Sibelius vs Finale

I currently use Sibelius, and to be honest, had never heard of Finale until yesterday.

What are the significant difference's between them, and overall, which is better for composing?

Ah, this is a perennial topic (or at least it was on the old YC boards):

The question is: are you happy with Sibelius? If so, and if you're used to how it works, then I wouldn't consider changing.

They're both very powerful pieces of software and you can't go far wrong with either.

So it's mostly about personal choice then. There's no obvious winner between the software...

Talk to different people get different responses...

In my 'research' I've come to the conclusion that the general consensus is that Finale is the slightly more powerful/professional software, while Sibelius is more intuitive and user-friendly.

...I'm speaking specifically on notational terms, I don't bother with playback and sound-font-sample-nonsense.

I use Finale 2003.

Finale has always worked great for me! It's easy to use, virtualy limitless, and has a package of really great samples.

But plenty of pros use Sibelius. The gap really is small as they're both incredibly powerful.

I started off using Finale as I was a printmusic! user originally (a cut down version of Finale, I don't know if they make it anymore tbh).

I swtiched to Sibelius three years ago as that's the software my uni music department had and the format our lecturer wanted all our compositions in.

As someone who's used both I'd say, for me personally, Sibelius just edges it. I'd imagine if I wanted perfect looking scores and was an engraver rather than a composer, I'd prefer Finale but I'm not.

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I reckon upgrading to Sib 5 could be good for you Chaski and may solve some of your hardware/software troubles at a stroke:

1. You know Sibelius already by the sounds of things.

2. Sibelius 5 comes with a huge range of sounds built in (and they're not bad quality either: Sibelius Sounds: Essentials)

3. Buy a reasonbly cheap MIDI controller to control these sounds instead of an expensive synth.

4. Bear in mind you can get student discount!

5. Sorted!

Just a thought ;)

But plenty of pros use Sibelius. The gap really is small as they're both incredibly powerful.

I started off using Finale as I was a printmusic! user originally (a cut down version of Finale, I don't know if they make it anymore tbh).

I swtiched to Sibelius three years ago as that's the software my uni music department had and the format our lecturer wanted all our compositions in.

As someone who's used both I'd say, for me personally, Sibelius just edges it. I'd imagine if I wanted perfect looking scores and was an engraver rather than a composer, I'd prefer Finale but I'm not.

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I reckon upgrading to Sib 5 could be good for you Chaski and may solve some of your hardware/software troubles at a stroke:

1. You know Sibelius already by the sounds of things.

2. Sibelius 5 comes with a huge range of sounds built in (and they're not bad quality either: Sibelius Sounds: Essentials)

3. Buy a reasonbly cheap MIDI controller to control these sounds instead of an expensive synth.

4. Bear in mind you can get student discount!

5. Sorted!

Just a thought ;)

Yeah, I'm on the Sibelius website now. Looking at it, it's basically

Does that include your student discount?

Does that include your student discount?

I'm not sure that I qualify for the discount. I think you have to be a university student for it, whereas I'm still in high school. I'll check it out, but if I qualified for the discount, and [i've checked this] I can upgrade direct to Sibelius 5, from 2, the total cost would be a mere

I own both Sibelius 4 and Finale 2007, and while I'm less experienced at using Finale than Sibelius, for me it's a straight choice between Sibelius' enhanced user-friendliness and Finale's superior playback.

I found Finale to be very counter-intuitive at first, but its playback is so wonderful compared to Sibelius' that I was willing to wrestle the learning curve. Sibelius is easier to learn, but arguably the reward for doing so is a lesser one. Bear in mind I learned Sibelius first, so I'm probably biased.

This is all assuming you actually care about playback, of course! If all you're looking for is a scorewriter, I'd go for Sibelius. If you want a great sounding rendition of your music right from the get-go, consider Finale.

Ultimately, though, you should try out the product demos, because it really is a personal decision. :)

I have not used Sibelius, but I choose Finale because of the price.

Finale costs less than Sibelius, and you can crossgrade from many other notation software. (You even get a discount of 100$ if you trade up from the free Finale Notepad.)

I have not used Sibelius, but I choose Finale because of the price.

Finale costs less than Sibelius, and you can crossgrade from many other notation software. You even get a discount of 100$ if you trade up from the free Finale Notepad.

Why does the board show this topic as having two pages when it only has one???

This would be the third post on the second page...:P

That's weird, when I clicked on the thread before the three posts above were at the bottom of the first page!

Now it's back to how it should be.

