MuseScore 4 Pipewire still non-functional on the Linux

• May 2, 2024 - 03:33

Hi,

The standard audio system on Linux is now Pipewire instead of Pulseaudio, and the older previous versions of MuseScore (2 and 3) do have a functional implementation of Pipewire connection (on top of initial Pulseaudio support). Some distributions of Linux (such as Arch and Gentoo) package MuseScore 4 with functional Pipewire connection, but there are distros (like Debian) that do not yet have MuseScore 4 which rely on the AppImage, which oddly still doesn't have support for Pipewire.

I think implementation of Pipewire support should be done for the MuseScore 4 AppImage, especially since older versions already have support for the new standard - it's odd for a newer version of the project to be less functional due to being somehow more outdated compared to older versions.

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• May 7, 2024 - 14:25

Update: Gentoo does not. I'm wondering how I got it working in Arch. This makes the case for looking into Pipewire support for Musescore 4 more valuable.

This issue going beyond the AppImage rules out a build error.

The solution of using Musescore 3 can be clunky for one reason or another, and I wish not for it to be made permanent.

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• May 12, 2024 - 19:11

Hello, here on archlinux, I struggled a lot with that.

What finaly worked, was to install pipewire-alsa, restart the pipewire session systemctl --user restart pipewire.service and restart musescore (that I got as an AppImage).

(and now I still need to work on wayland and get decend rendering)

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• Jun 11, 2024 - 16:58

That seems to make sense, I must have had that installed for completeness.
I've recompiled pipewire with the pipewire-alsa flag, which ends up being how that's done in gentooland, and the behaviour has now changed from no playback being possible; playhead not moving at all, nothing audible going on either with heard audio or on visual meters when clicking on notes; to now the playhead moving and audio being visible on the dB meters.

However, still the sound is still not audible. I ran mscore from terminal (/usr/bin/mscore) and noticed:
16:42:50.292 | INFO | main_thread | JackAudioDriver::open | sampleRate used by jack: 48000
16:42:50.292 | WARN | main_thread | JackAudioDriver::open | Musescores samplerate: 44100, is NOT the same as jack's: 48000

I wouldn't know how to change this behaviour so that it matches the system sample rate rather than having to do it the other way around. [Edited for formatting]

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• Jul 29, 2024 - 07:15

I don't know if this is still an issue.

You don't need Jack for running this if you have pipewire installed. There is a comprehensive video here for your reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LpXu1-wvlA&t=408s

From my own experience, I can point out some things :-)
- see if you have .asoundrc installed or not.
- use Helvum to visualise your connections ( https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/helvum ). It works better than Carla (with pipewire according to me).
- use also pw-top to visualise who is using pipwire (can be confusing at times)
- you can also start musescore with the 'pw-jack /usr/bin/mscore' . It replaced jack compatible libraries with pipewire ones.

Also i ran on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (on an old mac 2013 btw). Check what pipewire you have installed. This is what I have pipewire/noble-updates,now 1.0.5-1ubuntu1 amd64 [installed,automatic]

I hope this helps,

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• Sep 21, 2024 - 20:08

Installing pipewire-alsa worked for me. Thank you tristramg for the suggestion!

If the user does not have pipewire-alsa (e.g. they have only jack2 that is offered during the installation of KDE), then, version 4.4.2 AppImage on Arch Linux (freshly installed system) creates the following error in the console:

20:19:08.697 | INFO  | main_thread     | DiagnosticsModule::onInit | success start crash handler
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1000:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
20:19:08.786 | ERROR | main_thread     | AudioModule::setupAudioDriver | audio output open failed
20:19:08.827 | INFO  | main_thread     | MuseSamplerResolver::doInit | MuseSampler successfully inited: /home/avk/.local/share/MuseSampler/lib/libMuseSamplerCoreLib.so

The diagnostic message says, ‘Muse Sampler library is detected, version 0.6.3’. It is strange that it is still possible to play MIDI files with VLC+FluidSynth, as well as other kinds of audio, but Musescore not being able to do anything with jack2, alsa-lib, and their dependencies alone. I hope that either this behaviour is fixed, or the AppImage gets the essential dependencies.

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• Oct 27, 2024 - 19:37

I upgrade to Ubuntu Studio 24? and the playback was terrible. I installed pulseaudio (which uninstalled Pipewire). That fixed my problem.

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