Running the demo,

Lots of cosmetic changes, a redesigned interface and audio engine is now 64 bit. Everything is almost the same as far as I know.

I found it really nice overall and maybe a bit snappier.

But I was hopping for more... Like midi CC lane editor, loop capability or a new way to edit keyswitches. 

Yeah, what about that laughable Avid Orchestra?! I think the previous Sibelius Sounds are at least comparable, and the GPO4 for which I paid ~€85 and use with Sibelius 6 is certainly superior. I hate the even more 'WIndows' look and menus of the current instalment with much "busier"/distracting GUI than before, but I agree with FredB regarding the CC lane, and was expecting many more intuitive sequencer features in this instalment (especially with the AVID aquisition), but the sounds are the biggest laugh... I think they're going to get anihilated by those Finale 12 will probably feature. AVID should have attempted a better integration of the available professional orchestral libraries with Sibelius, rather than just give the mixer a vertical rotation. But what can one expect from people who musically backed the introductory video with a Band-in-a-Box track for a professional and sophisticated notation package, instead of featuring a symphonic movement; who do they think they're addressing? But I suppose with sounds like that, Band-in-a-Box was the better choice...

Will I upgrade? Not right now, I've always been a Sibelius man, but now I think I have to wait and see what Finale comes up with and their cross-over prices.

They all have weak and strong points. IMHO we still have to wait a couple of years to be really satisfied about one piece of software...Notion/ looks like it has problems with the devolpment team ..Sibelius/ lack of functionality and midi controls ..Finale /problems with CC 11, just mentioning only some majors points..and the list can continue..

  As long  as a company as VSL ( for example) is not involved in producing notation and sound software the other ones have to wait. In fact is a matter of sound experience and musicianship, which most of the development teams unfortuantelly lack the complicity of both aspects. Other are more into notation, other ones more into midi ....the midlle way is always hard to find !

Regarding the Avid orchestra ..who cares;)

Best

B

There was another post that I started in the past suggesting that VSL hire some superlative people and develop its own notation software, fully communicable with VI+VE PRO and of course Vienna Suite and MIR; or they could come to an exclusive deal with an already established platform, etc. I think in the future some platform is liable to do it, it makes sense since - even in these execrable times, surprisingly most composers and film-composers and orchestrators still use notation to produce music, so someone who would cut through the programming, the networking, the setting(s) up, etc., would be very attractive to people who are musicians first, let alone the obvious time-saving.

Someone might say that composers will always use more than one sound library. That's why VSL should do this when they already have VE PRO. Even if the final product will be live-orchestral, or something mastered in Pro-Tools, at least the composition, orchestration, and most of the mixing can be achieved more efficiently in-house.

Totally agree !!

Errikos,

 I haven't seen your post but from what you have written it makes definetly more sense !!

  Hopefully we're going to see this someday: VSL notation software !!

@bogdan said:

Totally agree !!

Errikos,

 I haven't seen your post but from what you have written it makes definetly more sense !!

  Hopefully we're going to see this someday: VSL notation software !!

@Errikos said:

I hate the even more 'WIndows' look and menus of the current instalment with much "busier"/distracting GUI than before

The new "Ribbon" gui (MS developed originally for MS Office) is a large improvement. My mother hated the new office and I had to try to explain to her how things were easier to find because it shows you only what you need based on what your doing and things are labeled in a way that makes things easier to find in a natural way. She only refused it because it wasn't the way she was used to. Now that she understands the Ribbon, she likes it. It is a far more intelligent approach than before. This new Ribbon for Sibelius is no different to me than office was. It is an improvement and one that most users wanted.

I get that you and many others might not like it now as it's new and different. But it certainly isn't busier or more distracting. Having to use more dialogue boxes (and other old-style GUI weaknesses) was what was distracting in the past. Trust me, I understand not wanting to adapt as much as anyone... I'm simply saying that if you gave it time and learned it thouroughly that you might actually find it to save time. Finale will never "anihilate" Sibelius simply because Sibelius has always had the 'composers in mind' approach; the Ribbon reflects this.

Just some friendly thoughts from the other side of the coin.