I prefer Finale to Sibelius because it's simply more powerful and I can do almost anything that I ask it to do. There are a lot of things you simply can't do in Sibelius without doing some kind of workaround to approximate what you really want (I won't lie, there are things like that in Finale, too). Most people don't realize that to be "intuitive and user-friendly," you sacrifice a lot of personalization options. Sure, MS Paint is easy to use, but you'll get better results with Adobe Photoshop.

On a personal note, I CAN'T STAND Sibelius' music font. It looks like children's music - like Piano Big Note Five Finger music. I half expect to see the note names in the notehead whenever I look at Sibelius' output. That, to me, is a major killpoint. I would be horrified and embarrassed to present that to a publisher.

Anyway, that's only my opinion, feel free to have a different one.

^Thats only one of a million fonts, the one they usually use on the tutorial video's and such. I just use the basic, professional looking font. But theres a ton to choose from.

I use Sibelius 5 and highly highly recommend. The only Finale program I've used is notepad and I couldn't get into it...though I didn't really try too hard as I only got it to play .mus files and I had Sib 5 with EWQLSO sat on my desktop.

But I've heard phenomanl compositions from people with Finale and people wth Sibelius, so really its whichever you find best to use.

Sure, MS Paint is easy to use, but you'll get better results with Adobe Photoshop.

I understand your point but that's not the best analogy to use when comparing Sibelius and Finale as they're about as powerful as each other; the difference is small, certainly compared to the difference between Paint and Photoshop! :O

I think, actually, this debate is much like the "sequencer wars". Cubase and Sonar are quite different to use but both are beasts when all is said and done.

Really, unless you're composing extreme avant-garde music (and what I've heard from you suggests you're not Ed!), Sibelius will be more than good enough.

And since you're used to Sibelius and know how it works, I wouldn't bother switching if I were you.

Haha, too right I'm not composing avant-garde! I only started thinking about composing a few months ago. I much prefere connecting my MM6 to my computer, opening Cubase and hitting record. Playing about for a while, and then replaying what I played and selecting the best bits, then importing those into Sibelius and starting from there.

It might not be the correct way of doing things, but it seems simple for me :)

Well, to be a little snarky, the "defaults" that Sibelius provides and that I see a lot of posted here gives: a) horrible spacing, b) unforgiveable collisions, and c) extremely poor page layout... just to name a few things.

Then again, that could just be the users. I suppose if one were to spend time learning how to use the program correctly, one would get better results.

Probably just the users. My composition tutor at uni swore by Sibelius and hated Finale for exactly ther same reasons! I thought that was somewhat irrational as I know you can make beautiful scores using Finale, and I know your point of view is also not right as my tutor's work was pristine and as I've said, he uses Sibelius.

To borrow an F1 saying: The most important part of the car is the nut holding the steering wheel.

I got Sibelius 5 recently, it doesn't really matter to me what the midi sounds like, but it works great for scoring manuscripts quickly, easily and they look really neat and professional.

I haven't actually used Finale though, and would be really interested in trying it out.

I was just checking out the Demo's of Finale's Allegro (one step below "Finale"-the top of the line software--about $199) and "Sibelius First" (One step below Sibelius 5--about $129.00). I thought that Sibelius First has a great interface, but was lacking in 1 or 2 things. I did not like how Sibelius First notated drums. You do not have instant notating access to all the drum sounds on the staff. You can put drum note down on the staff, but to get a cymbal sound (which are above the staff) you have to use your computer keyboard to scroll through the different drum note heads until you get the right sound. You will hear nothing if you put a note above the staff without changing it to drum notation after you plant a note. It's weird and inconvenient. Allegro you just move your cursor up and down the staff until you hear the correct percussion sound that you want--Allegro automatically changes notation. Finale Allegro gives you way more customizations, too. Sibelius 5 had better undo's. You can see a list of actions and undo them all. Allegro you only have 1 undo. Another nice thing about Allegro was that it plays back chord symbols. Sibelius First does not.

I don't know about Finale, but I thought the prime feature of Sibelius 5 was that it can host VST instruments. Before, you'd have to save to MIDI and load it on a sequencer such as Cubase. I find Sibelius 5 rather buggy though.

@cygnusdei: Finale, as of 2009, now fully supports all VST plugin instruments. It was able to work with most major packages before too, but it wasn't particularly stable in doing so — 2009 has been rock solid for me so far though, and I really put it to the test with intense plugin usage.

Sibelius 5 has lots of great features (that idea bar thing is pretty neat) but I've always found the experience of using Finale much more straight-forward and robust than Sibelius, even though the two packages are basically the same thing with different aesthetics and slightly different functionality. You basically can't go wrong with either so it's more a matter of use preference than actual functionality.

Even though I primarily use Finale, I always try out the latest Sibelius version too in case I'm swayed to switch over — I like to be open-minded about things because they're both such awesome pieces of software.