[Windows] MuseScore crashes on startup only with a specific audio output

• Jan 12, 2022 - 12:30

HI, recently I've been encountering crashes on startup with both Muscore 2 and 3.

When I launch MuseScore the program shows the blue (or grey for MS2) splash screen and then crashes. After launching with "-s" the program works, but obviously without the synthesizer, which I need.

After some experimentation I found that if I connect my iFi hip-dac the program starts up correctly and the synth works. So the problem has to be either with my motherboards DAC or the speakers (although I don't know how it could be). I tried to set the same settings for both outputs, but the result is the same.

I also tried the latest MuseScore 4 nightly and everything works correctly with my speakers. So maybe there's a problem with the Windows registry or the bug was solved in MS4.

Obviously I uninstalled MS2 and did a clean install for MS3 and deleted all the musescore settings (%appdata%/Local/MuseScore, %appdata%Roaming%/MuseScore and %Documents%/Musescore). I rebooted my PC and installed all the latest updates.

Here's my specs:
Windows 10 21H1 with January 2022 patches
Asus Z97-A (motherboard)
Logitech Z625 connected via optical output


Comments

It seems to be the way MuseScore works, that you have to have all audio input and out put hooked up and powered on before starting MuseScore. As evidenced by your hip-dac.

In reply to by bobjp

I don’t know. Both MuseScore 2 and 3 worked without any problem until 3-4 months ago. I didn’t change anything both in Windows (apart from updates) and in MuseScore 2 and 3, it just randomly doesn’t work unless I plug in my external DAC. It works flawlessly on my laptop, my father’s laptop (running on Vista, so only MuseScore2) and in a VM. I just hope that the final release of MuseScore 4 will solve the problem.

In reply to by luka97

As you know, different computers have different audio setups. I have one that is very picky. Audio quits working if I unplug then re plug-in the headphones. And one that doesn't really care. But in general, if there is a problem it seems to work best if everything is connected and turned on first.
This applies to midi, Bluetooth, aux, etc.

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