Bends lead to playback artifacts with Muse Sounds and VSTi (sustained sounds only)

[metasekk]

Issue type

General playback bug

Description with steps to reproduce

Basically a generalisation of #23584 that was too restrictive and was closed accordingly.

Three conditions:

• When bends are added onto the staff of an instrument that is allowed to playback bends (e.g. violoncellos)
• If the staff uses either Muse Sounds or a VST instrument whose playback engine supports bends
• If the sounds are sustained (e.g. strings, brass, synths,...)

... then the entire staff is tainted by a series of sound artefacts, both during playback or note preview, even if the bend is subsequently removed. The artefacts exist and persist as long as a bend remains, yet removing all bends does not instantly clear those artifacts (until restart of the software).

The two main effects noticed:

• During playback: weird "ghost" (= short and not notated) notes sound at the end of every "real" (= notated) note. The pitch of the ghost notes seems to depend on the direction of the bend (lower pitch if the bend went downwards, higher if it went upwards).
• During note preview: the note preview is one semitone lower in and outside the bend.
• (Additionally, the playback of the bends is frequently not updated if the pitch of the notes has just been changed: already known as Bend playback pitch doesn't change when target note pitch was changed #25158).

Supporting files, videos and screenshots

Supporting score: TestForBends.zip

The video below demonstrates the issues with two VST engines (Spitfire LABS and DecentSampler) and one Muse Sounds instrument (violoncellos; the same behaviour was observed for all strings, all brass, VOXOS Choirs,...).

2024-12-22.21-35-12.2.mp4

What is the latest version of MuseScore Studio where this issue is present?

Tested on 4.4.4 and master 4.5 (with recent changes to bends). Already happening in 4.3.

Regression

Yes, this used to work in MuseScore 3.x and now is broken

Operating system

Win10 (22H2); RAM: 16Go; CPU: Intel Core i5-9300H

Additional context

Not limited to Muse Strings or even Muse Sounds, as #23584 made it seem at first. Thus, there is good reason to think it may be a MuseScore issue.

It doesn't happen with Soundfonts, which are treated somewhat differently.

It doesn't happen with rapidly decaying sounds (e.g. plucked strings, whether VSTi or Muse Sounds).

Additional remark: as shown in the beginning of the video, is it expected that some types of instruments don't allow bends to play, whatever sounds are used?

Checklist

• This report follows the guidelines for reporting bugs and issues
• I have verified that this issue has not been logged before, by searching the issue tracker for similar issues
• I have attached all requested files and information to this report
• I have attempted to identify the root problem as concisely as possible, and have used minimal reproducible examples where possible

[bkunda]

@DmitryArefiev we'll need to review this one.