It's coming birthday present time for my partner and she's a heavy Sibelius 6 user. Never use it myself - I can just about score a monophonic tune in G, which is about my entire need, whereas she has just written an entire opera using Sib 6 (it gets its first performance tomorrow). So my question is: does Sib 7 offer enough to be a worthwhile upgrade from Sib 6? Would she appreciate it as a present, do you think? There isn't a review of 7 on the SoS web site for some reason.

TIA,

CC

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Put the fun back into dysfunctional.
Mr Punch's Studio

I hardly use Sibelius, but...

Just skimming the "What's new"...

http://www.sibelius.com/products/sibelius/7/index.html

I knew it had a new interface/menu structure, which to be honest, I think looks a bit of a dog's breakfast, and hasn't been universally acclaimed.

The main changes described on that page seem to be cosmetic, apart from the sound library. Which made me wonder...since Sibelius 6 has VST support, perhaps an instrument or sample library plugin might be another alternative...?

I know it's boring, but it might be one of those things where it's best to ask the user before purchase.

(Does she play an instrument...?)

Quote BJG145:

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I know it's boring, but it might be one of those things where it's best to ask the user before purchase.

(Does she play an instrument...?)

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Hmmm - good point about changing the UI. Whether acclaimed or hated, learning a new UI can be painful. I had better ask. (She plays fiddle and concertina, BTW).

CC

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Put the fun back into dysfunctional.
Mr Punch's Studio

(I saw Fairport Convention recently and fiddle player Ric Sanders was making extensive use of loops and delays. He did a terrific version of The Hiring Fair with it. I'm not sure what he uses, but something like a Boss LoopStation or an Akai Headrush might be fun.)

http://www.talkawhile.co.uk/yabbse/index.php?topic=13788.0

Sounds fun.

CC

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Put the fun back into dysfunctional.
Mr Punch's Studio

The new UI is...annoying...to start off with. However, once you get used to it, it does make a bit more sense than the old menu system. Think Microsoft Office Ribbon menu system and you're not far wrong. You will be scratching your head wondering where things are for a while though.

I've been using it for 3-4 months now, and it's second nature now, although there are still moments when the menu surfing gets annoying. I have to say though, less annoying menu moments than my old sib5 which I upgraded from.

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www.exaviormusic.com
www.manninmusic.com Music Teacher, Isle of Man

It's an improvement on Sibelius 6 but I'm not entirely sure it's worth the upgrade. It does depend on what you are really after. My main concern is that I teach music at a school in London and students who work on Sibelius 7 at school have some formatting issues when they try to continue on it at home if they have an earlier version of Sibelius.

For me, the main thing I need Sibelius for is just the notation (which is what it is designed for) and the earlier versions are fine for just this.

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http://best-headphones.org.uk

Well one of the things my partner has had is a lot of issues with some Sib 6 behaviour that frankly feels weird, especially when extracting parts for orchestral players - it keeps doing odd things like changing the clef, but only on the part, not the full score. In the run up to a recent performance of one of her compositions this sort of thing wasted a lot of her time and a lot of paper ... Perhaps I'm hoping Sib 7 is a bit more sane about such stuff.

CC

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Put the fun back into dysfunctional.
Mr Punch's Studio

I have sibelius 6.2 and have been using sibelius in general for about 10years. I have always upgraded as I felt there is always new features. However with sib 7, it hasn't grabbed me as it looks like all they have done is change the UI? Any other differences?

Quote ConcertinaChap:

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It's coming birthday present time for my partner and she's a heavy Sibelius 6 user. Never use it myself - I can just about score a monophonic tune in G, which is about my entire need, whereas she has just written an entire opera using Sib 6 (it gets its first performance tomorrow). So my question is: does Sib 7 offer enough to be a worthwhile upgrade from Sib 6? Would she appreciate it as a present, do you think? There isn't a review of 7 on the SoS web site for some reason.

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There's not much new in the notation department - mainly some improvements to text handling. It's now 64 bit. A new sound library has been bolted on. Painfully slow to load unless you invest in a SSD, but some users may think its worth it. A "Ribbon and Backstage" interface has been imposed, but there are plenty of rough edges.

The initial release wasn't ready. It's OK now, but downloading all updates is essential.

When you install Sibelius 7 it does not remove the licence for Sibelius 6. You can continue to run both versions indefinitely. Sibelius 7 will export a score in Sibelius 6 format.

But don't ask us if she wants Sibelius 7 - ask HER! Sibelius is obviously one of her major tools. Which version to use must be HER decision.

Avid have just effectively fired the London-based development team. It seems that Sibelius will now follow the ProTools model - administration in California, engineering outsourced to Kiev.

Quote ConcertinaChap:

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Well one of the things my partner has had is a lot of issues with some Sib 6 behaviour that frankly feels weird, especially when extracting parts for orchestral players - it keeps doing odd things like changing the clef, but only on the part, not the full score. In the run up to a recent performance of one of her compositions this sort of thing wasted a lot of her time and a lot of paper ... Perhaps I'm hoping Sib 7 is a bit more sane about such stuff.

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There are no changes in this department between Sibelius 6 and 7. But I don't think there are any bugs here - part extraction pretty much does what you tell it to. If she isn't getting what she expects, get her to enquire on the forum at www.sibelius.com - where the speed and quality of service is amazing!

I've been caught out a couple of times in Sibelius when I've selected instruments that are not what I thought they would be. For example, the standard Euphonium is in bass clef, but there is another one that is in bass clef on the score and treble clef (in Bb) in the parts. Likewise, there are tenor and bari saxes that stay in treble clef and others that go into bass clef when you switch off 'transposing score' - all very useful as long as you know what you're selecting!

Possibly this might be the problem Mrs CC has run into?

It's great, but I think it's important to get the hell away from Sibelius when composing too. There's a temptation to try to make a composition sound good as a synthetic orchestra composition, and not fully consider what real instruments can offer the compositional process and how they completely change the effect. (Even getting the balance right between instruments is different in real life because of how they're arranged on the platform.)

I use it mainly to get the thing scored, occasionally I'll try a few ideas to give me a better idea of what combinations might sound like. So, I doubt the new version would offer anything more than I need, but if your partner relies on the software for every stage of the composition, she might feel very differently.

Quote J.A.S:

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Even getting the balance right between instruments is different in real life because of how they're arranged on the platform.

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And, even more than that, because the players are listening to each other and naturally balancing.

With the situation at Avid, I'm tempted to upgrade to 7 but carry on using 6 for the foreseeable future until we have some idea of how it's going to pan out. No problem using one version with others on the machine - I still have 3, 4 and 5 on mine.

It's disappointing that Avid are closing the London operation - I expect the coding will be better but the product as an entity will suffer badly. It's about time somebody came up with a workable economic model of how saving money in short-termist moves will cost later. We all know it except the bean counters, who seem to be perpetually surprised by the consequences of their actions.