Playback on MS 4.1 is fine, but audio saved on cloud is very scratchy

• Jul 22, 2023 - 18:41

The audio of an orchestral score that I uploaded to the cloud is terribly scratchy, as one can confirm from the excerpt at

https://musescore.com/user/28524096/scores/11566843/s/4p2Fgu

This wasn't the case previously, with the same score.

The score playback on MuseScore 4.1 itself is fine (at least on my computer (64 bit Dell Latitude 5531 32GB Ram, Windows 10 Pro). I've attached the score of the excerpt from the score (29 parts - 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, tympani, bass drum, cymbals, strings, and woodwind)

My mixer settings are shown in the attached image. I have AUX-1 set to 100% for all instruments and AUX-2 to 50%, and was using the Aegean Symp. Orch sound font for all instruments, but noticed the same issue even with MS Basic.

Under Edit->Preferences -> I/O , I have the buffer size set to the max of 4096

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Attachment Size
MS Mixer.JPG 90.97 KB
Excerpt from Finale.mscz 49.7 KB

Comments

• Jul 22, 2023 - 20:21

I wonder if what we hear is distortion. When I played the .com excerpt above, The volume was so high I had to turn my volume from 49% to 12% just to be able to listen. It was still distorted. Maybe it was loaded into .com too hot.

The 4096 setting usually only needs to be set if Muse Sounds are being used.
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I don't have Aegean so I couldn't test that part of it. I changed to Muse Sounds and set the pan controls to spread the sound out. Sounds OK to me.

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• Jul 22, 2023 - 20:51

Thanks for the feedback Bobjp. I have a few questions:

Could you explain what you mean by “loaded into .com too hot”?

I want to confirm that when you say “sounds OK”, you mean on the MS 4.1 playback and not on .com I’ve never had a playback issue myself.

How did you manipulate the pan controls?

What I found is (and this is weird) but if I enable Muse Reverb for all parts but deactivate it for the master, the scratchiness is substantially reduced on .com

Thanks again.

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• Jul 22, 2023 - 21:33

Sorry, sometimes I'm not very clear.

Your score on .com was too loud for me to listen. But still distorted after turning it down. I can't say for sure why. I don't upload to .com so I don't know just how it works. But as a test I uploaded a score of mine to see if it distorted. It did not, at least on my system. You might try it on yours.
https://musescore.com/user/32282582/scores/11567596?share=copy_link
I don't know how long I'll leave it there before I remove it.
On any recording you might listen to, Instruments are spread across an area. I.E. 1st violins to the left. In European orchestras, 2nd violins tend to be to the right. Others are spread in between. Imagine you are in a concert hall. The musicians are not all sitting on top of each other. They are spread across the stage. That's panning. Turn the dials to move each channel left or right.
I confess I have no idea how to use th master channel for reverb control. the manual isn't very clear for MU4. I don't have MU3 on this computer.

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• Jul 22, 2023 - 22:21

The .com replay of your score was fine. I wonder if the issue in my case may be the excessive number of parts all marked triple-fortissimo. Im loathe however to change a score just because of how a compiled .wav rendition of it sounds on a website, so hopefully I’ll stumble upon an optimum combination of mixer controls

Thanks for your help!

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