymore launchable even if I have created them using MuseScore 4 over several days. But then, some days later while I haven't used MuseScore 4 at all, I start it again and load the score and ... MuseScore disappears from the User Interface without any error message. Always when I load the same score again. No chance to recover.

Other scores are working but some don't.
It is still a worse version, this must be said. But I am contributing with bug reports as much as I can and hope that the bugs are fixed soon. Never load and use a 4.0 Version for true work. This is wisdom.

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• Jan 26, 2023 - 20:31

I've had scores give me a warning that they're corrupted when trying to open them, but there's still the option to ignore and open it anyway. There's usually just one object that's causing the problem, but it can be a bit hard to find sometimes. I'm not sure why you're having it just crash with no error message, but that sounds like it might be a bug in MuseScore itself, not a error in the score. One thing I did before I started using MuseScore 4, which I'd definitely recommend, was make a separate copy of all my MuseScore 3 scores, so that I can still open them in 3 if I want to, just in case. I basically made a separate backup folder of scores that I'll never open in 4, and only convert the ones in my original folder.

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• Jan 27, 2023 - 14:02

A month later, I didn’t change anything at all to what I wrote: I deleted Musescore 4, and reinstalled Musescore 3.
As I also knew the time when the site offered scores without having to pay anything, I think I will soon abandon this project.
The "novelty" added to Musescore 4 makes this program (which I have been using since its creation) unusable: many much better and free DAW exist, very easy to use and low in resources. Why does Musescore not remain only a score editing software, which it did very well until now? No doubt that in a short time, version 5 will use nespresso capsules to make coffees and will suck as well as a Dyson...

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• Jan 27, 2023 - 18:15

Except that a DAW is not a good composing tool for someone that only knows notation. Plus you need better fonts than the free ones.
And it was illegal for .com to offer many of those scores for free.
I'm not sure what novelty you are talking about. Playback is vital to composition.

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• Jan 30, 2023 - 22:14

I wrote a lot of parts in MS3 and now I'm trying to write some new ones in MS4 and I agree that MS4 is much slower (in everything) than MS3:
- writing notes (sometimes it happens that I mark something, but it gets marked after a while)
- scrolling the sheet - I drag the mouse, but it starts scrolling after a while
- playing notes - quite often the sound plays, but the cursor gets stuck and jumps after a while
- response in everything is worse

It's very annoying, I've had a few times where I've accidentally moved a few notes while trying to scroll the sheet, or even deleted something.

The computer I'm using is quite powerful (i7, 32GB RAM, SSD, ...). On a weaker computer, I can't use MS4 at all (even playback gets stuck).

It's a big disappointment, after a few hours of writing notes I'm giving up. I'm going back to MS3 and I prefer to manually rewrite the part of the sheet music I have written in MS4 back in MS3 (because MS4 file can't be opened in MS3 anymore :( )

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• Jan 31, 2023 - 00:56

FWIW. My old i5 4440 quad core 16 GB ram SSD dinosaur runs MS4 very well. Not perfect. But well. I did make two small adjustments. I raised the buffer in MS4, and lowered my sound device bit rate a notch. I've also got it running well, but not as good, on my far lesser computers. An audio interface is the final piece of the puzzle for them. It is possible.

You do know that MS4 has scroll bars so that you don't have to drag a score around. If you export a score from MS4 as mxl you can open it in MS3.

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• Feb 13, 2023 - 14:38

I do must agree! I can't even change the system language , which was very easy on version 3.

Version 4 uses the Windows language system, and do not offer any possibility to change it into English.

I'll wait for the version 5.

Attachment Size
musescore4.jpg 204 KB

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• Feb 13, 2023 - 15:56

What?? Mu4 can change to all languages that Mu3 could switch to and in the same way. Except that in order to take effect you'd need to restart MuseScore (and Muse Hub too, as the message there clearly indicates, not to that the translations are quite horrible)

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• Mar 27, 2024 - 22:39

Dear Users,

my comment might be superfluous, unnecessary and of course is no help, but I too must complain about MS4.
First:
I was very much looking forward to MS4 because of many problems in detail I often had while scorewriting with MS3. And I do like the new design of MS4 and the many improvements which solved most of those old problems.
But:
I share the same experience like many others, the unbelievable slow performance when just writing or editing a score.
And only for that I would like to use Musescore , nothing else.
( I think this was the original purpose of a music notation software, wasn't it?)
(I understand that there are of course some more fields of application.)
It is such a pity .

