Why does MuseScore 4's Grand Piano SoundFont sound worse than MuseScore 3's?

• Jun 3, 2025 - 03:54

I've seen https://musescore.org/en/node/346777 and https://musescore.org/en/node/373331, but I do not believe these represent my issue. Those posts seem to suggest that MS Basic SoundFonts in MuseScore 4 (4.5.2 in my case) are supposed to be the same as the MuseScore 3 (3.6.2) ones, but at least for the Grand Piano SoundFont, MuseScore 4's version (with the reverb disabled since I did not like the current default) sounds notably brighter and more synthetic while MuseScore 3's sounds notably fuller, richer, and more natural. Is this expected? The "new" version of this SoundFont sounds like a notable step back to MuseScore 3 whereas I had remembered how refreshing of an improvement MuseScore 3's piano tone sounded.

I have attached a .zip of a .wav file in which five notes are played from MuseScore 3 followed by the same through MuseScore 4. My audio device (and hence the .wav file) is set to 32-bit 44.1 kHz. My system uses Windows 10 with 16 GB of RAM and an Intel i7-4790. The heard differences do not sound consistent with a sample rate mismatch or performance issues.

As an aside, I had mainly reinstalled MuseScore 4 due to encountering a bizarre bug where CTRL+V of bars suddenly stopped working on MuseScore 3, even on new scores, yet the issue persisted. It oddly went away after making another new score on MuseScore 3 and using a shifted selection in the affected file. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of irreversibly overwriting some of my files into the MuseScore 4.5.2 format which is no longer compatible with MuseScore 3.6.2, meaning that for now, those files are stuck with the displeasing newer piano tone; maybe I can export and import back into 3.6.2, but I might be missing out on some 4.5.2 features. It would be nice if there were in fact a setting with which to restore the rich MuseScore 3 piano tone within MuseScore 4.


Comments

You could add MS3's Piano to MS4 as Soundfont file. (Just don't bring across all the other instruments as the file will be larger than needed). If it still plays brighter then it must be the MS4 playback system.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.