Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

Sibelius is much, much, much better than Finale

stigc56 said:
I work with Sibelius every day around 5 hours, and I can assure you that there are several bugs! Parameters in engraving options that are not remembered correctly, running headers that suddenly appears out of the blue. And how about slurs between staves, used a lot in harp and piano. I and so many other Sibelius users has been complaining about that for years, nothing happens! I can't wait to see Dorico get the last things in place and I and the Publishing House I work for will switch to Dorico ASAP.
Click to expand...

I fully understand your frustration and sympathize. Yet you are still using Sibelius for professional engraving? There must be some things about the program you prefer over Finale, right? Anyway, since I use Sibelius for composing and doing simple arrangements, I have not encountered these bugs, but I do not doubt you. As a retired business person, my guess is that the Sibelius management team sees the thousands of folks like myself as their target market, as opposed to the smaller number of professional engravers, and prioritizes the things they think the larger market would use most.

It could also be true that flaws in the original programming code make it difficult (impossible?) to address the bugs you mention without either a complete rewrite or more man hours to find the glitches than they can afford. I did some programming in the 80's and 90's as a hobby and I know that the bigger and more complex software becomes, the more difficult it is to solve issues.

Anyway, I hope Dorico is one day the program you want and need. I am just too old, at 64, to wait for that to happen.
 
stigc56 said:
I can't wait to see Dorico get the last things in place and I and the Publishing House I work for will switch to Dorico ASAP.
Click to expand...
May I ask what the most important things you have on the list of missing last things?
 
Sibelius is still a great tool. But the biggest problem with it is the speed. The bigger the project, the slower it gets - to a point where an 80-page orchestral score takes often more than 5 seconds to copy a single note and another 5 to paste it in. However selecting a note and just clicking middle mouse key to paste it in is instant. Plugins also take more time the larger the score. To a point, where exploding parts would take you 10 hours instead of 10 minutes, performing one bar per second.

- Piotr
 
Vik said:
May I ask what the most important things you have on the list of missing last things?
Click to expand...
I do a lot of arrangements for musicals and small combo's, so I need Dorico to be able to write drums staffs (5 line) slash writing for rhythm guitars, cue notes are also very important, and then I need to be able to record the music live into the app. My sight reading is good enough to be able to "record" a bass in one go, so that is needed as well. But I see the force in the whole structure about master pages, I mean the whole point in using computers for this kind of work is to be able to reuse your work and although Sibelius has the housestyles setup it's kind of convoluted to use in my daily work. I have created a setup in Metagrid and together with Keyboard Maestro it works okay.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Vik
Paul T McGraw said:
I fully understand your frustration and sympathize. Yet you are still using Sibelius for professional engraving? There must be some things about the program you prefer over Finale, right? Anyway, since I use Sibelius for composing and doing simple arrangements, I have not encountered these bugs, but I do not doubt you. As a retired business person, my guess is that the Sibelius management team sees the thousands of folks like myself as their target market, as opposed to the smaller number of professional engravers, and prioritizes the things they think the larger market would use most.

It could also be true that flaws in the original programming code make it difficult (impossible?) to address the bugs you mention without either a complete rewrite or more man hours to find the glitches than they can afford. I did some programming in the 80's and 90's as a hobby and I know that the bigger and more complex software becomes, the more difficult it is to solve issues.

Anyway, I hope Dorico is one day the program you want and need. I am just too old, at 64, to wait for that to happen.
Click to expand...
I wrote a book about Finale in 2001 in Danish. I have taught Finale for many years and written quite a lot of scores in Finale, but the moment when Sibelius was able to adjust layout automatic, and avoid collisions between different elements, I bought the app.!
 
During the years, I've repeatedly heard that Finale can do things that Sibelius can't, and that its output is superior. I've not yet had evidence of this superiority, and would like to put these statements to test.

I'm stuck on Sibelius 6.2, since I hate everything that came after, but would be more than happy to partecipate to any comparison on copying any complex score in different notation programs. This would not shown the full set of differences (for example, it will not test speed with bigger scores, or how easy it is to extract separate parts), but would at least compare the layout features of each.

