[MacOS] Inputting notes results in a cracking noise

Thanks for the report. What OS are you using? And which version of Musescore?

Popping and crackling can happen because of low amounts of free RAM and/or a lack of system resources. A restart can often clear this issue up.

If it's consistent, please say.

This is the generic "Mac stuttering/crackling problem", which I and some others suffer, but not reproducible enough for the staff to investigate it. My observations indicate that it happens only if particular notes in a particular soundfont have not been played in "a long time", e.g., as when entering them, or opening and playing a new score.

Yes, it's on every instrument and soundfont. It only goes away when you play the excerpt through a first time. My guess is that the computer can't keep up with the sound unless the soundfont pages have already been paged in. My Mac is 6 years old.

Same issue here since 3.0. Only when in input mode, not playback. This is really annoying :/ Running a 2013 MBP with i7 and 16G of ram.

I finally found the stable scenario to reproduce the noise.

1. New score with one instrument
2. Add any number of any (e.g. 8th) notes

3. Hold Space (quick play/pause)
   Result: no noise

4. Add any instrument

5. Hold Space
   Result: the noise is here

6. Remove the new instrument

7. Hold pause
   Result: no noise again

So, the reason is several instruments processing. I will dive deeper into it.

I solved it by buying a new Macintosh. Is your result on a Macintosh, and how old?

The newest MacBook Pro 2018 with i5 13"

Huh. Mine is 2018, 16gb, and it does not happen.

The culprit commit is https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/commit/2b6cb8b432612d19589f702d2…. A real reason of the bug is still unknown.

See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/5638. This solution still needs testing but in my brief tests noises on note input and playback do not appear anymore. Therefore using relatively slow QSettings-based preferences in realtime sequencer routines indeed seems to be the cause of the issue.

!!! Thanks for looking into this. I would be ecstatic and even build it myself to try it, but for the fact that I have had "many good weeks" without audio corruption -- something like the weather. Let's see if this cures cases worse than my own. Here's hoping for the best!

Fixed in branch master, commit 39305c9bc2

_fix #280493: fix audio glitches on note input and playback on MacOS

Ensure that realtime-context routines in sequencer do not access
QSettings directly and use cached preferences for faster access.
The exception is a hack with fake JACK transport on count-in: it
seems to require working with QSettings-based preferences directly.

This improves general performance of playback so audible glitches
which were reported for MacOS seem to not appear with this patch._

Fixed in branch master, commit 40595c9a41

_Merge pull request #5638 from dmitrio95/280493-mac-noise

fix #280493: fix audio glitches on note input and playback on MacOS_

Hello all,

The update did fix most of my issues with playback and popping with one exception. Sometimes when I use musescore, playing a YouTube will cause my speakers to start crackling until I reload the video and restart it. Not sure if this can be fixed or not - this seems related to the general t2 chip audio issues. I'm using a new 16 inch MacBook Pro.

That was my guess, too (t2).

Please open a new issue for that and let this one RIP

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

I'm still having this problem anytime I select an orchestral (Instruments in an orchestra) notes. I'm not sure If the problems stems from the T2 Chip on the 16in MBP, but I do know that it's very annoying.

Which version of MuseScore do you use?

As said earlier: please open a new one (with sutable information) and let this one RIP