Strange playback problems

• Sep 20, 2012 - 11:07

Hello all,

I have been using Musescore for a while now with no problems. This morning I created a new file, and have inputted a dozen or so bars of notes. When playing back the first few bars sound OK then the tempo slows down, and notes sound distorted and off-key, as though the program is struggling to process the information (yes, sounds weird I know). Then a few bars later it all sounds normal again - I've opened a few files that yesterday were working fine and the problem happens with those too, but not always in the same place in the score.

I've shut down and restarted the program, shut down and rebooted the computer, uninstalled the program and reinstalled with a new download, even uninstalled and cleaned out the registry before reinstalling for a second time.

MP3s etc play OK via a media player so I don't think it's a sound card/driver problem.

Any ideas?

Musescore version 1.2
Revision 5470
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1

Thanks

Pete

edit: I have tried restoring factory settings but this hasn't helped. I can save files to e.g., MIDI and these playback fine so it's just a Musescore playback problem

Comments

• Sep 20, 2012 - 13:50

With all questions relating to playback (or other aberrant behaviour) of a particular file, it helps to attach the file to your post. Sometimes you get a good answer, sometimes not, but if you don't attach a file you can be sure of several speculative answers. I note that you have mentioned the OS, MS version etc, and this is to be applauded as so many posters miss this out.

I can speculate, for instance, that your score is quite large since this might slow down processing (and playback ) in places (but I might be wrong if your score isn't large).

I suggest some sort of "sticky" for anyone posting a problem of this nature prompting for answers to various questions to allow the best chance of a meaningful response. Include:

OS
MS version
CPU (AMD, Intel)
RAM
and any other questions anyone can think of.
AND attach the file

Reply

• Sep 20, 2012 - 15:02

I could attach the affected file(s) but as I said it doesn't always happen at the same point when playing back the file(s), and it's a variety of files that have been affected including some that played perfectly well yesterday (and that now that I've gone back to Musescore v1.1 they play perfectly well again). None of them is particularly large either - when the problem first appeared it was with a fairly small file that I'd just started working on - only a dozen or bars had been inputted

MS version and OS as above but for what it's worth I have an i5 quad core processor (2.5GHz) and 6Gb of RAM - which until this morning seemed adequate unless something has changed!

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• Sep 20, 2012 - 15:16

and I did check, to find the reverb wasn't the problem, but thank you for the suggestion. The problem I was having was more than just distorted sound - it was that plus notes going a bit off-key plus the tempo slowing plus the audio being out of sync with what was on the screen.

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• Sep 21, 2012 - 01:07

Yes I have experienced this too, but never with the consistency required to produce an error report, and thankfully not very often.

In my case a computer restart has solved the problem every time.

I suspect it is a buffering problem from the FluidSynth engine, but as I've never been able to reproduce consistently I am not sure.

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