Sibelius vs Finale

[stevec]

Hi Guys :?:

Anybody have any experience with either of these two software's? Is one considered better than the other or is it just a coin toss?
Any feed back would be great.

thx

steve

[Mikey]

Hey Steve,

I have used Sibelius for over a year and have worked with Finale before as well. Without question Sibelius is the superior program. The interface is better (easy but extremely powerful). You have practically unlimited notation options. And the playback on Sibelius 3 is superb. It's packaged with Native Software samples so your scores actually sound pretty good when played back. I use the software everyday and could not live without. Agian, in comparison to Sibeius, Finale fails miserably! I'd be happy to answer any further questions about the software.

Mikey

[stevec]

Mikey

Thank you so much for that feed back. I know I'll have other questions so let me do a little more research and I'll post them here or maybe we can exchange addresses if there's to many to post.

thx again

Steve

[jrethorst]

Anybody have any experience with either of these two software's? Is one considered better than the other or is it just a coin toss?

A Google newsgroups search on rec.music.compose will give you a _lot_ of discussion. Both programs (and many others) have downloadable demos, which are well worth a look after considering everyone else's opinions. One of the others you might want to look at is Overture (www.geniesoft.com). Fast, powerful, very nice output, best midi support of any notation program (I'm not affiliated etc.)

[Hucbald]

Finale has the most anti-intuitive, user hostile artist interface of any music related program I've ever used. I absolutely, positively hate Finale. ANYTHING must be better than Finale.

Personally, I use Encore 4.5/Mac. It's very easy to learn, intuitive, the MIDI is "OK", and the playback is also fine. I've composed everything from solo guitar music, to chamber music, to symphonic music with it.

I've been using Encore since about 1994 or so, tried Finale in 2000, and went back to Encore. I can't compare it to Sibelius or Overture because I've never tried those.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. In Finale you have to define how you want repeats to execute in a very anti-intuitive format. I actually had to call customer support and have them explain it to me. That was the last straw for me. In Encore repeats function by default as if... (Wait for it... Here it comes) a human performer was reading through the score. Also in Finale you have all these needless "layers" for non-notation symbols - which you have to use for guitar fingerings and position indicators all the time - whereas in Encore you just select the symbol and plop it into the score. Then you can just click on any of them and drag them around to wherever you want them. With Finale you have to select the correct layer before you can tweak the score. It really and truely is positively asinine.

I fail to understand how Finale has become the "industry standard" music printing program when it is such a code-pile of reeking garbage. I'd say it would be as if all the top classical guitar performers were playing on Yamaha student model classical guitars, but that would be unfair to Yamaha.

I'd like to hear from anyone who can compare Sibelius or Overture to Finale. Keep in mind that I use a Mac (I also fail to understand what keeps millions of people from throwing their Wind-blows PC's out the window every day). The only irritants about Encore are that it's a tad unstable and unexpectedly quits on me every so often and I'd like the sequencer to be a little more powerful and easy to access.

Hucbald

[sl455]

I've used both and I can understand why Sibelius is so much more popular. Finale is... anti-intuitive... in a way. But then again, your problem with layering (which, honestly, isn't that difficult of a concept nor practice), is only the beginning of many more "anti-intuitive" things about Finale. In fact, I find layering a wonderful function; if you use Photoshop you'll see similarities and I appreciate the layers. I actually find it very flexible to work with them.

With the repeats in the playback, true, it's finnicky, but did you really need to hear the repeat in the playback? I'm guessing that the default is set the way it is because during playback you don't need to hear it again. I think, if you really want to shoot down Finale you might want to consider how the things you want are just buried under too many menus and there are too many clicks.

If one of you out there is stuck with Finale and hate it and wish you were using Sibelius, try making yourself learn the program by reading the manual or pressing F1 every now and then. Take the time to familiarize yourself with F1--it pays off. Learn the hotkeys. You practice guitar--why not practice, if you're going to bother to front all that money on the program, Finale?

Personally, I can't say that Finale is "anti-intuitive" because once you understand how to go about the program you'll understand why it is done a certain way. For me, Photoshop was a similar experience; it would be nice if computers could just do everything we wanted. Well... we still have to learn it to make them work for us. Of course, despite all my defense for Finale, go ahead and get Sibelius. I just grew up using Finale and got used to it; at the same time, I grew up typing papers on WordStar (remember those?), though I'd really hesitate to recommend that!

[selma600]

Hey Steve,

I have used Sibelius for over a year and have worked with Finale before as well. Without question Sibelius is the superior program. The interface is better (easy but extremely powerful). You have practically unlimited notation options. And the playback on Sibelius 3 is superb. It's packaged with Native Software samples so your scores actually sound pretty good when played back. I use the software everyday and could not live without. Agian, in comparison to Sibeius, Finale fails miserably! I'd be happy to answer any further questions about the software.

Mikey

Mikey, email me please. I am having some mysterious issues regarding my scans not showing up more than halfway after I "send to Sibelius." I just started to use Sibelius, having used Finale LIGHT years ago (I think it was the second version)
tremont600@bellsouth.net thanks