Trying to figure out why Pulse Audio cpu usage is high when MuseScore is open (even without any score open)

• May 22, 2019 - 22:51

Notice I have no score open. Pulse Audio cpu usage would be under 0% without MuseScore open. But if I have MuseScore using PulseAudio as output, PulseAudio cpu usage jumps up to 25% of a core. And it is even higher up to %50 of a core if I select PortAudio and use PulseAudio as backend:

even-higher-port-to-pulse.png

If I instead just use ALSA device directly instaed of PulseAudio, then there is no cpu hogging.

I don't know if this is something with my current arch linux system...I didn't notice it in past versions of MuseScore though, and I don't think I've really changed the audio setup on my labtop.

Not a major problem, but it does eat up my laptop battery and causes the fan to make noise, or I can just use alsa. But just wondering if people experience this or have any suggestions.

Comments

• May 22, 2019 - 22:56

Some Mac users also reported this.
So I don't think this is specific to your OS setup.

my guess (may not be true) was that PulseAudio was evaluating and processing the silence (and perhaps the reveb).

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• May 22, 2019 - 23:00

Also interestingly, MuseScore's normal idle cpu usage wiht no score with PortAudio using an alsa device as output is only around 10% a core, but is only ~3% when using PulseAudio as output, but is way up around %25 when PortAudio is using pulse.

I do notice some error messages in console upon startup in this PortAudio using pulse configuration: portaudio-to-pulse.txt. I don't know if that is related.

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