Paolo
 
For me, I started on Finale back in the late '90's, then happily switched to Sibelius ver. 2 and have been using it up to version 7.5 for the last couple of years.

I got hold of Finale 2012 a few years ago, and just upgraded to Finale 25 last month....and am trying to get up to speed again on Finale.

I'm finding that Finale is definitely as fast as Sibelius for anything (once you use the Macros and set up your own keystrokes as well)

Chords? ...I haven't gotten into the Finale system too much yet... always thought Sibelius did jazz chords very well.

But....when trancribing or having to listen to an audio track in order to add and print out extra horn parts or something, I really love Finale over Sibelius. You just import an audio track, and you can even line up the score easily with the audio track.

Finale's not supporting video right in the program right now, but if I'm scoring for video I just do that in MOTU DP as my DAW (and, it'll convert anything to Music XML if one needs to print out parts for players from back in Finale or Sibelius...or, the DP scoring is pretty decent for fast and easy parts as well!)

Some things are much faster to accomplish in Finale, and different things are easier to accomplish in Sibelius.

Score playback with NotePerformer is fantastic in Sibelius....but Finale does as super job as well using the built-in Garritan library and Human Playback. (.....nothing, nothing, nothing will ever be better than using a dedicated DAW for convincing 'human-like' playback imho....at least at this point in time....it seems futile to expect Finale or Sibelius to even come close to what you can do with Kontakt, PLAY, etc.etc. etc. in a real DAW program.)

It's a toss up....I'm not sure what I'll really 'stick with', but I really want to get to know Finale really well again seeing as I'm not a fan of Avid and their subcription model. There isn't anything past version 7.5 that matters to me.

So....they really both get the job done for most all music printing and scoring needs, except for the most avant-garde capabilities of Finale.
 
douggibson said:
Sibelius has the same function. No difference.
Click to expand...

I mean to say that I like the way in Finale that you can actually see the audio track, and then adjust the timing in order to synch up the barlines to match the tempo of the audio file....and then start playback from whereever you like in the score.

Seems more clumsy in Sibelius; like you have to use ReWire and have an audio track in a DAW, create a MIDI tempo track, and then import that into Sibelius in order to match what Finale can do simply.

But, maybe I haven't explored that enough in Sibelius.
 
Now...my major compaint about Finale, and why I have to use Sibelius for ease and intuitiveness....

I'm pencil/paper trained middle-aged guy, and I like to work quickly and easily when I'm composing/arranging.

So, I've usually done most of my work on paper (at least even sketches) on paper first, and then get it into Sibelius, (or Finale once in awhile when wanting to compare programs.)

But I've been trying to compose directly into Sibelius over the last year, so that I can 'bypass' the transfer from paper and maybe save myself some time...and to try to really treat the software as composer-friendly to me for my initial writing.

Sibelius has been great, and I'm adapting. I love the way you can choose to 'noodle' and play on the keyboard in order to work out the music before hitting 'N' and then inputting your ideas.

It's what 'Speedy Entry' in Finale is trying to do....right?

But, in Finale, when you use 'Speedy' it squishes all you notes together, creating a real eysore and a technical 'flow-stopper' for composing and seeing what the hell is going on. On all the Finale forums and help groups, this seems to be a major complaint and for every complaint there is somebody with a different solution to try in order to get the input notes spacing themselves correctly.

In Sibelius, the music just flows onto the score, and thanks to 'Magnetic Layout', a composer can stay inspired, almost like writing with pencil on paper.

Plus, all the keystroke shortcuts that you can create yourself, in addition to the ones that already exist, really make Sibelius very composer friendly.

So...to me, Sibelius does seem a clear winner when it come to my way of thinking and working.

Haven't tried Dorico yet, but should probably try a demo.

Also...the little Notion program on an iPad is very useful when you try the 'handwriting' option....great for some idea sketching....the handwriting recognition really does work!

