Slap bass on website playback doesn't sound right

• Sep 24, 2017 - 23:11

I don't know if this has come up here before, but it's been bugging me forever.
Download and listen to the attached mscz file, then compare it to the uploaded version here. Hear it? The upper notes of the slap bass sound too slappy, so much so that it almost drowns out the tonality. I guess it's a problem with the website's playback mechanism itself; no other instruments seem to be affected either.

Attachment Size
Unused_Battle_Theme.mscz 41.62 KB

Comments

In reply to by DaforLynx

Use Pick Bass.

This piece's style is more like electronic music.
It's hard to find proper voices. If you can find it, try the special, Electric/Electronic Bass SoundFonts.
Slap bass (pop, slap, mute) is a technique. It's not a single instrument. The use of continuous and small note values can give this kind of results.


For future posts: If you isolate the problematic part and add it here, then you get a quicker answer.
Where is the Slap bass? It's hard to find. And nobody wants to deal with it.

Can you be more specific about where we should be listening for a problem? Which measures of which staff specifically?

Be sure you aren't using a different soundfont locally than the one used on the web site. The website uses the default (FluidR3) unless you have explicitly uploaded your own audio.

Further details:
The slap bass is located in the same staff as the electronic bass; it's one of the alternate instruments that you can get to using staff text (like pizzicato).
The problem also appears in this other score. https://musescore.com/user/847341/scores/3824881
The problem is, above a certain range, the slap bass playback on the website doesn't represent playback in the program. I can't give the specific range right now, but those notes definitely sound different (worse imo) on the website.

In reply to by DaforLynx

OK, knowing which staff to listen to is a start. When you can can give us a specific measure to listen to, and can verify you are using the default soundfont (see View / Synthesizer) and have the latest version (2.1) installed, we'll be happy to check for you.

Note there are some known issues with playback that affect certain instruments such as some bass sounds, but these should affect your installed version as well - again, assuming you are using the default soundfont and are also on the most recent version (2.1). So it's important to understand what you are in fact hearing on your own system, which is why we need to know what soundfont you are using and also what version of MuseScore.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

It's really not that hard to pick out if you listen to it, it happens in pretty much every measure. But if you want specifics, start from measure 10 and listen for every G in the "Acoustic Bass" line (it's actually slap bass). That's the offending sound, that slapping sound that DOESN'T appear in the installed version. Yes, I used the default soundfont when I made it.
(yes, I said that the slap bass was in the electric bass line at first - but that was my mistake)

In reply to by DaforLynx

Hmm, it's pretty dense in there, so quite hard for me to pick out even listening through headphones. I could use the Mixer to solo that track, but this switches the audio source to "synthesizer" and you get something entirely different, so I'm not sure that's helpful. Could you maybe try uploading a version where that is the only track?

In reply to by DaforLynx

OK, yes I do hear a slight difference. These notes are also out of whack when playing within MuseScore (using 2.1), but not to as great an extent perhaps. I am thinking this is a case of the issue I alluded to earlier - #197131: Regression: Bass synthesizer and bass guitar create popping sounds - in which the specific extent of the issue may be more noticeable on Linux (where the audio for musescore.com is generated) versus whatever OS you are using.

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