As you can see , my PC is not the latest model (i5 CPU, 2 cores, 3.33GHz, RAM 8,00 GB , Windows 10 pro on internal ssd, external ssd as storage device),
but it works satisfying for example with Reaper, Audacity, GIMP, Inkscape and much more.

I will not see the need to buy a new computer only for a music notation software when my old one still works very well with many other applications, no , I won't throw it out of my window .
Isn't it possible to conceive a software so smartly that it runs properly not only exclusively on the latest state of the art data center power machines (not the most sustainable way, I think...) ?

So I dare to question myself:
Is there something wrong with the very basic principles of MS4 software design ?!
I am no programmer at all and have the biggest respect for everyone who is working on this project,
many many thanks to them all out there !!!!
But in the case of MS4 I have the feeling that it was perhaps going to the wrong direction.

I quit using MS4 and go back to MS3, which means a lot of work for me, because I started all my recent scores on MS4 , so I have to reedit all of them in MS3 and I have to deal with all the annoying little things which tried to bother me in the past. But at least I can work fluently with it which is at the moment not possible with MS4.

Sorry for all that above ...

Kind regards,
Ulf

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• Mar 28, 2024 - 00:50

Yes , of course, I guess it has to do with playback, sounds and so on ?
But it is so sad that I can not use it for just music notation purposes, I am excluded from all the improvements.
I do not believe that you really need 16 GB Ram and 8 cores when you just want to WRITE a score.
It was possible with MS3 !

I mainly work on editing new percussion scores for existing orchestral works because there is so much unusable material out there you get from publishers. For that work I do not need playback at all but all varieties of layout options, sometimes very special ones, because percussion scores are sometimes a bit special.
And Musescore has a lot of options, I like and appreciate that . MS4 has made big improvements compared to MS3.

Normally, a software should use and require maximum computer resources only while doing a very complex job.
Why can I edit videos with my PC but not fluently write a MS4-score ?!
Maybe I'm too silly, this will not get into my head...

I still have a feeling that MS4's architecture is not optimized in that direction.
That is a conclusion of someone who is not able of coding, so please forgive my amateurish thoughts.

(I'm desperate)

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• Mar 28, 2024 - 11:18

Hi bobjp !

It's not regarding this thread , but:
As a professional orchestra percussionist I have to deal with scores in my daily work, and I can tell you, what we have to work with is sometimes unbelievable. Sometimes it is the mere quality of the print (still very often copies from handwritten music, arrgh, copies of used copies with unerasable notes and drawings from other musicians and much more...) which hampers your sightreading, distracts your concentration away from the music and so on. And often the parts are written in a manner that you can see there is absolutely no understanding for the needs of percussionists, particularly when it comes to bigger percussion sections with multiple instruments.
Recently we phoned a famous italian publisher because of such problems , they said they had never heard of such problems and their material is being played worldwide. OMG I thought, how naive, and no one uses your original material because there are selfmade scores out there since decades. Of course it is expensive to reedit a whole opera,so they do not have any interest in that as long as they have the monopoly and exclusive copyright for it. But in my opinion this is ignorant against us musicians. I know many musicians from other orchestras, they have the same issues, all are complaining, but nothing changes. Just an annoyance...

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• Mar 28, 2024 - 15:01

Be thankful that publisher answered the way they did. Anyone who makes copies of their publications is in violation of copyright. I know it is common practice to ignore the law and do whatever the heck we want. Break the law? Who cares. A college concert band on tour played in a city one night. They moved on but one musician accidently left their music folder behind. It was full of photocopied music. Someone found it and took it to the publisher. The publisher sued and won several hundred thousand dollars. It's not just about the publisher, but also the composer. You can make copies, but only with the copyright holder's permission.