It's great to read and get people's feedback on the notation programs here in addition to all the other great V.I. information.

Excellent community!
 
NoamL said:
The problem with these shortcuts is that they are context dependent on the tool menu.
Click to expand...

Yes ^^^^!!!!.

I have been using Finale since 1.0 and this idiotic tool menu constraint still makes it incredibly sluggish. If you double-click an object, it should jump to the relevant tool. It doesn't.

That said, I can't stand / trust Avid to do anything but try to milk money from users, so I'm staying with Finale for the time being.
 
JohnG said:
I have been using Finale since 1.0 and this idiotic tool menu constraint still makes it incredibly sluggish. If you double-click an object, it should jump to the relevant tool. It doesn't.
Click to expand...

It does, you just have to be in the selection tool which you can get to by hitting escape. It is an extra step but at least it's quicker than clicking on the tool.
 
prodigalson said:
It does, you just have to be in the selection tool which you can get to by hitting escape. It is an extra step but at least it's quicker than clicking on the tool.
Click to expand...

I can't quite understand, but that would be nice. Are you saying that you simply press the "Esc" key, then double click something?
 
JohnG said:
I can't quite understand, but that would be nice. Are you saying that you simply press the "Esc" key, then double click something?
Click to expand...

unless I'm misunderstanding what you're looking for then yeah, at least in 2014.5. While in the Selection Tool just double-click on any articulation, expression, chord etc and it'll take directly to that tool while also allowing you to edit that object.

While in any tool, just hitting Esc defaults to the Selection Tool
 
JohnG said:
Yes ^^^^!!!!.

I have been using Finale since 1.0 and this idiotic tool menu constraint still makes it incredibly sluggish. If you double-click an object, it should jump to the relevant tool. It doesn't.

That said, I can't stand / trust Avid to do anything but try to milk money from users, so I'm staying with Finale for the time being.
Click to expand...
Inspired by this video, I setup Quickeys 4 Mac with an Shuttle pro 2, to have quick access to the funtions I use most in Finale. I think it helped the workflow :).


(broken link removed)
 
prodigalson said:
unless I'm misunderstanding what you're looking for then yeah, at least in 2014.5. While in the Selection Tool just double-click on any articulation, expression, chord etc and it'll take directly to that tool while also allowing you to edit that object.

While in any tool, just hitting Esc defaults to the Selection Tool
Click to expand...
Yep - what he said. I use that constantly.
 
I tried Sibelius (been using Finale since 2006) and didn't like it as much, but that probably had a lot to do with the years on Finale. I think I'm too old to change my workflow. It still seemed like quite a nice program.

I just realized...I hardly ever even notate music anymore. I got so used to writing and working with midi.
 
Gerhard Westphalen said:
I find that Sibelius rarely looks as good as Finale. It's also much more difficult to do complicated notation things in Sibelius. This is coming from a classically trained engraver. It can be slow, though. Check out Tim Davies's videos on orchestrating in Finale. Those tricks helped get through tight deadlines.
Click to expand...

Gerhard, I have some workflow questions for you:

1) Do you know if rtpMIDI can do the routing that Davies has in Finale on a PC? I have been dying for the longest time to set up these sorts of macros, but I have never found the time to really pursue it or learn a lot about it. The last time I tried using midi for macros, or macros in general, I was unsuccessful setting it up. I had it so that whenever a specific midi commanded was executed it would activate; however, it did it for any midi device I had hooked up (not ideal when putting things in with a keyboard).

2) Do you know if quick keys work on PC?

3) If I remember correctly from some of your posts, you use the logical editor in Cubase a lot. Do you have any recommendations on learning how to use that? (This last one doesn't have to do with Finale or Sibelius, but it is in the same general workflow vein.)
 
Hey all, just wanted you to know I didn't just trollpost and abandon this thread, I'm busy orchestrating but there's some very interesting back & forth about the competing features and hopefully I'll have time next week to respond to all your thoughtful comments.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom