Playback is harshly out of tune in Musescore 4.

• Dec 18, 2022 - 20:44

I just loaded up MuseScore 4 for the first time and spent about half an hour trying to figure out why the piano playback sound is almost a whole step sharp. I then uninstalled MuseScore 4 and reinstalled it and it still is playing extremely sharp. In "properties" my note tuning is set to 0.00. This is pretty frustrating! Would really appreciate any help with this.


Comments

Update: Enabling the "Tuning" plugin fixed the issue. Not sure why this doesn't default, but for anyone having this issue, try that.

I had the same problem with a new MuseScore 4 install on a machine where version 3 was running fine. The odd tuning error (not an even number of semitones) made me wonder if it was a sample rate issue or something. I normally run a Focusrite Scarlett USB audio interface. In MuseScore, I went to edit, preferences, i/o and set it to use the laptop's built-in audio interface. I restarted MuseScore and now the playback was pitched correctly (coming out of the laptop's headphone jack).

Then I switched it back to the Focusrite, restarted MuseScore again, and now the pitch is correct from there too. Hope this is helpful to someone. The software must have made some wrong assumption about the audio interface that was corrected when I explicitly changed to a different one.

In reply to by scusemore

I have the same issue with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 (2nd Gen) USB audio interface on Win10 pro.
I get almost half tone down pitch.
Switching to the internal laptop interface from Musescore I/O preferences makes it play right, but unfortunately switching back to the USB interface does not solve the problem for me.
Playing with Sample Rate settings it seems that the problem arises only with 44.1kHz and multiple values;
at 48, 96 and 192kHz it seems to work fine.
Now I managed to make it work at 44.1kHz changing not only the interface's Sample Rate setting, but also selecting/deselecting the external interface as the SYSTEM standard (i.e. from the loudspeaker tray icon).
I really don't know which action made it work... for now...

In reply to by yankee73

I had several scores open. Only one of them had sharp playback. I enabled the "playback" plugin. And I restarted the machine. With changing 2 parameters, I'm not sure which one fix the problem - but it appears to be fixed.
I'm guessing it was a memory problem. I tend to have several PowerPoint, Word, MuseScore documents and Chrome open as I build curriculum and suspect I'm challenging my Windows 11 machine.

In reply to by scusemore

Thank you so much, I've been using some bluetooth headphones to listen to a score over and over again (studying some schoolwork). I decided musescore was the easiest option, but for some reason it was just WILDLY out of tune, and not in a way I could accurately pinpoint. I had spent a good hour trying to figure it out what was wrong when I came across this comment- I checked exactly what you described and as soon as I switched it to specifically the headphone's audio output it was instantly fixed!! Legit saved my day/study session tysm 😭

Believe it or not - I'm getting different results every time I use M4:
first almost a half-step flat,
later sharp a half-step
today WHOLE step flat!
Then I quit, restart and it'll be fine (at least for this session)

Same thing for me WTH. I wanted to play over the track with my sax, but it sounded so out of tune that it was simply impossible. Like a half step below but not really.

Same problem, but different things are out of tune in the same score at different times, even within one part. It's somewhat persistent, but not completely. It occasionally changes every several restarts, but not always. Most of the time it's a specific section, with other sections with the same instrument/part being in tune at the same time.

I experienced the same when using the new amazing sample libraries in Musescore 4. These are recoreded at 48.000 Hz, so make sure your audio interface is set to 24kb, 48.000 Hz. Then the problem will be solved most likely (in my case it was solved). Be well, Jeff Hijlkema

this happened to me after i used my headphone jack, the way i fixed it was plugging the jack in again with the headphone takings it out and reconnecting my headphones

I know what you're talking about, I'm typing while listening to playback like this lol. But it usually just solves itself when you restart it. At least for me. I don't know what triggers this because it's completely random.

In reply to by antoniopowell

Did you guys ever figure this out? this is crazy, I'm going crazy how the hell does a notation software go out of tune, I'm not sure why but my entire song is a half step too low! I already tried the tuning plugin and nothing, I even tried to put the song in a different score and it still was out of tune. what can I do?!

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