I cannot make this software do anything, and I have no idea why

[derde]

Describe the bug I want to record a midi track and mess around with it. I have a MIDI keyboard. I have the infinite software resources of the internet available. I cannot get started. I just want to do the simplest thing. Anything. Anything at all. Just make a sound. No amount of poking this thing with a stick produces any result.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Start muse
2. Click on the track
3. Go through the options
4. Click record
5. Click record on the track
6. Read the "getting started" thing ... it says to click on things that don't exist ('the track') for context menus that don't appear (midi)
7. Click every key on the keyboard. Click every control on the screen.

Expected behavior I expected the thing to make some sound at some point. I expected something to happen: a track, a waveform, a stair step midi something I cannot tell whether I have a configuration problem, or the application simply does not work in any way that I relate to.

Screenshots Quo vadis?

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy
• Desktop: xfce

Additional context This is not the first time. I simply cannot make this project do anything: it just sits there and tells me it is a big impressive serious piece of software with vast capabilities, and refuses to do any of those thing for me.

[spamatica]

Hi derde and thanks for trying! There are some wierd layout issues in the screenshot you show, possibly that is part of why you are having trouble. The icons above the tracklist seem huge and don't fit the area. Not sure what is going on there, they aren't supposed to be resizable... very odd.

Regarding the manual, there has been some user interface changes since the last update but it should be fairly close to the truth. I'll have a look anyway..

Can I ask you to watch one of our tutorial videos? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRP8xdJ2p8A&list=PLZ9h4Km-GCNYcylMk20a6ZbOSjDMYLEQa

The one called "MusE 4.0 walkthrough create a simple song" goes through a lot of the basics in MusE 4. If there is something in your installation that does not work as in the video I would be interested to know what it is.

[spamatica]

Looking at the screenshot again, the layout issue with the icons does make it very strange. All the columns are not visible and subsequently probably will make it very hard to use. I'll have to make a test installation with ubuntu + xfce, see if there's some issue

[terminator356]

Can you tell us the screen resolution setting? Is it a 4K monitor? I'll bet this a HighDPI monitor problem. But I do not have one. @kybos did have one, and he added some HighDPI support in MusE, and he never reported anything this ugly. IIRC he was using Mint not Ubuntu+XFCE.

Some observations:

The scroll bar on the left is just a stock QScrollbar. The scaler on the right is just a stock QSlider. We do nothing special to them.

Our app forces the Style to use Qt's "Fusion" style, for a consistent look. At first I thought that Qt's Fusion style is missing and it chose some other weird Style like "BB10", because some styles really mess things up . Here is a screenshot of what a "BB10" Style looks like in QtDesigner's Preview feature:

Notice how messed up that QSlider is - just like in the OP's picture !! But nope, the OP's picture is definitely using "Fusion", you can tell, it's identical.

So... in the first picture that QSlider's gross looking thumb is not our fault per-se, but most likely a HighDPI monitor problem. It's stupid that one stock control looks gross over another stock control. Couldn't it at least have been consistent? ;-)

I've a feeling that since we use fixed dimensions in some places, this is interfering with the HighDPI efforts to auto size things. The lower scroll bar and scaler area do not appear to be an example of that. They are not fixed height. But another example is here, and does use a fixed height:

void Arranger::initTracklistHeader() 
{ 
    header = new Header(tracklist, "TrackListHeader"); 
    header->setFixedHeight(31); 

So I'll bet that the Header wants to expand to a larger height to satisfy the HighDPI, but we're not letting it. When we set the columns' SVG icons, I'll bet it thinks the Header is actually taller. I checked and we don't do anything special to the icons.

Finally, we do enable some system-wide HighDPI features with these lines in main.cpp:

        QCoreApplication::setAttribute(Qt::AA_EnableHighDpiScaling);
        QCoreApplication::setAttribute(Qt::AA_UseHighDpiPixmaps);

For me, a good test for the OP is to open QtDesigner and throw a couple of these controls on a form a play around with their height, fixed etc. Or maybe better, a small test app which puts those controls on a form and enables whatever HighDPI settings that we do. I'd be curious to see how those two controls look alone on his/her system.

