What is MuseSounds Pro?

MuseSounds Pro is the subscription for the paid MuseSounds libraries. It gives MuseScore Studio 34 partner libraries at once, from the Vienna, Spitfire and Cinesamples orchestras to Cantai, which sings the lyrics in your score.

This page lists all 34 libraries by maker and the paid libraries that aren’t included. It explains the monthly and yearly plans, what happens when you cancel and who Pro suits, and it plays one short score with the free libraries and then with Pro.

MuseSounds Pro and what it includes

MuseSounds Pro

MuseHub

Subscribe

Vienna Strings

Vienna Symphonic Library

CZK 1,479

Symphony Strings

Spitfire Audio

CZK 1,059

CineStrings

Cinesamples

CZK 1,059

Cantai

Turing Opera Workshop

Get

Nucleus

Audio Imperia

CZK 1,689

One subscription, 34 libraries

MuseSounds Pro is a MuseHub subscription that gives you 34 of the paid MuseSounds libraries for as long as you subscribe. It costs CZK 419 a month or CZK 4,229 a year with no free trial, and it adds to the twelve free MuseSounds, which stay free.

The 34 libraries come from eleven makers. Vienna Symphonic Library, Spitfire Audio, Cinesamples and Audio Imperia supply the orchestras. Muse Group adds a pipe organ, more guitars, a jazz trio and ambient textures, and six other makers add instruments such as film percussion, a euphonium, recorders and a celesta. Each library is also sold on its own, so Pro gives you all 34 without buying them one by one.

In the US store, the 34 libraries add up to $1,644.66 at their regular prices, more than eight times the price of a year of Pro there.

How Pro fits with the free MuseSounds

MuseSounds are sample libraries built for MuseScore Studio. They play your score with recordings of real musicians and follow the dynamics, slurs and articulations you have written. If you are new to them, what are MuseSounds? explains how they work and what the free set covers.

Pro changes nothing about the free libraries. Muse Strings, Muse Keys, Muse Drumline and the rest stay installed and free whether you subscribe or not. Pro makes the 34 partner libraries available next to them, and the Mixer lets you choose a library for each instrument. One score can play its violins with Vienna Strings and its horns with the free Muse Brass.

Everything installs through MuseHub, which needs a free account and runs on Windows and macOS. Pro libraries play only in MuseScore Studio. They aren’t VST, AU or AAX plugins, so they won’t load in a DAW (digital audio workstation). Some partners sell DAW versions of the same recordings, and those are different products, intended for different platforms. On Linux, MuseSounds Manager installs the free set only, so the Pro libraries need MuseHub on Windows or macOS.

Hear free and Pro side by side

The quickest way to judge Pro is to hear one short score played with and without it. We took the opening of “Morning Mood” from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 and kept its first 20 bars. Then we played them in MuseScore Studio three times, changing only the sounds:

1. MS Basic, the soundfont that comes with MuseScore Studio.
2. Free MuseSounds: Muse Woodwinds, Muse Brass, Muse Percussion and Muse Strings.
3. MuseSounds Pro: Symphony Woodwind, Symphony Brass, Symphony Percussion and Symphony Strings from Spitfire Audio, four of the libraries in the subscription.

The tempo, the mixer, the reverb and the export settings stayed the same each time, all at their defaults. In the second and third versions the woodwinds, brass, percussion and strings all moved to the new libraries.

Look at the score before you listen. The piece is marked Allegretto pastorale, in 6/8. The flute plays the melody, the oboe answers it, and the two pass the tune back and forth while the strings hold chords underneath. The opening is unhurried, so every long note of the flute and the oboe is exposed. Follow the markings in the score as you listen, and try to imagine how they should sound before you press play.

1. MS Basic

First, the soundfont MuseScore Studio uses until you install anything else. A soundfont has only a few recordings per instrument, so a held note keeps one tone from start to finish, and a softer dynamic mostly turns the volume down. Listen to the flute’s long notes and notice whether they change at all as they sustain. Pay attention to the handover, too. Does the oboe sound like a different instrument taking the tune, or like the same line carrying on?

