Troubleshooting Guide

This Troubleshooting Guide is updated based on reported issues. If you do not find any help here you can create a new issue.

Issue: EmuSC application keeps crashing immediately after start

This is usually caused by a device configuration that for some reason is not working as expected, combined with the option to automatically start the synth emulation on start. To prevent EmuSC from crashing you need to start EmuSC with auto_power_on turned off and then change the audio and / or MIDI device configuration in the preferences dialog.

Issue: How to disable auto_power_on?

If EmuSC is running normally you can do change this setting in the Preferences dialog -> General Settings. If you are unable to use the preferences dialog for some reason you can start EmuSC from the command line with an extra parameter:

./emusc --power-off (Linux & macOS)

or

emusc.exe --power-off (Windows)

If you are unable to run EmuSC from the command line another option is to edit the configuration file directly. See below for a general description for how to edit the configuration file manually. Then search for the key in [Synth]\auto_power_on and set value to false.

Issue: How do I change the configuration file manually outside EmuSC?

This depends on which platform you are running:

Linux

• Edit the configuration file in ~/.config/emusc/EmuSC.conf

macOS

• Edit the configuration file in ~/Library/Preferences/com.emusc.EmuSC.plist
• Run killall -u $USER cfprefsd to prevent the plist from being cached.

Windows

• Run regedit
• Look for HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\emusc\EmuSC\

Issue: Cannot open the preferred audio device with ALSA on Linux

The ALSA audio system in EmuSC does not cooperate well with the Pulse Audio server. There are two ways to work around this limitation:

• On modern Linux distributions it is now common to run the PipeWire Sound Server. If that option is available in the device list, then that is normally the preferred audio device to use.
• If you have more than one sound device you can select another sound device in Pulse Audio settings first. Then EmuSC ALSA output will be able to open the device which is no longer locked by Pulse Audio.