# Sibelius 7! VERY slow!



## nikolas

I know there's another thread about sib 7, but it was about the release of it and not on how slow it is...

I'm getting seriously bugged with the delay in my work...

I just need to check with anyone else if these things are happening to them:

1. When I load up Sibelius it will take around 1 minute to start working and not stopping!
2. After that anything I touch to move it will do so but slowly. I have to wait (a sec or so), for any dynamic to be moved for the first time (and then it goes on). I also have to wait for anything to be copy pasted, or 'reduce staves' (to add 2 voices from two staves to one), etc... EVERYTHING is NOT immediate (not even moving the score around by dragging the moust).
3. When I 'Change instrument', to delete an existing staff at some point of the page (I got to other->no staff (hidden barlines) it gets the story done, but then if I have to move something (to change the entry point of the staff for example), it takes quite a while to do so...

Now keep in mind that:

1. Only WMP is open on the back playing music (but I've tried it without, in no vail).
2. No sounds are loaded. Just the midi crap (don't care about listening to what I'm doing at this point).
3. My computer is an i7 with 6 GB of RAM!!!!
4. I've followed the instructions from the avid website, thus stopped the textures, and anything else it mentions.

Of course I'm talking about quite big scores (553 bars, and 87 pages at this point), but IT STILL SUCKS! :(

Can someone tell me if this is happening to them as well, or not? 

I'm seriously considering asking for avid my money back, or a free Sib 6 version! :@


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## bdr

Sib 7 is definitely slower, in some cases annoyingly so. Is the one minute delay while the sounds are loading in? They are quite bigger than previously.

There are a number of threads on the Sib forum regarding this, I suggest looking through them. I guess there going to point to the length of the score. Is it just as slow with smaller scores?


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## nikolas

No it's not as slow with smaller scores (a 23 page quartet for example), but there is still a tiny delay when moving anything... It's not too much with small scores, but what is it worth when I HAVE to work on this huge score?!?!?! :(

And I already posted in the Sibelius forum!


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## tote-musik

Hello,

I have seen this problem too. I´m using Sibelius 7 under Win 7 64bit with VSL and it was awful at the beginning! 
First I have used VSL Ensemble 32bit and after changing to VSL Ensemble 64bit it speeded up but there are still delays that wasn´t in Sibelius 6.

regards 

Torsten


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## Pietro

With large scores, both S6 and S7 are sloppy.

Writing on Sibelius forums, I got into conclusion, that they are using 10 years old engine, that are only extending with each version in new features.

This makes some actions and functions slower and slower with each version.

Sibelius officials seemed to be concerned about the problem, however, were quite surprised to see anyone want to edit a 1000 bars orchestral score. I thought I looked like an alien to them, expecting good performance of basic actions with small and large scores.

Looks like they don't expect professional or so called power-usage from their users, which is worrying.

They said, that improving performance of basic actions would require complete core code rewrite. And they didn't seem to be thinking about it yet...

Cause you know, Nikolas. You have a 4 core, hyperthreaded powerful CPU, but thanks to 10 years old Sibelius core code, you can obviously only use 1/8 of that power. Sibelius only uses more than one thread for plugins and video.

There ia however a tip to use Low latency asio drivers for edition. Or not at all. This will improve selecting things.

- Piotr


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## Robin

Nikolas, you could try freezing the magnetig layout positions of the parts of the score that you already edited which is supposed to gain a bit of performance.


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## nikolas

Hey Robin and Pietro. Thanks for the heads up! (Robin I'll PM you for some details...).

Cheers all for the help. I'll try freezing some positions, since I'm done with half the score (40 pages approximately)...


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## nikolas

Double post but...

I now have sibelius 6.2 on my computer and the change in speed (in the same score, same part o the score, same issues) is phenomenal WOW!

And, btw. The Sibelius (Avid?) customer support is stunning! WOW! And a public thanks to Daniel (though perhaps he won't see this), for all his help (and Robin who has send me a number of messages to help me with my starting problems or other in sibelius)!


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## robteehan

I want to thank you, Nikolas, for convincing me NOT to upgrade to 7! o-[][]-o


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## Malo

Hi! I bought the Sibelius 7 upgrade (from v6.2) and played around with it yesterday. Every little thing I do lags 1-2 seconds, or I get the spinning wheel for a little while. I exported the score back to Sibelius 6, and everything was instant again.

Tip of the day: Keep your Sibelius 6 on the same computer as v7! It seems not everyone has the lag problem, but I certainly find Sibelius 7 unusable in its present state! (Sib 7.02)


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## almound

Here's some tips to optimize Windows 7 many of which can be applied to Windows XP.


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## kclements

I was happy and fortunate enough to be a beta tester for Sibelius versions, 4, 5, 6 and 7. As soon as I first opened version 7, I closed it and never went back. I really dislike the new look and feel. I've stuck with 6.2 and it works very well.

