Customer Reviews

Sibelius 4 Competitive Upgrade

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Sibelius has always had a much easier learning curve than Finale, with its deep but complicated feature set and user interface. However, when Sibelius 4 came out, its feature set was compelling enough that Makemusic began borrowing the best ideas for their own updates to Finale 2006 and 2007. The organization of the preference panels, integrated parts and score in the same file, and other, more subtle features are all finding their way into Finale after being introduced in Sibelius 4.

Sibelius, with its more modern internal architecture and design philosophy, always manages to keep its user interface transparent even as the feature set became greatly expanded, so the program remains remarkably easy to use, and the "look" of the printed notation (right out of the box with no additional tweaking) is just, well... better. For serious music copyists and engravers, the Optical Beams and Ties in Sibelius 4 alone make this a superior music typesetting application.

This Sibelius crossgrade is the same price as Finale's annual upgrade to Finale 2007. If history is any indication, Makemusic will work the bugs out of their initial offering of Finale 2007 within 2 or 3 maintenance upgrades. For the same price, you can crossgrade to Sibelius where all of the implemented features work correctly right out of the box.

Other notation applications such as Encore or Mosaic may also be eligable for this crossgrade pricing.

Sibelius is ... dare I say - fun to use, and produces consistently good results at any level from novice to professional. If you are a Finale user who has been impressed by Finale's power, but turned off by its user interface, or you love the ease of use of Encore or Mosaic, but need more power, you will be very impressed with Sibelius 4. This crossgrade provides the opportunity to switch to Sibelius at an excellent value for the money.