Audio and PDF Transcription software

I've spent all night looking at Photoscore Ultimate 6 and Audioscore Ultimate 6 and come to the conclusion that even the demo versions are frustratingly awful and aren't even worth the free download, let alone the atrocity of $250. I beg of anyone, is there anything better than this trash? What's the best transcription software out there? If it works, I could hardly care about the price. My fantasy was that there could be a software that could transcribe music from PDF or Audio and easily translate to Sibelius. I suppose I hoped too much for something like that? Please help, thank you.

I've spent all night looking at Photoscore Ultimate 6 and Audioscore Ultimate 6 and come to the conclusion that even the demo versions are frustratingly awful and aren't even worth the free download, let alone the atrocity of $250. I beg of anyone, is there anything better than this trash? What's the best transcription software out there? If it works, I could hardly care about the price. My fantasy was that there could be a software that could transcribe music from PDF or Audio and easily translate to Sibelius. I suppose I hoped too much for something like that? Please help, thank you.

From Audio?? Not likely, friend.

From PDF is tricky too - any of the score-scanning softwares are notoriously finnicky, and take some serious skill/patience to get them to work right.

But, for having a program to transcribe audio is, I think relatively impossible. Unless it's a VERY simple, single line melody, played in-tune and in-time, you're out of luck. The best things for transcribing are ears...you have two of them, learn to use them. ;)

No, I can transcribe by ear; that I actually enjoy, but it's certainly time consuming. The PDF transcriber is my main hope, because then I can transcribe works off of IMSLP, and that would save tons of time. Than I can transpose some of Ornstein's works so I could possibly play them. But...is there really no hope in that? :/

The only thing that might somewhat work for Audio to Midi I am aware of is Melodyne. I wouldn't expect fantastic results though, if you aren't working with something extremely simple.

And I wouldn't expect it to be less time-consuming than transcribing by hand really. Since you'll have to correct lots of errors those programs automatically produce.

Well the audio transcription is unnecessary, but PDF transcription is what I really am wishing for. Is there anything that might work?

For PDF transcription, the only software I've had any sort of satisfying results is with Visiv SharpEye. However, the only way I could transcribe sheets were page by page, and I needed to convert each page of the PDF to individual TIFF images. The results are quick, and when it works it works wonderfully. Editing the results is very easy, and then you can export to MusicXML.

However, I do not recommend this process as it may seem easier, there are so many things that do go wrong, especially when it doesn't interpret the number of voices in a staff correctly, and you need to do so much cleaning up to the piece after you've finally imported it into your music notation software. When transcribing music from PDF, I have always been most satisfied with inputting it note by note myself. I'm sorry, but computer software hasn't really caught up with this concept, I don't think. If you want something done, you got to do it yourself.

Alright, well, I see that m hopes have surpassed technology. Unfortunate, but I'm sure I'll live. Thank you all. :)