Cheers
kc


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## snattack

The general solution of speeding up Sibelius is to:

1. Run Windows. NEVER OSX when editing large scores.
2. Disable all smoothing and other crap which can't be disabled in OSX.
3. Disable textures (which IMO reduces accuracy in proof reading anyway).
4. Change the workflow to using keys to scroll instead of mouse wheel. There are different options in the "Navigation" part of the Keyboard Shortcuts: Scroll a little, scroll a page full, scroll to top/end. Thats MUCH faster than scrolling with the mousewheel. At least helped me alot.
5. The same goes for zooming as for point 4.

But yes, Sibelius is simply useless for professional orchestrators when it comes to speed. If Finale wasn't even more unreliable I'd change, and that is my only reason for staying: Sibelius quite safe. 

Hoping for the Steinberg-team to fix something new and fresh though.


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## Pietro

After all these years (original thread from 2011), I'm still in shock on how slow Sibelius gets with larger scores.

Currently finishing a big orchestral/choir score with 32 staves, about 50 minutes of music. Exploding parts goes like 1 bar per 5 seconds. I'm not exaggerating. Considering the score is something like 900 bars, it would take me over an hour per part to do.

Fortunately, there is a workaround - making a temporary copy of the full score, deleting all parts but the one you are currently exploding and then copy-pasting (which takes forever anyway!) to the actual score.

Avid is not going to rewrite the core any time soon and will only be giving us a slower and slower version since Sibelius first came out. This is pity, really. Steinberg is probably going to win over this one at some point unless something changes.

But this thing aside, I grew up to like 7.5 more than 6.2 actually. I have most of my plugins and functions under keycommands or mouse gestures, so don't mind the ribbon anymore.

- Piotr


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## caign

This is an incredibly old thread. Sad that it's still so relevant and has recent posts.

I'm having some bad Sibelius 7.5 performance problems on a fast recent Mac. Interesting the comment above about the performance problems being less bad on Windows - usually not the case with audio software.

My problems are delays of up to 5-10 seconds when clicking on a note before that note sounds. Admittedly using the huge Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) sample library, but that should not make so much difference.

As I write music and the score size increases, the software performance delays creep in, similar to the experiences of others above. Any additional suggestions welcome!


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## Pietro

Usually, the delay between selecting a note and hearing it has to do with audio interface latency setup (very much in Sibelius, because the graphical feedback of that will also be delayed - it will wiat for the sound before displaying the note is selected). I often chose not to have any audio coming from Sibelius when doing some layout work on the scores, which can speed it up significantly.

But the larger the score, the slower everything gets. Selecting any object can take up to a second. Copy function, and then paste - each can get at least a second delay depending on what you would like to select. Try selecting a whole part in a large score. Like flutes - tripple click select on Windows. It can get to something ridiculous like 20s to select and then another 20s to copy and then over a minute to paste.

I have a 6-core machine with lots of RAM.

I wish there was hope, that they would fix this, but last time I checked on their forums, the officials said, that they acknowledge the problem, but fixing it would be impossible. My guess is that it's the way Sibelius stores the score in memory, that is the problem. Basically any action, like selecting a note would force it to go through the whole score from the beginning in search for the object. And if you select a number of objects, it also has to skip a number of objects in between. So it's more like the score is a continuous sentence, and the objects are words. This definitely could be smarter.

- Piotr


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## caign

Pietro said:


> Usually, the delay between selecting a note and hearing it has to do with audio interface latency setup



Good point, although in this case the delays would start with a small score, rather than being introduced as the score size increases.

Note the video on changes in Sibelius 8 mentions new "multi-task support" but there's no detail. As anyone tested the performance of Sibelius 8?


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## Pietro

You can demo it for free. It will create separate installation for the new Sibelius, so your previous Sibelius will remain untouched.

I checked briefly but there seemed no actual performance improvement whatsoever. And basically, since thet are still building this software in an incremental way, leaving what was there and just adding new stuff, I believe it actually might be slower slightly. But I only checked briefly so I suggest you go on and do the same. I only checked what's new. There was nothing really new and useful for the desktop user, so I'm waiting for the updates and see where they are taking Sibelius with the new subscription model.

- Piotr


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## snattack

I have two computer:

1. Macbook Pro Retina maxed out from late 2012.

2. A Mac Pro late 2013 8 core w. 64 GB Ram.

Whats baffeling is this: theres NO DIFFERENCE in performance using Sibelius between these two machines, even though the trashcan-macpro has 2,5 the processing power according to geekbench.

That's how badly optimized Sibelius is.

The "select note lag" you experience aren't latency, but from what I've understood the slow Sibelius playback engine sending program changes/trying to select the proper articulation. This bug have been around since forever, it was the same in Sibelius 6 when I used VSL, it's the same today. 7 years later. But THANK GOD for the ribbon and surface pro support


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