Is it worth getting Finale Allegro or Saving Up for Finale Full/Sibelius?

I love composing and I'm going to get some kind of notation package soon. I have worked with Sibelius and downloaded Finale Allegro and frankly Allegro seems just as good a Sibelius minus a few features although I haven't worked with Sibelius nearly as much as I have with Allegro. So first off am I right about this?

Judging from these forums it seems Finale is the way to go so it seems I'm going to get Finale Allegro but should I save up for the full version of Finale or just get Allegro because it seems to have all I need?

Thanks,

A question: If "it seems to have all you need", then why bother spending extra money on the full version?

For me, however, I've tried going back to my old version and it absolutely drives me crazy because I've grown so accustomed to tweaking all the little things that Finale lets you fix. I have a feeling that if you save up for the full version, you'll end up using a lot of the features that you didn't think you needed.

I would spend money on the Academic version .. about $330 I believe .. of Finale, which is the full version. It's definitely worth it. Go Finale, not Sibelius. Although Sibelius does have a few other interesting Academic software. Do research on both products, but again I just received Finale.. GPO is great, I'm getting EastWest's Bosendorfer, and hopefully soon I'll have EWQLSO, all three of the previous are sound libraries used any time you playback your piece or enter a note. You should have at least 1 GB of RAM or more if you are planning on buying software like this otherwise it will crash a lot and you'll have to end the task and start it up again and again.

Thanks very much for the advise. I really appreciate it. It's great to be a part of this great forum.

Sorry to butt into this thread, but I have some similar questions about Finale:

So the Academic Version of Finale is EXACTLY the same as the full version?

Also I have another question about the GPO and East-West Orchestras, etc. Which is easiest to use with Finale? Which is of the best quality? Is it all simply a matter of a plug in or do you have a lot of tweaking to do in order to make it sound professional?

Thanks for any help you may be able to give me.

Sorry to butt into this thread, but I have some similar questions about Finale:

So the Academic Version of Finale is EXACTLY the same as the full version?

Also I have another question about the GPO and East-West Orchestras, etc. Which is easiest to use with Finale? Which is of the best quality? Is it all simply a matter of a plug in or do you have a lot of tweaking to do in order to make it sound professional?

Thanks for any help you may be able to give me.

its not actually "academic version" of Finale... it's "academic pricing" of Finale, if that helps to clear up the confusion. You only need to be enrolled in a school, any school, and have the secretariat of your school fill out a form, to get the academic pricing. MakeMusic (makers of Finale) require the tax number, if I recall correctly, of your school to allow you access to the academic pricing.

You get exactly the same version as anyone else. And future upgrades are the exact same price as all other owners'.

One other minor thing: I was once told that the Academic/Student licences for software such as Sibelius and Finale proscribe their use for commercial purposes. So technically, you can't make money off any music you produce with them under one of those licences - you may only "learn". May or may not be a problem.

I guess I'll address your question about the sample libraries then.

GPO is by far easier to use with Finale as the two companies are currently in a partnership and you actually get a copy of GPO when you buy Finale 2007. It is specially programmed to be easy to use and responsive within Finale's interface.

EWQL libraries are MUCH more powerful, produce higher-quality recordings, are more versatile, MUCH more computer-intensive and also a lot harder to use with Finale since Finale isn't really a very intuitive MIDI sequencer.

I use both GPO and EWQL libraries and I write most of my work in Finale and then transfer to Sonar 4 if I need to make more specific edits to the MIDI to get it sounding more realistic.

Ultimately, if you're looking for an easy and practical way to render your compositions effectively from Finale, GPO is your library. EWQL's stuff is professional and requires more tweaking and raw MIDI programming to function at its peak. Besides, you need a solid 2GB of RAM and 2 harddrives to run an EWQL setup well enough to do it justice.

If you've never used a sound library before then I STRONGLY recommend that you forget about EWQL and go with just buying Finale 2007.

Here's a reliable company that sells Finale 2007 at the academic price of $217. The Academic SuperStore usually has similar pricing.

Finale 2007 | Music Software | Finale Software - Lentine's Music