Sibelius Upgrade?

[tbn.al]

I just replaced my 7 year old failing desktop and now need to decide what software upgrades to purchase. I use Sibelius 6.XX and Photoscore Ultimate to rescore church orchestra charts to meet our instrumentation. That and a bit of arranging for brass quintet is all I use it for. I am wondering if the newer versions of these would be of much help. The main problem I have is the number of scanning errors I have to correct before I can start to work on reinstrumentation. About half of my time on a score is spent correcting errors. Anyone have any experience with the new Photoscore or Sibelius 7.5 and can shed some light on them for me?

[burningchrome]

I upgraded to 7 some time ago and 7.5 just recently. I think if you know where all the buttons in 6 are, 7 won't make much of a difference; the new interface just makes it easier for people who have never used it. I do like the new navigation window in 7.5, but I'm not sure it was worth $50. I have no experience with Photoscore.

Oh, and Avid changed the registration process and now it's a giant pain in the butt.

[scottw]

You might want to look into downloading Musescore's beta 2.0. It's free and it sounds as though it would be perfect for your needs. I used the previous 1.3 version and it was good, if "glitchy" from time to time. The new one is far, far superior to the old 1.3 version. Look into it.

[tbn.al]

I decided to stick to my Sibelius 6.2 but upgraded to Photoscore Ultimate 7. The scanning part is where I could use the most help and this looks like it will do it. Sibelius 6.2 which I already have is plenty good for what I use it for. Just got it all buttoned up about 30 minutes ago.

[MaryAnn]

I thought both Sibelius and Finale got bought out be companies who were going to milk them for as much money as they could get without fixing any bugs or doing any upgrades? Is there anything else out there that can do a full band score without having to turn handsprings? (Although percussion in Finale still caused many handsprings.)

[Donn]

Full band score? hmm. I've been using Lime, from the CERL Sound Group originating at the University of Illinois, for years for my rather modest notation needs. It's the same $65 with a US check, free trial, that it was when I started. It's a low powered software development project. I recently discovered that the MacOS version has a sort of beta release series that is now far better than the really old standard release, but realistically, if there's a bug, it may be a long time before it gets fixed.

When people start to talk about "engraving" in a particular way, I have to suspect that Lime would not meet those needs, and that might include your full band score - the more stuff you try to fit on a page, the more critical the spacing, size and general look of things. And there are some damn awkward things at a more practical fundamental level for me. For example, breaking a score into parts, vs. annotations like 1st/2nd ending brackets - that can be messy, and there seem to be some bugs here. Often though, things I thought it couldn't do, turned out to be right in front of my nose - like the x notation customary for percussion notes - and who knows if I'm missing something on the things that give me trouble. On the other hand, it can do some crazy stuff that I don't care about, that meet the needs of the somewhat more academic musicians in the CERL crowd. Anyway ... as someone who has never used Finale or (beyond just barely) Sibelius, I can't say how Lime compares, but it's a lot of software for $65.

It will take MusicXML export format; if anyone wants to see what Lime rendition looks like for a small piece, I'd be willing to try to import it for an output comparison. You have to provide both MusicXML and PDF. I've never tried it, could be a waste of time.

[scottw]

I thought both Sibelius and Finale got bought out be companies who were going to milk them for as much money as they could get without fixing any bugs or doing any upgrades? Is there anything else out there that can do a full band score without having to turn handsprings? (Although percussion in Finale still caused many handsprings.)

Again, MuseScore 2.0 beta is awfully good and free, too. A full score is quite easy and exporting parts is literally one click. And it can be exported in pdf, midi, .XML, etc. Drum parts are not as easy as the other parts, but once you get the hang of their system it isn't any worse than other software. The good part is that they are debugging and improving it each and every day, and with good help in the forums. Not for everyone, I suppose, but a lot for the money.