After many years hiatus from the music biz I am dusting off the old onion skins and getting back into writing. The last version of Finale I used in earnest was Finale 98, but I have seen and experimented with both Finale 2006/2007 and Sibelius 4.xx. I do have a lot of old music in the Finale 98 format, but I'm not all that concerned about being able to reuse it. I'm sure I'd have to do some major tweakage in any case, so it's just as easy to re-enter the parts. One other consideration is that I'd *really* like to use the Golden Age font
Don Rice has recently upgraded his GA font to work with the OS upgrades. - however I am confident that I can modify it for use in either application. Some of the fonts that come with Sibelius do however look promising...
*SO*, what's the advice? Do I stick with Finale or do the Sibelius crossgrade?
Use Finale. What I have seen of the new Finale - it looks pretty much the same as Finale 98, except with Aqua-looking buttons and a lot of consumer-level features added that I'll never use.
Finale 2007 is vastly superior to Finale 98, ignore the cosmetics.
Sibelius on the other hand, looks much slicker and fresher,
Cosmetics. and I've heard of professionals using it instead of Finale,
Alongside maybe, but most pro copyists and engravers I know use both, if only for the money ;-) but all my experience has been with Finale (with C-Lab's Notator sw before that! Does that date me?!? :) )
I presume most of the readers of this list to be ardent Finale users,
Yes we are. but I'm sure you've at least looked at Sibelius,
Yes, most of us have. so I'd love to hear your opinions on this (without starting a turf war of course.) The issue has probably already been beaten to death,
It has and you'll get plenty of Sibelius lurkers jumping in to recruit.
Use Finale, it's a better piece of software. You will get the job done faster and with more finesse. so if you'd rather point me to an archive of such a discussion that would be welcome as well.
FYI, I work mainly on a Mac (new MacPro machine pretty much maxed out) alongside of Logic Pro, but I do also still use a Windows XP machine, and could definitely see myself doing my recording on the Mac and notation on PC if necessary, but generally I will use the Mac. That being said, cross-platform compatibility of whichever app I choose *is* an important feature to me.
If as you mentioned above, you have experimented with both applications in their latest upgrades including recording/sequencing software and you are also comfortable on both Mac and PC platforms you probably need to get both if you can afford it. I don't believe cross-platform is an issue now with either piece of software.
Jonathan
Thanks in advance for your input! - Bob Shuster
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