Benefits of Logic versus Sibelius 5

[cgernaey]

Hey all,

I am not sure where to ask this but I am really fed up with the idea of being stuck on MAC OS X and paying 3 times more then I should have to for hardware.  So many people complain about Windows but I have just as few issues on a PC running Windows as I do on a Mac running OS X.  Especially when it is setup to only do one thing, audio.  And more importantly, I can build a machine as powerful as a Mac Pro for a 3rd of the cost and upgrade at will.

With that said, I own Logic 8 pro and Sibelius 5 (but it sits collecting dust).  If all my work involves orchestrating samples, what would I lose by using Sibelius over Logic?  Or maybe easier for someone to tell me what I gain by using Logic.  Is Logic more stable?  I seem to remember back in the days about 3-4 years ago, Sibelius wouldn't always catch all my controller commands live.  Almost as if it was not responsive enough to get them all in time.  Logic's never failed me here once.  An example would be sometimes Sibelius would miss a pedal down command on my live piano recording and it would be HELL to try to write in a natural pedal command.  I think that was about it though.  Everything else was smooth.  Maybe that's fixed by now.

I think Sibelius doesn't have a "freeze" type system does it?  I use that function in Logic all the time.

I perform my initial parts in live.  Then I borrow notes from the corresponding notes to paste them into other instrument tracks.

Sibelius would instantly give me dual platform access but am I losing a tremendous amount of things to do that?  I pretty much only use VSL products and will be getting Vienna Suite for plugs so I won't even need Logics reverb, or plugs anymore soon.

What do you all think?  Any input would be so helpful.

Maestro2be

[PaulR]

I don't know if this is any good to you - but to me Sibelius is for creating scores that are to be read by musicians in a real performance. it's great for that. Logic to me is for playing in parts live.

[William]

 I agree on not paying Mac money, as you can get an equivalent system for about 1/4 the price with PCs.

However on Sibelius it is a mistake to use it for sequencing.  It is mainly for notation, and was just tweaked for sequencing (though they have done more and more tweaking and it can do things seriously now).  But a real sequencer/DAW is preferable, unless you mainly want to create a combination of notation with MIDI.  Sonar 8 is good for PC and just as powerful as Logic.   I recently have been using the "Producer" edition (which has a lot of great additional sounds as a library) and it is very stable and can do anything with MIDI or audio.

[cgernaey]

I really appreciate the responses and anyone else who would like to chime in with experiences to maybe support their decision.

I am going to be setting up within the next few days a side by side of the two while recording live.  I am going to perform a live piano recording using Pianoteq 3, first in Sibelius, then in Logic 8.  Going to disect it deeply to see if it missed any information.  After that I will go for a small orchestration of the two.

I did use Sibelius solely in the past but it had no VST/AU support so it was a bit of a head ache to work with Kontakt 2.  Now it does and I used to be very fast at doing articulations etc in it.  For some reason, my mind finds it easier to work in because I am a true musician.  My mind loves "Staring at the sheet music".  Something about it makes it feel real to me.  However that doesn't mean it will give me the results that Logic 8 will.  I am afraid about losing features like "freeze tracks" etc though because it saves tremendous CPU and HD utilization.  I will know more after some hard core testing.

I am just thinking that since I can host VI and VE3 pro from within Sibelius and also I will use all VSL plug-ins (Vienna Suite) I need to know beyond a doubt if it can handle the task.  I don't do any "live analog" recordings.  I only use samples.  There will be lots of factors but in the end, if I can get the same results from a project in Sibelius as I can in Logic, yet stay cross platform and save time, it will be sold.  I will also look into Sonar.  Believe it or not, many years ago, Sonar was the first recording software I ever tried.  Back then things were to complicated for me.  I just wanted to make music.  So I eventually ended up with Sibelius and loved its look and feel.  It felt like music to me (maybe an illusion).  I do love Logic and very comfy there, but I will not pay 10,000.00 dollars for a new computer when I can build a super Windows machine for 2,500.00 dollars. 

Anyone else who wants to chime in and give their opinion experiences I would love to hear them.  Especially the people who USE Sibelius solely everyday.

Thanks!

Maestro2be

[cgernaey]

Well poop....

Tonight I had a good chunk of time so I decided to give Sibelius a try.  I have had it installed for score purposes for a long time and always keep it up to date, even though I haven't used it in god knows how long (currently 5.2.5).

Long story short.  I loaded Pianoteq 3 which I have already setup in the past (I always do this incase Logic went down, I would have some type of backup temporarily).  The results?