MS Basic sounds full straight away, and it is the loudest of the three by a clear margin.

2. Free MuseSounds

Now the same bars with the free Muse Woodwinds, Muse Brass, Muse Percussion and Muse Strings. These libraries are recorded note by note at several dynamic levels, and MuseScore Studio picks the recordings that match the markings. Listen to the flute and the oboe as they trade the melody, and notice how easily you can tell the two apart. Then listen underneath them. Do the string chords stay behind the soloists, or do they compete with them?

The free version sounds decent, with nothing to fault. It is quieter than MS Basic.

3. MuseSounds Pro

Finally, Spitfire Audio’s Symphony Woodwind, Symphony Brass, Symphony Percussion and Symphony Strings, all four in Pro. Spitfire recorded the strings, woodwinds and percussion in the Hall at AIR Studios in London, the strings with a section of 60 players. Listen for the room around the flute and the oboe, and for how far the sound falls away in the quiet passages.

The Spitfire version sounds nice, but on this excerpt we prefer the free one. It has the widest spread between quiet and loud of the three, so its quiet passages get much softer. It also has less low end than the other two. Some listeners will prefer the Spitfire render, and others the free one.

Only the library changed between the three versions, and a finished mock-up isn’t made that way. Each library responds a little differently to the same notes and markings, so arrangers adjust the balance, the dynamics and sometimes the writing to the library they use. On these 20 bars the free libraries hold their own, and Pro’s case doesn’t rest on them. It rests on libraries usually recorded at more dynamic levels and with more playing techniques, and on instruments the free set lacks, such as pipe organs, a jazz trio and a choir that sings the words. The rest of Spitfire’s range on MuseHub is in Spitfire Audio MuseSounds.

Every library in MuseSounds Pro

All 34, grouped by maker:

Four orchestras from four makers

Vienna Symphonic Library, Spitfire Audio, Cinesamples and Audio Imperia each give you a full orchestra. Vienna recorded most of them with a Decca Tree, the three-microphone setup used on many orchestral film scores, and built the nine to blend with each other. Vienna Symphonic Library on MuseHub goes through them one by one.

Spitfire recorded its Symphony strings, woodwinds and percussion in the Hall at AIR Studios in London. Chamber Strings was recorded there too, with 16 players instead of 60, for a smaller, closer string sound. Nucleus from Audio Imperia puts a whole cinematic orchestra into one library, with sections, soloists, a choir and sound design such as pads, drones and sub booms. Solo, from the same maker, adds lyrical solo strings, winds, brass and a soprano voice.

Cinesamples recorded CineStrings, CineBrass, CineWinds and CinePerc at the MGM Scoring Stage at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles, with the same setup, so the four sections blend. VOXOS Epic Choirs, recorded at Bastyr Chapel in Seattle, sings 30 syllables that you choose by typing them as lyrics. Cinesamples MuseSounds covers the whole range, and MuseSounds Pro welcomes Cinesamples shows how subscribers install the five.

Cantai, the library that sings

Cantai from Turing Opera Workshop sings the lyrics you write under the notes. It synthesizes the voice instead of playing back recordings, and it has solo soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices as well as choirs. If your computer isn’t fast enough to render the voices locally, Cantai renders them online, with a weekly allowance of online time. The product page has the details, and Cantai sings your score shows what it does with a choral piece.

Cantai

Turing Opera Workshop

CZK 209/m or CZK 6,349

See options

Beyond the orchestra

Part of Pro covers music that has nothing to do with an orchestra. Muse Pipe Organ and Union Chapel Organ give you two pipe organs, the second with three manuals and a full pedalboard. Sidecar Jazz Trio plays lead sheets and small-combo charts with guitar, bass and brushes. Muse Guitars Vol. 2 adds mandolin, banjo, ukulele, a 12-string, an electric, a resonator and a pedal steel. The rest are single instruments and families: a euphonium, recorders, a celesta, 20 historic keyboards and the traditional instruments of East Asia. East Asia needs MuseScore Studio 4.7.5 or later.

