Support for external synthesizers and MIDI ports (IN+OUT)

• May 27, 2012 - 10:53

I cannot get MuseScore to use Windows embedded synthesizer (Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth)


Comments

True, and support for MIDI out has been requested before, and hopefully at some point - when the basic notation feature set is more complete - that will happen. This would not, however, allow use of the built-in Windows synthesizer engine. That would require totally separate programming, I think, and for little gain - there are freely available soundfonts you can use with MuseScore (eg, FluidR3, as described in the Handbook) that are *far* superior to the Microsoft GS sounds.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Most other scorewriters, sequencers and MIDI players do support Microsoft Windows synthesizer engine as well as other kinds of external synthesizer engines. Why not support it? Also you should know that the MuseScore synthesizer engine has a bug that most others do not have. That is, certain "repeated note clusters" (clusters having notes with the same pitch and with no spaces between notes) play as a single note.

In reply to by Musical Notation

Why do you NEED to use the obsolete Windows synthesiser engine?

There are other, far better alternatives available, including the soundfont engine used in MuseScore - Fluid.

The problem is that currently MuseScore doesn't support MIDI Out, and so therefore cannot communicate with the MS MIDI API.

Hopefully this will be rectified in a future version, but for now the development team is concentrating on getting notation display and generation sorted.

MuseScore will communicate with JACK control, however, so this may be a solution to your problem.

In reply to by Musical Notation

Have you tried downloading and setting up JACK ?

I will have a go at this myself now I have my old DAW machine back up and running again - that has a SW1000XG soundcard in it ('fraid it's that old) and it would be great to access those sounds from MuseScore.

I just need a window of free time - I'm about to move again, so it will be after that :)

One thing I can be certain about - MIDI Out support won't be available for the foreseeable future. Version 2.0 is already set in stone, and the dev team are working towards release "later this year", which probably means early next :)

The best course of action is to submit a formal feature request after 2.0 has been released for MIDI Out support to be included in MuseScore 3.0. You will have support from several members of the MuseScore community, including myself. Alternatively if you have coding skills, you could start work on implementing this yourself.

In reply to by Musical Notation

Also, note MuseScore is cross-platform. Programming that goes into direct support for Windows' own rather crude synthesis system (which as noted is pretty inferior to Fluidsynth running a good soundfont like FluidR3) is work that could go into implementing something that would help *all* users, not just Windows users (and really, just that small subset of Windows users who prefer Windows' synthesis to MuseScore's running something like FluidR3). So while I'm not saying it would never happen - and I'm not the guy who would be making those decisions or doing the implementing - I can certainly see why it thus far hasn't been a high enough priority, and is unlikely to become one any time soon.

To my mind, direct MIDI out support makes a lot more sense than trying to interface with the Windows synthesis engine. But even not everyone has or would want to use an external synthesizer. I would say that basic improvements to playback overall - like support for more markings, more control over repeats/DS/etc, interface with systems that can do chord symbol playback, etc - would benefit even more people. And looking beyond that, I would say that support for VSTi - and with it, the ability to use things like the Garritan - would be much more useful to than supporting Windows' own synthesis. I'd personally rate that above MIDI out too.

Have you *tried* the FluidR3 soundfont? It really is much (*MUCh*) better than anything shippsed with Windows. But if you have external synths, it is certainly possible you have something better still - in case, I'd be looking into how to get thing running via JACK.

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