Playback from note in score jumps / pauses / hangs

• Feb 7, 2019 - 16:38
Reported version
3.0
Type
Functional
Frequency
Many
Severity
S3 - Major
Reproducibility
Always
Status
closed
Regression
Yes
Workaround
No
Project

I checked the issues already raised and found some similar problems (e..g. Selecting notes for playback and Playback Issue ) so I added my problem to these, which seems to have been an error - they are both stuck at "needs info".

When trying to play back - for the first time from a particular point - the playback cursor may jump, the playback may hang for a while, one or two notes may be played and the synthesizer sticks on a note for a while ...

First time is critical - once you have played past a point playback from that point is OK.
Closing and reopening the file does not restore the problem - you must close and reopen Musescore to reproduce the problem.

It only occurs when starting playback part way through.
It is not associated with a particular point in score, deleting earlier parts of the score or removing instruments, moves problem further on towards the end.
It varies depending on the soundfont.
Easily reproducible for a particular score although the effect is fairly random, never happens on other of my larger / smaller scores. As yet I have not identified the difference.
Export as mxl and re-import from mxl does not change the behavior.
Reentering the score from scratch does not change the behavior.

Just to confirm, the problem seems to be unchanged in nightly 2019-01-30.

Test procedure and files attached


Comments

Frequency Few Many

I am having the same issue, as of today, for some reason. I checked to see and can confirm that I am on the latest version of MuseScore. If I select a note for playback, I get only one instant of sound, then the sound cuts abruptly. This doesn't happen every single time, but once it starts it happens continuously; I have to select and play, select and play, over and over again, until it plays through. If I playback from the start it plays through with no skips or hiccups. Closing and reopening the file did not fix the problem. Closing and restarting MuseScore did not work. Restarting my computer did not work.

Status active needs info

It's still the case that without precise step by step instructions to reproduce a problem, there is little we can. So if you do get to that point, please update us.

I have the same problem. There are no definite steps to reproduce the problem, but in general it happens with a score that has not been played in full from the beginning. This is a serious problem when one has a very long composition because it is not practical to listen to all the score just to be able to play reliably from from notes close to the last input ones.
One possible (and relative) workaround is to play at a very high speed (with the sound muted to prevent getting mad!) such as 3x (the maximum allowed in the play panel), but I'm afraid some buffer problem might arise.
Another workaround is to create a different (shorter) file with only the last parts and do the editing there, and finally paste it into the main document. However, this presents a further problem: not all information is copied and pasted, for instance tempo (which is used to gt closer to a meaningful performance) is not copied or pasted.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc said "It's still the case that without precise step by step instructions to reproduce a problem, there is little we can. So if you do get to that point, please update us."

I do not understand. I gave a step by step test procedure (Erratic Playback.docx) for half a dozen different misbehaviors with sample files. Do you mean, that you cannot reproduce these problems or that the procedure was not clear enough (the latter is quite possible)? In any case the effects are sometimes slightly different in V3.0.5 so I have updated the step by step instructions (the files are the same as above) .

Attachment Size
Erratic playback1.docx 16.63 KB

Sorry, you said the effect is "fairly random", which I took to mean, following those may or may not reproduce the problem. Are you saying it is guaranteed that following those steps reproduces the problem for you every time?

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I cannot guarantee that the effect will be the same on any other machine (my other machine will not run v3 at all), which is why I ask whether the problem can be reproduced on other configurations.

Perhaps the other users reporting similar problems could run my tests and see if the failures are the same :)

ON MY MACHINE (Windows 7 x64) it is consistent in that
1) Starting off with a newly opened MuseScore with a particular score (restore previous session), it always seems to fail if you start playback at the same point.
2) Scores which fail, always seem to fail, scores that do not, never seem to fail.
3) Once you have played past a particular point, you can always start successfully from any point after that, but does not affect starting from an earlier point.
4) Re-entering a score in V3 has the same effect as importing it from V2, either directly or via mxl.

It is random in that
1) The failure does not always manifest itself in the same way every time.
2) Adding a measure to the end MAY OR MAY NOT change the effect.
3) Playing another score before loading a failing score MAY OR MAY NOT stop the score failing.
4) I cannot identify any feature in a score that makes it fail - in the example Magyar Sandwich14c2r.mscz above, there is nothing that does not appear in any other of my scores.

I am afraid that I can do little at the moment to fix it, but I can run traces if given some guidance.

Definitely, there have been quite a few updates since, including fixes in this area. If you continue to have problems, please attach the score you are having trouble with and give us steps to reproduce the problem.