Rendering and Dependencies
scorekit intentionally delegates synthesis and post-processing. doctor considers the environment ready when FFmpeg and at least one renderer are executable on PATH.
| Tool | Role | Requirement |
|---|---|---|
| FFmpeg | Audio conversion and export | Required for complete audio builds |
| FluidSynth | Primary SF2 renderer; uses MuseScore General by default | At least one renderer is required |
| TiMidity++ | Alternate SF2 renderer | Optional |
sfizz_render | SFZ renderer | Optional |
On macOS, install the standard dependencies with:
brew install fluid-synth timidity ffmpeg
On Debian or Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install fluidsynth timidity ffmpeg
Homebrew and prebuilt scorekit archives do not bundle sfizz_render inside the main scorekit package. Install the optional backend with brew install talkincode/tap/scorekit-sfizz, or from a source checkout use make install / make sfizz. Apple Silicon builds sfizz_render from source because upstream macOS binaries are x86_64-only.
make install downloads the official MuseScore General 0.2.0 SF2 and its MIT license to ~/.local/share/scorekit/sounds/sf2/, or a custom SCOREKIT_SOUND_LIBRARY_DIR. FluidSynth and TiMidity use this file when --soundfont is omitted. An explicit SF2 overrides the default; sfizz still requires an explicit --orchestration profile (which itself routes to one or more certified renderer profiles). doctor validates the default file’s SF2 header and reports ok, missing, or invalid.
Texture recordings may be WAV, FLAC, OGG, or any other format the installed
FFmpeg can decode. Before placement, FFmpeg converts them to stereo 16-bit PCM
at the build’s --sample-rate; scorekit does not implement resampling or
channel conversion. The normalized intermediates are command-scoped and are
removed on success and failure.