when i save an .it song and play it with vlc media player, no sound comes out. when i export it as .wav i can hear it fine but .it, .xm, etc. just dont work. im wondering if this is a really basic problem because i just started using openmpt. thanks in advance for the help
Are you using samples or VST instruments? In the latter case, external players will not play any sound because VST instruments are generally not supported by players.
Exporting to Wave/FLAC/OggVorbis/Opus/MP3 is the only option in this case if you want your song to be played back on a wide variety of players.
If you are using samples, can you please provide a test file and the VLC version you are using, as VLC should generally be able to produce sound out of files saved by OpenMPT. Note that VLC uses the old libmodplug internally as a playback engine for module files which has various playback accuracy problems compared to OpenMPT and libopenmpt, thus, even if it does play back the file, there may be inconsistencies.
https://wiki.openmpt.org/Manual:_Saving_and_exporting (https://wiki.openmpt.org/Manual:_Saving_and_exporting) has further information on the different file formats usable for exporting and saving.
oh man, i am using vsts.. ill remember all of this next time but is there any way to get a vst to work in those formats?
VST's are not supported outside OpenMPT, so in order to play your music in other programs, you have to convert them to .wav, .mp3, .ogg, etc. and play those. The good thing about this method is, that it will always sound 100% accurate. With a module it is always a question if the player plays everything accurate, depending on the techniques you use.
thank you both for the help! i appreciate it
If you want to spread your music and not rely on plugins being available / usable by the listener, you can also "bake" the VST instruments into the song by rendering either single notes or entire passages of notes to samples.
how would i go about 'baking' a vst? sorry for the late response..
You put one note (or an entire sequence of notes) in an empty pattern, right-click it in the order list -> render to wave and then render it into a sample slot.