Depressing.  I recorded one song live from start to finish.  It sounded perfect through my studio.  No breaks or mishaps etc.  I began playing is back and thought, "holy hell what the hell tempo is that"?  It was playing it back faster then I played it in flexi-time.  Then came the missed notes in the recording, missed pedal commands and blotched up passages.

I was instantly reminded why so many years ago, I left Sibelius for Logic.  Like an ex-girlfriend, there is a reason she's my ex...

I love you Sibelius, but you're no good for me.  I deserve better then this and will not settle for 2nd place anymore.  Keep doing what you do well, but please stop calling me inside my head to use you because you simply never hold up to your end of the bargain.  Such pretty scores you have, and lovely curves...  However I can no longer hash the past.  In the past you shall remain for live recording.  Perhaps I will pull you out from time to time to indulge myself with your beautiful colors and lavish slurs.  Until next time, dust shall be your fate.

Logic has it's claws in me and for good reason.  It's never let me down and continues to amaze me by never failing me on one recording ever.  Not once, have I ever had to redo a live playback session.  If only it were multi-platform.

Always wanting what we can't have.  Longing for more till no end.  Long live Logic.  I hate you Apple.

Maestro2be

[mosso]

From my personal experience, Sibelius is fantastic for creating sheet music of a standard suitable for publishing, but not for creating music to be heard. I'm sure there are those out there that disagree, but that's my experience. It's easier to create something that sounds decent in just about any sequencer and using Logic's score editor I can create scores that are good enough for session musicians, which is really all I need. If I want to read score rather than matrix editors, event lists and the like I just use the score edit page.

If I had to give scores to a publisher I'd be using Sibelius for the finishing though...

Martin

P.S. - I originally started using Logic on PC - you should have heard how loudly I was cursing Apple when they made it OSX-only...

[PaulR]

If you play a keyboard reasonably well, I don't understand why anyone would want to spend time entering notes into a piece of software like Sibelius. 

As you're a piano player, this piece illustrates to me the difference in something like Sibelius and Logic (could have been any daw). It took 2 minutes and 42 seconds to just play the damn thing into Logic and then 5 minutes on top of that getting rid of duff notes. The timing speeds up and down a little but I can't help that. If I had tried to do this on Sibelius, I would still be doing it months later. Like I say, Sibelius is great for pretty looking scores to played in a live context.

http://www.productionmusiconline.com/track_detail.php?track_id=644

[cgernaey]

Well Martin and Paul,

It's definitely apparent to me for the 2nd time (perhaps 3rd or 4th) in my years that Sibelius is just not cut out to handle it for a real musician who's intent is "realtime entry".

I certainly am a capable pianist and never manually enter my parts.  My only concern was that I am sick of being stuck on the MAC side, getting less then subpar machines for 10 times the money.  I wanted to view my already paid for options to see if any of them could cross platform me and save me a zillion dollars in hardware and actually be able to go on a nice vacation with the remaining 80% I saved.

If only things could run as powerful as Gigastudio could.  I used to run an entire orchestra with 16-bit and 24-bit samples on a 1.2GHZ laptop with the sequencer running local.  It was amazing how powerful Giga was if you had a stable hardware platform for it to run on.  Sigh...

In Sibelius the results were terrible.  The scores are beautiful but beyond that it's way sub par for music creation in all my experiences.  I always found the score editor in Sibelius easier to work with though and so if I was able to live play in parts and get results as good as Logic in terms of playback quality it would have been more beneficial to me.  That way I could steal certain notes and paste them into new tracks and have bass/upper winds parts done in a matter of a few minutes.  I don't find it as quick in Logic.

Although perhaps all of my old scores in Sibelius would probably pipe over to Logic pretty well I would think.  I just don't know the best combination to use when exporting the file to a midi file (or whatever works best) to ensure Logic gets an exact reading of controller messages, articulations etc.

I can see you're frustration of them making Logic OS X only.  It is mine now coming from the flip side of yours.  If only they didn't charge so much for their hardware.

Maestro2be

[cgernaey]

 Also, very nice job on the solo piano piece [:)].  Isn't it glorious to get such a good recording, and only have to mock up for a few minutes and be done and have a class A recording.  I am thrilled with the results I get now a days.  Pianoteq is a great instrument in my opinion.  Has the best velocity and true performance control of any piano out there right now.

I am drooling over VSL's new piano coming out.  It is a for sure buy for me as long as it holds up to the typical standards of VSL.

Maestro2be