What isn’t in MuseSounds Pro

The other 26 paid libraries are sold only individually. Pro doesn’t include the Orchestral Tools Berlin series or either Tapspace library, along with eight titles from Cinesamples, three from Audio Imperia and five from Spitfire Audio.

Several of these also come in bundles, among them the Berlin Series Orchestral Bundle, the Tapspace Drumline and Percussion Bundle and the Audio Imperia Bundle. If the library you want is on this list, compare the options in MuseSounds Pro vs buying libraries.

Monthly or yearly

Both plans include the same 34 libraries. What differs is how long you pay for at once.

Monthly suits work with an end date, such as a commission, a mock-up for an audition or a composition assignment due at the end of term. You subscribe for the months you write with the libraries and cancel when the project is done.

Yearly suits steady writing, such as a school year of arranging for your ensemble, a year of services or a year of film and game cues. In the US store, a year costs less than twelve monthly payments.

Neither plan has a free trial. To hear what Pro builds on before you pay, install the free set and play one of your own scores with it.

What happens when you cancel

If you cancel, the Pro libraries stop working at the end of the billing period. Libraries you bought separately keep working, and your scores stay as they are. The free MuseSounds aren’t affected.

Who MuseSounds Pro is for

Students. An orchestration or composition assignment has a deadline, which makes it a monthly project. The free set already covers a full orchestra. Pro adds libraries that are usually recorded at more dynamic levels and with more playing techniques, which helps when you want to hear whether a voicing works.

Film and game composers. Nucleus, the four Cine sections, VOXOS Epic Choirs, LA Modern Percussion, Scoring Synths and Ambience are the cinematic side of Pro. LA Modern Percussion was recorded and mixed by Alan Meyerson on the Eastwood Stage at Warner Bros. The Orchestral Tools Berlin series isn’t included, and neither are the Cinesamples soloists, CinePiano or CineHarps, so if your sound depends on them, you buy them separately.

Church musicians. Two pipe organs cover the organ part, and Cantai sings the words of a hymn or anthem as you wrote them. Together they let you hear an organ and choir piece with its text before the first rehearsal.

Band directors. Pro adds the Vienna and Spitfire brass and woodwinds, and ebbandflow’s Euphonium, which its maker describes for orchestral, wind band and solo writing. The free Muse Drumline, recorded by The Blue Devils, already covers marching percussion. Tapspace’s Virtual Drumline and Virtual Percussion are sold separately. A school year of arranging fits the yearly plan.

Hobbyists. Start with the free set, and start it with Muse Keys and Muse Strings. Muse Keys is the most downloaded MuseSounds library, and piano is what MuseScore Studio is used for most. Subscribe when you want a particular sound, such as Vienna Piano, Sidecar Jazz Trio or Muse Guitars Vol. 2, and choose monthly to try it on one project.

Start MuseSounds Pro

1. Create a free MuseHub account, then download and install MuseHub on Windows or macOS.
2. Start MuseSounds Pro from its product page below, then install the libraries you want from the MuseSounds section in MuseHub.
3. Restart MuseScore Studio if it was already open.
4. Open a score, open the Mixer, and choose a library for each instrument.

How to use MuseSounds in MuseScore Studio walks through the Mixer step by step.

MuseSounds Pro

CZK 352.42/m

Subscribe

FAQ

Next steps

If you are deciding between subscribing and buying, MuseSounds Pro vs buying libraries works through the cost of each route. For the free set and how MuseSounds play a score, read what are MuseSounds?. To hear the largest partner range in Pro, see Vienna Symphonic Library on MuseHub. You can browse every library in MuseSounds on MuseHub, or download MuseHub free.

More libraries in MuseSounds Pro

Chamber Strings

Spitfire Audio

CZK 1,059

Muse Pipe Organ

Muse Group

CZK 419

Sidecar Jazz Trio

Muse Group

CZK 639

Vienna Piano

Vienna Symphonic Library

CZK 529

MuseSounds Pro

MuseHub

Subscribe