MuseScore
MuseScore copied to clipboard
musescore
[MU4 Task] Audio API selection (ASIO/WASAPI/MME) driver support
In the Edit->Preferences->I/O dialog there are NO options to select the audio API. You can only select the device.
Musescore 3 had options for selecting the driver ASIO/WASAPI/MME and then the device.
When using MIDI controllers, an ASIO driver is mandatory for lower latency.
Note that ASIO is pretty hard from a bureaucratic standpoint. I'm not sure how MuseScore v3 distributed this, or if it simply 'ignored' the problem.
GPL license, requires that MuseScore distributes all code sources, to whomever it distributes the software to. Standard.
However, most software that allows for integrating with ASIO (e.g. a library like PortAudio), uses the ASIO SDK from Steinberg. This SDK has a custom license, one point of which demands that you must not redistribute the source code of it; only Steinberg may do so. Technically, Steinberg asks that after acquiring the SDK that you send back an agreement form stating you agree to this license, prior to making use of it.
So the licenses of the two softwares are fundamentally at odds. One requires re-distribution of source, and the other forbids it. To integrate ASIO in some 'legally compliant' manner, I would imagine you'd need to figure out some tricky workaround, or find/create a clean-room re-implementation (/reverse engineering) of the ASIO interface, so that that code/library was not subject to Steinberg's license.
Many open source projects, for example SuperCollider can use ASIO drivers. And in the Mac OS X version of MuseScore 4, ASIO is still available.
ASIO has recently been released under GPLv3, which eliminates the license problem. Therefore, we are now planning to add an ASIO driver in one of the next few releases. With some luck, even 4.7, but we can't promise that yet.
Steinberg's decision to provide GPLv3 licensing for its ASIO technology now allows proprietary and open-source license options to be offered side by side. This dual licensing approach combines the reach and trust of open source with the sustainability and reliability of a commercial model.
It seems this is thanks to them really wanting to be officially compatible with OBS, which forced them to allow a GPL license with it
This has been implemented in https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/30851, https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/30882, https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/30884, and https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/30950. These will be part of the 4.7 release and can be tested in master nightly builds (https://musescore.org/en/nightly-builds) (apart from the last mentioned PR, which has not yet been merged at the time of writing).
For remaining refinement tasks, separate issues can be opened.