MuseScore on a Netbook (sound problem)

• Jun 7, 2012 - 13:28

I just tried MuseScore on a Netbook (Toshiba NB-500, 1GB RAM, Intel Atom N455, 1,66GHz) with success, but at the beginning the sound was bad, because it was too glitchy and fuzzy.
The problem was in the synthesizer effects, specially "room size". I turned off all those effects by silencing them and then everything played great!
I hope this tip helps someone.
Thanks to MuseScore I now can compose everywhere! I just wanted to say "thank you" for supporting musicians from every part of the world and for making this fantastic software free!

Comments

• Jun 7, 2012 - 13:34

Hey caixamagica, thank you for sharing this! Just one more question, what operating system is running on your netbook?

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• Jun 7, 2012 - 20:21

I've encountered this on my Windows 7 netbook, too, caixamagica. Are your audio drivers by Realtek? Mine are, and it was pointed out a while back that MuseScore currently has a compatibility issue with Realtek drivers. You might want to look at this thread:

http://musescore.org/en/node/16592

Like you, I've managed to get excellent playback quality by eliminating the synthesizer effects, but I usually have to do that for each session, as my setting doesn't stick.

By the way, this machine is by Acer, but has the same CPU type and speed as yours, as well as the same RAM size.

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• Jun 8, 2012 - 05:45

Yes, outskirter, Realtek Drivers (Realtek High Definition Audio Driver 6.0.1.6234). That's it! I didn't know about that incompatibility issue.
Fortunately, there's no need here to silence synthesizer effects every session, somehow it remembers the settings (even if the synthesizer dialog shows differently). That's why I haven't tryed yet one of MuseScore nigthly builds (2.x) to see if this problem is solved. I always prefer stable versions too. But perhaps I'll do it in the next couple of days :)

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• Jun 8, 2012 - 10:42

The nightly builds are getting quite stable now, and I'm starting to use them for non critical serious work like preparing hymntunes for insertion into service sheets, also the Split Measure function makes a Nightly Build preferable to use when I'm doing unmetrical stuff.

As long as you obey the usual caveats about saving often and backing work up even more religiously than usual, they are quite useful.

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• Jun 8, 2012 - 14:05

Thanks for the tip, ChurchOrganist. Usually I save my work all the time anyway, so maybe I'll go for nightly builds, instead of waiting for a final new release.
Looks like they have a metronome (not present in v.1.2) , whish it would be very usefull to me too ;)

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• Jun 9, 2012 - 14:59

Unfortunately my experience with nightly builds wasn't so good, because they consume a lot more of RAM and sound problems seem to be even worse.

Meanwhile I realized that I MUST have these I/O settings in my Netbook (Edit > MuseScore Preferences):
- Portaudio Api: Windows DirectSound
- Portaudio Device: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio).

Recap:
Turn off synthesizer effects + Windows DirectSound + Realtek HD Speakers.

Thank you all for your time and attention :)

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• Jun 9, 2012 - 19:28

Well, it might be other problem, ChurchOrganist. I really can't tell if it is related with Realtek drivers or not.
My intention from the beginning was to help who ever had this particular Toshiba Netbook and wanted to play with MuseScore on it.
I'm not a computer expert and the thing I love most in this program is that we just need to know music to be able to make it on MusicScore. That's the only thing we need. :D

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• Jun 9, 2012 - 19:33

It would be helpful to the development team if you could provide more detail as to what is going wrong on your system with sound using the Nightly builds

Obviously when 2.0 is released the MuseScore community wants it to be as stable across as many computers as possible.

I heartily agree with your last comment :)

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• Jun 10, 2012 - 01:21

Usually we have the reverse: softwares for people with great computer skills but where music skills are not required.
MuseScore is for musicians and people who really want to learn music, that is the beauty of it.
I'll try to find what's wrong, it's a pleasure for me to participate on this active and helpful community :)
Best regards.

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• Jun 10, 2012 - 02:11

caixamagica wrote: "MuseScore is for musicians and people who really want to learn music, that is the beauty of it."

Yes, MuseScore is a great learning tool even for people who already have a pretty good knowledge of music. I started teaching myself to compose music many years ago (on my classical guitar back in 1971), and despite all the experience, I've learned so much more since I started using this application. Of course, it would have been a lot easier for me if home computers and music software like this had been available back then, because I really would have preferred to write scores for the piano. I had no access to one, nor could I have played it anyway. I'm no pianist today, either, so I let MuseScore play my stuff for me.

Sometimes I think composers like Bach or Beethoven would have killed for a tool like MuseScore. ;)

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• Jun 10, 2012 - 14:15

Actually I don't know how they did it without MuseScore or similar, outskirter ;)
There are a lot of well made midi files we can import to MS and that is an excelent way to learn composition: watching how other composers did it.
We are privileged to have the opportunity to look at all those great masterpieces!

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• Jun 10, 2012 - 17:02

It's been mentioned in an earlier post, but if you swing over to the IMSLP site (http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page), you'll find thousands of classical scores in PDF format to view and/or download for free. I've learned a lot by looking at the scores to some of my favorite works. Last night I found myself wondering if the J.S. Bach keyboard piece I was listening to should really be played that fast, so I downloaded the score and found that it should indeed be that fast according to the metronome markings. Of course, it wasn't Bach's original manuscript, so it may have been published according to modern interpretations. Besides, the metronome wasn't around in Bach's lifetime, as far as I know.

The piece was Bach's English Suite #2 in A minor.

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• Jun 11, 2012 - 00:04

Back to the main subject, guys, because I have very good news!

I did what I should have done previously: unistalled version 1.2, rebooted, and then tryed nightly build. Success! I guess working with v1.2 and trying nightly just after that messed things aroud here the first time in a scary way... lol

So you were right, ChurchOrganist. Apart from memory consumption (it's higher than v.1.2 and that can be a "con" in a netbook...) nightly build is in fact working pretty well :D

I consider this thread solved!

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• Sep 30, 2012 - 12:53

You, sir, are a genius. I had been trying everything, but changing the room size completely fixed the problem for me. I cannot thank you enough.

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• Sep 30, 2012 - 23:24

The Intel Atom processor, even the dual-core one, and its related chipset used in most if not all Intel-based netbooks are very poor in performance compared to the other Intel and AMD offerings.

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• Oct 13, 2012 - 09:13

I had a similar experience - downloaded v1.2 yesterday (onto an EeePC, Windows XP) and couldn't get the playback to run for more than about three bars without breaking up, despite trying numerous different soundfont files. I followed these instructions -

Edit-preferences
- Portaudio Api: Windows DirectSound
- Portaudio Device: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio).

And it seems to be working fine... Thankyou!

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• Oct 13, 2012 - 09:31

Correction - the problem seems to have come back after closing and opening MuseScore again. The settings haven't changed and this happens whether working with the soundfont downloaded with v1.2 or with Synthfont (which is only about 1MB). Any recommendations?

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