Synthesizer

• Jul 23, 2020 - 19:47

I do not understand why I have to load my soundfont from score all the time or save the sound font to score. Sometimes it uses the same sound font for every score and I did not even say set to default. Also, the musescore.com uses the same default soundfont even when I try to update it with the proper soundfont.


Comments

Soundfonts can be slow to load, we if every score always changed the soundfonts, that would make score loading slow. That's why you need to do that explicitly. But if you want to use the same soundfont all the time, just hit the "Set as Default" button.

MuseScore.com would have no way of having every soundfont anyone might use, so if you want to hear a specific soundfont in the playback there, you need to check the "Upload score audio" button in the Save Online dialog. It doesn't upload the soundfont, but the actual audio for your score generated on your computer, same as if you did an export to MP3.

In reply to by Nadine Hill

Totally serious.

My PC is ten years old so I have to accept some slowness at times. If you share the score, your computer spec, mp3 encoding bit rate and time taken to export then I can test it on my PC for comparison. You may find someone else who will test it for you on a higher spec'd PC than mine. This could help you to decide whether a high spec. computer would be a viable solution.

In reply to by yonah_ag

Okay, let me elaborate myself: VERY, VERY slow like it is downloading 32 Gigs. Once it was at about 19%, I had to quit the upload and just deal with it. And I also wanted to get onto more transcribing, because it would not let me go on to anything else as long as it is downloading. Thank you for allowing me to elaborate, but I am not the one to buy a computer. And my parents cannot even afford one right now. By the way, my computer IS about that old too. :-)

In reply to by Nadine Hill

I'm not sure what 32 Gigs has to do with it. That would take about 3 seconds to download on my internet connection but my mp3 exports take much longer - although typically less than 1 minute. You are not providing any measurable data that would indicate an actual problem.

You also now mention upload. Before you were only talking about mp3 export. Try the export on its own to see if that is slow. Uploading to MS introduces other factors, especially if it's the first time uploading this particular score.

If you share the score, your computer spec, mp3 encoding bit rate, soundfont (+ name of preset used) and time taken to export, (NOT upload), then I can test it on my PC for comparison – just in case there is something obviously wrong.

In reply to by Nadine Hill

Once it was at about 19%, I had to quit the upload and just deal with it.

Wait.. Do you upload your scores to .com to then download an mp3 of them? That is entirely not needed at all. Simply use File → Export and select mp3 as the file type.
Exporting audio can take some rendering time depending on all those settings, but at least shouldn't take longer than the duration of the score (for an average score).

In reply to by Nadine Hill

What isn't clear is exactyl what you did. We can probably help, but we'd need you to describe very precisely what you are doing, step by step, like:

1) load the attached score
2) View / Synthesizer
3) press button X, Y, or Z.
4) ...
5) ...

Then we can see exactly what you are doing, and if you tell us what you expected and what happened instead, we can advise you as to what you need to do instread.

In reply to by Nadine Hill

@Nadine: No it's NOTHING to do with your demanding soundfont. If it still sounds the same then you have either failed to change the soundfont, or picked a preset from the new soundfont which happens to sound the same as the old soundfont.

Please follow Marc's request and he'll have a better chance of helping you.

In reply to by yonah_ag

@Nadine. Your original post talked about loading fonts to and from scores and why you had to do some of that every time you opened a score. If you use the sounds that came with MuseScore, you hardly have to mess with any of that. Let's say you have the sounds that came with MS set as default ( done by selecting the font in the Zerberus tab in the synthesizer and selecting "set as default"). If you start working on a piano piece, you use the mixer to assign a piano sound to the piano staffs. When you are done working on the piece for the day you select "save as", name the piece and save to a location of your choice. That saves everything and all settings you created. The next time you open that score everything will be loaded just as you left it. Sounds, reverb settings, everything. Then, just "save" after subsequent sessions. You don't have to load to or from anything, unless you decided to change fonts. Then you have to do it all over. Every time you start a new score you must assign sounds. MS can't do it because it has no idea which of the violin sounds you want, for example. If you open someone else's score it might load sounds for you if the score uses the same font you have. I have never used save to score, or load from score or whatever. I think you may be making this more complicated than it needs to be.
Other news is about your piano piece. Quite lovely, by the way. I know you stated why you want to use "fp". I get it. But "fp is not possible on a single note on piano. More proper to use two separate markings right where you want them. Just for the fun of it, I tried loading your piece into Sibelius to see if it made an audio file any faster. But Sibelius can't read your repeat structure. There may be some disagreement but it's always safer, when you repeat back to the beginning of a piece, to have a repeat sign at the beginning also. Sibelius when to some random spot 10 pages prior. Just a thought.

"Unfortunately not"
Wow. This is really one of the most inconvenient cons of MuseScore to be honest.
By the way, how do y'all italicize text or bold text.

In reply to by Nadine Hill

It took my computer 1 min 51 sec to export. The first 50% was done in 30 sec and the second 50% in 81 sec. I don't know whether this is due to the size and complexity of the score.

Reducing the bit rate from 128 to 64 took the export to 1 min 44 sec – not a big saving. There is a lot happening on converting soundfont playback into mp3.

If someone with a decent PC can test it too then the result would be interesting. How long did the export take on your computer?

In reply to by yonah_ag

I think XMPlay exports faster. That software also uses Lame DLL.

The previous result was with my own soundfont. Results with Musescore's soundfont:

New test, with Musescore_HQ soundfont:
Musescore MP3 export: Test1: 4:51, Test2: 4:54, Test3 4:56
XMPlay MP3 export: Test1: 1:23, Test2: 1:24 Test3: 1:23


my CPU is Core i5-650, 3.20GHz

In reply to by Ziya Mete Demircan

FWIW, all kinds of things come into play with export. More than just the cpu.
This score is just big.
My 6 year old laptop. i5 at 2.29 GHZ : 4 minutes . 3 minutes if I lowered the sample and bit rate ( but at a cost)
My rebuilt within the last 2 years desktop. i5 at 3.10 GHZ: 3 minutes.

In reply to by Nadine Hill

@Nadine: Your score itself lasts over 28 mins by the time all the repeats are played so I'm not surprised that it took nearly 2 minutes to export on my old PC. In fact, I'm quite impressed that it did so well.

I monitored the PC's performance during the export and the process is CPU intensive. I'm running Windows 10 (64-bit) with only 4 GB RAM and an Intel dual-core 3 GHz processor so I don't know how much quicker a modern PC would be. I'm guessing that this conversion only uses a single core and 3 GHz is better than many current laptops. What sort of processor are you using?

Well Nadine, there are various things to try here but we didn't resolve your original query. It's best to put different queries into their own posts to prevent this type of digression.

To summarise

• Make sure to use File > Export to make the MP3
• The process can take a few minutes with long scores
• A computer upgrade probably won't help much so not a cost effective fix
• Reducing bitrate won't help much either and may reduce the sound quality
• You could export as MIDI from MS and complete the conversion using XMPlay
• Markdown is the tool for formatting your forum posts

https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/basics

I think it is closed
I went to Save Online and was able to update the score and upload score audio without much fuss. I did lower the bitrate-- who knows if that helped. Helpful tactic.

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