Frustrations with Finale

I used to be an advocate of Finale. It's what all my music has been scored with, and back in the day it seemed problem-free.

These days, however, Finale has treated me very poorly. Several times in the past, the green playback-tracking line had vanished, and nothing short of reinstallation would bring it back. Playback no longer scrolled at all. Recently I discovered a major issue with playback; while older files would play at normal volume, all new files (created from scratch, not template) would be nearly inaudible. MIDI data was fine, system volume, mixer settings... everything. Emailing MakeMusic yielded no reply.

Now I am beginning a large-scale project, the orchestration of a musical theater production scheduled for performance this coming Christmas, and Finale's scrolling playback has again vanished, just today. Needless to say, I've had it up to here with Finale's quirks. It seems to fail me at the most critical times and has been a damper on my creativity for years.

I'm considering buying the Sibelius competitive upgrade, and would like candid, honest critique on Sibelius from those on this forum who use it. What sort of problems have you experienced with it, how easy is it to plug in the GPO soundset, etc. Anything you can tell me will be a great help, save for the "Sibelius rocks, buy it now" sort of posts that don't actually provide any information.

Thanks in advance, I know I can count on my friends here at YC in my hour of need!

Before you jump ship, tell us about your computer. How much RAM, how fast the processor, etc. When was the last time you defragmented your drive? How much empty space is on your hard drive? What version of Finale are you running? Have you added any hardware or new programs lately?

Finale 2006
1.43 GB RAM
1.83 GHz processor (AMD Athlon XP 2500+)
Defragmented probably at least a year ago, will run the operation tonight
Noticed issues since a reinstallation of Finale a month ago, but that reinstallation was instigated by the scrolling-playback issue
Used 34.5 GB out of 153 GB hard drive space - 118 GB is free space

Don't know about new programs. The only thing I can think of is a recent installation of World of Warcraft, but that certainly didn't have anything to do with it - the problems predate WoW by a long, long time. I don't often add new software, I tend to work with bare bones, my desktop usually has under ten icons on it and the Start menu is similarly tidy. Finale is one of the only programs I have EVER had any issues with, my system has treated me very well.

Okay, are you running large scores? Large amounts of virtual instruments (Garritan stuff...)? Which version of Windows are you running? 1.5 gigs is low if you're running Vista, you should should have at least 2 (more if you can get it). This also impacts the Garritan instruments since those run from RAM as well.

Are you running a virus scanner? Is it up-to-date? Do a full scan of your drive.

I can only speak for myself:
my Finale 2006 worked perfectly until I installed Finale 2008.... it still works perfectly, except with Finale 2008 I have migrated to the newer and more efficient Kontakt Player 2 for my Garritan libraries.

I haven't seen any of the sort of problems you describe on my computer.

Oh, and I also have WoW installed, and it hasn't affected Finale in a negative way... except it seems to affect how much time I spend using Finale.

Virus scanner is AVG Free Edition, which is up to date. It does a full scan every morning, and I've never EVER had the sort of systemic problems one associates with a virus. I doubt a virus would target a single program and make only that one program have the same bug periodically over the course of several years.

I do run large scores sometimes, but not exclusively, and often these bugs have cropped up when running a simple piano grand staff. Anyway, memory should not affect volume without creating other serious artifacts such as massive slowdown. I'm running XP, and with a full set of orchestra samples loaded I have plenty of "headroom."

I think I'd recommend taking this directly to the Finale forums... I seem to recall slowdown being a documented issue. (don't quote me)

What? No, I said there isn't any slowdown. Just volume decrease. *isconfused*

Per my original request, is there anyone on here who's worked in Sibelius for a while who can give me a realistic idea of its reliability and capability?

my bad, I misread your previous post. :-p

Originally Posted by johannhowitzer

Per my original request, is there anyone on here who's worked in Sibelius for a while who can give me a realistic idea of its reliability and capability?

I worked with versions 3 and 4 for several years before semi-migrating to Finale, i.e. I'm still not completely sold on it. But that's probably because I was so used to working in Sibelius. I've heard Finale users claim Sibelius strikes them as counter-intuitive, whereas my experience has been the exact opposite. I could go into my reasons, but those are probably subjective too.

Anyway, in other words: if you switch to Sibelius, it might take you a few months to get fluent. Both programs have their own differing philosophies as to how the user should interact with the score.

As for its reliability and capability, Sibelius offers all of the commonly-used features you'd expect from Finale, minus the more advanced tools. Sibelius isn't as good for doing "anything at all". That's only really an issue if you are an avant-garde type person, however. Reliability-wise, I have consistently found it to be more stable than Finale, having run both applications on XP sitting on common hardware components.

Aside from all that, I'd definitely recommend reformatting before you resort to drastic measures such as switching to Sibelius...does this mean my post was a waste of effort?