MuseScore.com mixer causes a hang with playback

• Dec 10, 2016 - 11:22

Hi

I am having difficulties with using the mixer on MuseScore.com - it is very useful because I am compiling rehearsal tracks to help the choral society I belong to with learning the different vocal parts of pieces of music. On selecting the mixer option and clicking on "Enable Audio Synth", then trying something like mute or solo on a particular stave, on returning to the score and pressing play, the blue "loading" line just under the title goes backwards and forwards continually and will not allow the piece to be played. Typical example:

https://musescore.com/user/7765511/scores/3043086

The music I have is converted from midi files and has fairly complex orchestration. Unfortunately I don't have midi sources available with simple piano accompaniment. I have managed to use the mixer with pieces of music loaded by other users.

Is this just a problem with complex music overpowering the software? If so, I will try to find simpler accompaniments in future, but please would you have a look to see if I am doing something wrong.

Thanks

Tony


Comments

There seems to be a bug with the web player not being able to fetch the strings sounds for playback, causing the lockup.

Might I ask why you are using the web player for this? The Desktop software provides you with just the same (and more) functionality. You can also open up the mixer and change the volume settings of each instrument. The you can export your score into one of the several supported audio formats.
The big advantage is that you're not limited by the sounds of the online soundfont, which is more optimised for size and less so for quality (although it does a really good job in giving as much quality for that size).

@Thomas: netlogging shows the following:
https://d1jdgm35warl9f.cloudfront.net/soundfont1/synth_strings_1-mp3.js 403 (Forbidden)
https://d1jdgm35warl9f.cloudfront.net/soundfont1/synth_strings_2-mp3.js 403 (Forbidden)

In reply to by jeetee

@jeetee, the big advantage of the online player (especially for choir practice) is that users are not required to download and install anything.

Having said that, the quality of the web synthesizer is much lower than the pre-rendered audio. One way around this would be to pre-render each vocal track individually, and then play them on top of the pre-rendered ensemble to allow individual lines to be emphasized.

In reply to by shoogle

Thanks both for your responses. Will the problem with the rendering of strings be picked up automatically as a bug or do I need to raise it elsewhere?

Just to clarify, many members of the choir would be very confused with running MuseScore locally (too many options for them and average age is..well, fairly high!), but do need the ability to loop through difficult parts, alter the tempo or emphasise particular voices while learning the music and the on-line player is ideal for this if they are using a laptop or similar. Those with tablets are using MuseScore Songbook successfully with downloaded files.

For the moment, I have worked around the mixer issue by adjusting the mix locally before uploading sets of files for each voice. As a temporary measure this is fine, but does take a long time....

Because this is learning material only, the playback quality is not too important as long as there is a degree of realism.

WIth previous pieces of music for the choir I have given them mp3 files with emphasised parts. That is all well and good, but obviously does not allow the functions listed above or scrolling visually through the score. The MuseScore.com player seems ideal, and those using SongBook are very enthusiastic.

Thanks again,
Tony

In reply to by twculpitt

The musescore.com developers have been notified of the issue in the developers chat, so for now, no extra action is required on your end.

At first I gathered you were using the online synth merely to generate the audio files and not as a practice tool. Agreed that the online player should be the way to go in your use-case.

Hi twculpitt,

Thank you for reporting this issue. I will report back when it's fixed. Thank you for your patience.

@jeetee @shoogle Thanks for following up guys. I really appreciate it!

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.