Simplified synthesizer/reverb improvement suggestion

• May 5, 2021 - 23:29

I'm new to this forum but have used Musescore at times in previous years. I see many improvements/additions now in 3.x versions and appreciate all the effort applied!
I recently ran into the concern of having only a "blanket" synthesizer/reverb (or two) for entire sound output. I've noted requests for things like completely independent reverbs per instruments or even voices on a staff. As a coder myself, I realize the enormity of such a change (not to mention the hardware/software overhead for a dozen reverbs!).

I'd like to suggest a middle-of-the-road improvement which might be reasonable to implement. By retaining just the one (or two) reverbs, a lot more flexibility could be achieved by adding a simple gate (switch)--probably in the mixer?--per instrument to either include the effects/reverbs or not. Better of course would be two switches per instrument--one for each of the two synthesizer effects.

One could then have say a high-endy, longish reverb for things like cymbals and other percussion, but no reverb at all on a bass, for example. Or other instruments utilizing a short reverb through the second synthesizer effect.

From there, of course, it's a short hop to a version where the "switches" become volume knobs with zero or full volume devolving to the above cases, but variable levels of reverb (or compression effect) in between.

The next level of improvement would probably be the same as above but applied "per voice" on a staff rather than at the instrument sliders on the mixer. (But I fear that might necitate putting the control at some "earlier" point in the sound definitions than the mixer which may not even be possible?)

Thanks for the opportunity to suggest improvements. Hopefully, one or more of the concepts above could be implemented much more quickly than shooting for the moon of totally independent multiple effects.


Comments

Note that per-track reverb is available in the mixer and already applied to the MIDI-out information, just not to the internal synth.

And that internal synthesizer is getting major rework for MuseScore 4; it too soon to tell how the specifics will end up, but given that the feature indeed has been asked for before I'd imagine this has been taken into account.

In reply to by jeetee

Perhaps I'm not understanding the routing/etc. But the ONLY reverb I hear when playing a score is what I have set in the Synthesizer reverb. The Reverb (and chorus) slider may do something for MIDI out(?) but has no audible effect on each instrument that I can hear--neither in direct playback of the score, nor in Export to mp3, etc.
Am I missing something here?

In reply to by skubscore

Indeed, exactly as I've replied: The per-channel reverb settings are only applied to MIDI out; so you will not hear them on playback by the internal Synth, which is also what is used to make audio exports. So you'll indeed not hear it there either; only when using the MIDI output..

In reply to by jeetee

AH, OK thanks for the clarification.
So I guess my original request still stands. Sounds like you have major changes anticipated for the synthesizer section in 4.0; hopefully, that includes at least the sort of additions I suggested in using synthesizer (reverb, etc) capabilities independently--at least to some degree--per instrument (or even per voice) soon?

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