Finale vs. Sibelius: Another Perspective

A very interesting little article that popped up in the Film Music Magazine the other day...I figured it's worth sharing:

There is a curious aspect of the ongoing Finale/Sibelius imbroglio in that the debate, at least partly, is too finely focused on sexy features or glaring shortcomings, and not on broader aspects of software depth and maturity, which frankly can

I don't feel like I'm adding much here, but I'll say it anyways.

The quote of the magazine you have says that, "the debate is both consumed by (and sometimes carried by) people who lack sufficient experience in the true depths of their own software to accurately assess the weight of the opinions they encounter."

While I'm ignorant of the true depth of Finale, it's fundamental design is not a winner for me. Keep in mind I use 2008. For 2008's standards, the technology wasn't that great. The interface is quite slow, requires too many clicks and too many menu items to be opened. It feels very unpolished when it randomly doesn't show my recently opened files or when it only shows one page at a time in page view. Even worse is the help system. The search feature doesn't work on the safari browser and is incredibly slow with firefox. Thus, I have to resort to sifting through long lists of headers.

Overall, it feels like it was written in 2000 rather than 2007.

But seriously.... who cares? Why debate about it? If you like Sibelius.. use Sibelius.. if you like Finale... use Finale....

I guess the point would be to enlighten those who are using the lesser one to use the better one.

Use Sibelius.

The end.

:)

But seriously.... who cares? Why debate about it? If you like Sibelius.. use Sibelius.. if you like Finale... use Finale....

I feel the same way. I'm still learning how to use Finale with all its functionality. Why confuse myself further by taking on another program? The learning curve for both is about the same, I think.

I feel the same way. I'm still learning how to use Finale with all its functionality. Why confuse myself further by taking on another program? The learning curve for both is about the same, I think.

Not even close. Sorry to break your bubble but Sibelius' curve is far less. That's why its considered the more "intuitive" program. It is much easier to learn the basic (and even intermediate) features of Sibelius in a matter of a few days. This does not exist on Finale which can take many weeks to learn just the basics.

But once you've learned them........ then you know how to work the program.................. so who cares if someone else thinks another is better....? Why does anyone care what program someone else uses? It's illogical. It doesn't affect you, stick to what you like, don't go preaching to other people unless they ask for advice.

I think Sibelius is more intuitive if you're using traditional notation. Anything outside standard notation is possible, too, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get there. Finale manages much better with less-common notation, because it seems to have a button cluttered somewhere in the interface specifically for what you want to do. Anyway, this comes down to my opinion being that they both have their strengths and weaknesses without one or the other being "better." And a lot of the bias that comes into arguments seems to be a "what you're used to" kind of thing.

I'll definitely agree that Finale has many aspects that seem a bit involved and counterintuitive, especially to a new user. I also agree with Doovongeman that many features of the program seem like they have been carried over from many years ago (mostly because they are carried over from many years ago) and make parts of the program seem slightly out of line with the rest (concerning the interface especially). There are some rather obscure dialog boxes that look like from 1995 or something and probably haven't been touched by the programmers for many years.

Those are all legitimate concerns about Finale. (While keeping in mind that even those ancient looking dialog boxes even exist in the first place and often provide some nifty functionalities if you can look past their presentation - which I still prefer to not having those functionalities, respectively requiring very complicated workarounds to get them.)

I strictly disagree with the notion however that it takes "many weeks to learn just the basics". That's just nonsense. Sure, if you just open up the program and try on your own to do everything, some things may take you a while to figure out. But if you either:

- Read the manual.

- Go through the video tutorials/exercises.

- Ask someone proficient with the program to introduce you.

Then you can easily learn how to use Finale for "normal" needs within a couple of hours. I've given some introductory lessons on using Finale to other people and generally, one hour or a bit more was enough to cover the bare essentials, as long as I wasn't dealing with especially slow people.

Sure, it may take you somewhat longer to become comfortable and fast using Finale and of course even much longer to grasp all the shortcuts and details (I'm still far from being there myself), but that's the case with almost every sophisticated program. I'm sure beginner Sibelius users also aren't as fast writing with it as people who've worked with it for years.

So really, I agree with those who said: It doesn't matter -that- much. Just work with your program, learn about it, use it frequently, and you will get proficient and efficient with it. Both programs are entirely capable and powerful notation tools and both are far from impossible to learn without being a computer specialist…