Tim.

[terminator356]

The lower scroll bar and scaler area do not appear to be an example of that. They are not fixed height.

Ah, but they are fixed width:

    if ( o == Qt::Horizontal )
    {
        box = new QBoxLayout ( QBoxLayout::LeftToRight);
        scale->setMaximumWidth ( 70 );
        scroll->setMinimumWidth ( 50 );
    }
    else

So the scaler wants to expand horizontally but we're not letting it. That's why it looks ugly. It wouldn't if the value shown above was say, 200 not 70.

[derde]

The monitor is xhdpi - 3840x2160 - and the DPI is set to 284. In xfce settings, it is also set to 2x window scaling.

[spamatica]

Alright, good to hear, seems Tim is on to something! Could be a big part of you don't getting anywhere with MusE.

I think I can arrange access to a similar monitor, hopefully I can reproduce the screenshot.

[terminator356]

Whoa, sweet monitor! It seems that Qt or the system is dutifully applying automatic scaling to everything. You can see that everything is attempting to be bigger including the icons. So it is doing its job. Or at least trying. But I am puzzled why it would not apply that same scaling to our fixed dimensions. The track header for example, I would expect that even though we fix the height to 31, that the HighDPI scaling would scale that fixed value, so that everything is scaled together. Weird...

The Qt docs mention something about how specifying fonts in points and dimensions in pixels are a challenge for HighDPI scaling. Maybe when we specify fixed dimensions in pixels, it doesn't like that and simply obeys what we tell it instead of scaling...

[spamatica]

So, it turns out I could get a hold of a big screen. But I can't seem to get it to do what's in the screenshot. I use Kubuntu 22.04 regularily so I just switched window manager to xfce and set the settings you mentioned. The scale thing really threw me off, it worked the opposite of what I expected, turned everything microscopic until I increased the DPI. Now the window titlebar is really slim and the mouse is incredibly tiny. But MusE looks fine...

I know I had issues at one point with NVIDIA drivers (not this computer) and their handling of DPI. Otherwise I don't really know what to test. Ideas?

[terminator356]

Hm. I can't help noticing that the OP's font is unusual. Seems to be some kind of Times font (with serifs). Perhaps more importantly, it seems to be really big, in relation to other 'working' elements of the picture.

Unfortunately we removed the ability to choose the main font in MusE, instead deferring to the system font. So what happens if you change the system font to something big like the OP's? I wonder if it is affecting things. Thanks.

[thelabcat]

I am also using Kubuntu, and have been unable to get Muse to make a sound. I have no external midi hardware, but even upon setting up a synth or sound font loader with a sound font I have, it's still dead quiet even though its volume meters say it's producing sound. I have not finished the tutorial video, because it's awful: Recording and layout aside, the guy assumes we want to start with playing samples of drums that we are assumed to have. I'll trudge through to the end if it means success, but please don't send people to that video. I'll literally make a new one for you if you'll officially accept it.

[derde]

It would really help to have a simple demo file that shows whether muse is working at all. I think it doesn't work at all on my system, but since nothing seems to do anything (except that clicking adds empty tracks) it's impossible to tell.

[ChihHao-Su]

The UI looks pretty weird from your picture. It's very close to my case that I use Kvantum for theming Qt program:

Are you using a theme engine (or, have you made some configuration about the appearance of Qt)? Have you tried to disable that for MusE?

[thelabcat]

I was thankfully able to eventually get it to do something, and I think part of the problem was using the wrong audio server.

You are using Xubuntu, yes?

[terminator356]

That's good to... hear... You had us worried there. Hopefully the graphics issues cleared up?

[thelabcat]

That's good to... hear...

You had us worried there.

Hopefully the graphics issues cleared up?

I am not the OP.