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• Mar 29, 2024 - 09:09

You are right and I am fully aware of that. I am very careful with my scores, in our case we legally purchased the material and the performance rights, and we use my scores only in this context. I don't publish them on any platform in the web. ( Honestly, I would like so much to share it with my professional collegues around the world...)
In many cases (depending on the composers date of death ) the rights are not anymore exclusive.
A good hint is often IMSLP.org.
In my opinion copyrights should be strictly obeyed because someone tries to make a living from composing, printing, publishing and so on. This is not very common nowadays (big problem for musicians). On the other hand, why do publishers still produce material that is nearly unusable ? Is it so difficult to ask musicians what they need ? I'm afraid this will remain a permanent thing ...

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• Mar 28, 2024 - 01:49

For large scores (dozens of pages), Musescore starts to slow down when simply entering notes. There is a 1-2 second delay between entering a note and appearing on the screen
It is naive to believe that Musescore will use all 8 cores. Honestly, I think Musescore is slow because it only loads one cpu core.

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• Mar 28, 2024 - 12:11

This is not about how the CPU works. This is about how Musescore is designed and whether it is capable of parallelizing heavy calculations. And as far as I can tell, Musescore does heavy calculations in a single thread. One thread can only run on single core.
This is what I see when Musescore does heavy calculations (and even freezes) on my 4 core CPU. 25% utilization means 1 core is in use.
mscore_load.png

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• Mar 28, 2024 - 00:23

@ulf wrote >> I quit using MS4 and go back to MS3, which means a lot of work for me, because I started all my recent scores on MS4 , so I have to reedit all of them in MS3 and I have to deal with all the annoying little things which tried to bother me in the past. But at least I can work fluently with it which is at the moment not possible with MS4.

You can open your MS4 scores directly in MS 3.7 Evolution. And then you can edit them in 3.7 or 3.6.x.

NOTE: It was tricky getting a recent version of 3.7 running on macOS. And once installed and running that I found that 3.7's audio system is broken on MacOS. BUT I CAN use 3.7 to open MS4 scores, save, and then open in 3.6 or open in an older version of MS 3.7 (specifically, in my case, 3.7.0.4524440406) which runs fine on MacOS, but does not have the latest bug fixes or enhancements.

The point of MS 3.7 Evolution is twofold:

a) to address the bugs in 3.6.2, ongoingly

b) to provide an alternative to MS4 for those who don't like the interface, behaviors, bugs, regressions, and omissions ...

scorster

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• Mar 28, 2024 - 00:44

I downloaded Musescore 4.0 when it first came out, and in literally 2 minutes got rid of it.
I have an iMac and immediately saw the problem with open tabs, and all the bloat with Musehub and where the new software was headed.
Unfortunately, about four weeks ago, I tried 4.1 -- figuring things would be fixed by now, and converted a few of my scores but had too many problems (now I can't convert those scores back to 3.x which is very frustrating)

Anyway, I am never going beyond 3.x. I don't need anything else.

For many composers who compose the old-fashioned way -- with their instrument by playing it -- Musescore 3.x is just fine.

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• Mar 28, 2024 - 00:47

Many share your sentiments.

@Unknown Prodigy wrote I tried 4.1 and converted a few of my scores but had too many problems (now I can't convert those scores back to 3.x which is very frustrating)

As stated above: "You can open your MS4 scores directly in MS 3.7 Evolution. And then you can edit them in 3.7 or 3.6.x."

NOTE: It was tricky getting a recent version of 3.7 running on macOS. And once installed and running that I found that 3.7's audio system is broken on MacOS. BUT I CAN use 3.7 to open MS4 scores, save, and then open in 3.6 or open in an older version of MS 3.7 (specifically, in my case, 3.7.0.4524440406) which runs fine on MacOS, but does not have the latest bug fixes or enhancements.

scorster

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• Mar 28, 2024 - 01:16

Please note—as Jojo mentioned—the MS3.7 artifact download links work only if you logged into Github, which simply means you have to open an account, and that merely entails choosing a Github userName and password.

Nice if development devises a simple way to download MuseScore 3.7 Evolution from a reliable, unchanging link. (This was spoken of, but I don't know if it has occurred.)

scorster

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