Dissatisfaction with Muse Sounds Choir

• Nov 15, 2023 - 13:59

Just installed Muse Sounds in my last step towards switching away from Sibelius, and I'm quite disappointed. I predominantly write for choir (with or without accompaniment) so I loaded up one of my old choral scores, switched the profile, and switched the individual instruments on the mixer to load Muse Sounds instead. From what I understand, this is the exact steps Musescore recommends.

The playback is completely desynchronized from the piano accompaniment I have written. The choir loves to rush through 8th notes which will usually lead to them landing on chords at the wrong time. Their cutoffs are also wrong often, and usually they hold on for too long after a note ends. Additionally, this problem gets compounded on when I set the piano to one of the Muse Sounds pianos, which Musescore doesn't do by default. With an ensemble this small (essentially just two instruments), it's frustrating to have to give up that much just to get the sounds to almost work.

Additionally, the choirs are very quiet, and their dynamics are extreme. I would consider this a good thing if the dynamics were consistent, but they aren't. The mezzoforte of the choir is so much softer than the forte of the choir, and the piano of the choir is essentially impossible to hear (on the mixer, it was coming out below -60db). Combined with the old piano vst, this makes dynamics essentially unusable with accompanied choral works, as the volume of the choir varies so drastically that it goes from being near impossible to hear to being too loud often.

My last pain point is that there were people complaining about this last year. It's been a whole year since this bug was reported, and it still hasn't been fixed, people have just found workarounds. I would love to see this get addressed soon, as it's really frustrating. The sounds are so good, but in their current state are essentially unusable.


Comments

Within MU4, go to View>Playback setup and select Muse Sounds. Then the program will try to load Muse sounds for every score you open. Unless the score labels a part something like "violin". MU4 might interpret that as "solo violin".
Anyway, you shouldn't need to assign sounds in the mixer each time you open a new score.
I find that I need to raise the faders for vocal parts, in general. I also find that Sibelius and MU4 don't read dynamics quite the same way. So I sometimes have to re-enter or change dynamics. MU4 does not playback slurs.
Please post at least part of a score (mscz) so that we can see what is going on. I don't have the problems you are having. Also post your computer specs. Including if you have an SSD.
I have Sibelius 7.5. So I am aware of the kind of problems between the two programs.

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