-Sean

I was finally able to test Sibelius 7 and I have to agree with the above poster about the ribbon, I think it is an improvement. Specially in the house, my family members have experience with MS Office and this helped them work in Sibelius, including the youngsters. I think that was a smart move by Avid, making Sibelius close to MS Office, they linked its learning curve to the learning curve of an ubiquitous software. I'm also having a good time with the new publishing options, I believe a lot of work I had to do in InDesign I will be able to do in Sibelius itself.

But, I'm really frustrated with the lack of improvement in the Playback Configurations. It's still the same, I think it has been this way since Sibelius 5 (or 4?). I can't make myself sit down and go through all the hassle of building soundsets, setting up the percussion, etc. At least here at VSL, we have soundsets provided, but for other libraries it is a mess. I think I'm going back to just sending MIDI data with text.

Oh, and finally true MusicXML support!

@Tralen said:

But, I'm really frustrated with the lack of improvement in the Playback Configurations. It's still the same, I think it has been this way since Sibelius 5 (or 4?). I can't make myself sit down and go through all the hassle of building soundsets, setting up the percussion, etc. At least here at VSL, we have soundsets provided, but for other libraries it is a mess.

Agreed! - I really want improvement there. I have no idea how but I want an easier way. I don't use VSL's presets at all. I build my own instruments out of the patches from the ground up, my organization, custom patches with time switching and patch combinations, etc.  For someone like me, a sibelius setup with VSL is horrendous and I want a better way.

It also runs much slower on my machine. Granted, I have an AMD machine and although I like AMD for certain reasons, I am quickly learning that most software is built with Intel in mind. When I switch I'll enjoy Sibelius but right now it runs so slow I can't even really use it. If somehow Sibelius and VSL software could communicate and route patches automatically to Sibelius that would be amazing... but I know I'm wishing for a bit much there.

-Sean

I just saw the VSL notation bit...

Although I would LOVE it for the sake that everything would work seemlessly with VSL, I would also think that they could even design things to be more time saving and more 'real playback with less work' than with external software. Other companies are obviously general and not VSL tailored.

I'm pretty sure that will never happen, but man I'd be all over it. If it worked right I'd drop cubase and sibelius instantly, for most composing anyway. I think the only real goal I've had since 'the beginning' was to have notation with playback that's a realistic representation of an orchestra, no fine tuning required. The problem is, VSL's the only good sounding library out there but fine-tuning is certainly needed. I don't blame VSL for why, it's obvious for how software currently works.

In the 'real world' you write it on paper and hand it to a cello player, no 'fine tuning' required for a good sound. Fine tuning for a preference or style? Yes. For decent quality playback? No. VSL is well more than decent, but without finetuning it's digital sounding, not human. I want notation and human results. The problem to me seems to be that the notation is one company and sounds are another. Thus why I think a VSL notation program could solve this, I just don't see it ever happening. Both sides are getting better alone and at communicated with each other, it seems anyway, but none of that matters to me. Easy notation with quality human results I think is what most people want. Until that happens, I'll just have to deal with all the work and less composing time. :(

-Sean

@iscorefilm said:

The problem to me seems to be that the notation is one company and sounds are another. Thus why I think a VSL notation program could solve this, I just don't see it ever happening. Both sides are getting better alone and at communicated with each other, it seems anyway, but none of that matters to me. Easy notation with quality human results I think is what most people want. Until that happens, I'll just have to deal with all the work and less composing time. 😞

I believe the real problem is over-generalization. I remember some other poster spoke about this topic (Errikos?), and I have to agree. The DAWs out there all try to cater for music production as a whole, regardless of genre, and it seems this became true for all notiation software as well. What we need is a orchestral oriented composition software, designed for work with the available libraries. I believed Notion attempted precisely that, even more when they released the SLE versions for several libraries (VSL SE, EWQL, GPO, Miroslav), but for some reason, there's a ominous feeling of abandonment there, the developers decided to produce iPad software instead (!!!).

I think VSL could be the good samaritan here and produce a midi-imput/notation software precisely for working with VSL, and maybe add a PRO version for us to work with other libraries as well (like VE and VE PRO). Honestly, it could be really simple, we could always do the fine-tuning in other software, but just something to allow us to compose in an full VSL environment without having to waste days (maybe a week) just getting everything to work.

@Tralen said:

The DAWs out there all try to cater for music production as a whole, regardless of genre, and it seems this became true for all notation software as well. What we need is a orchestral oriented composition software, designed for work with the available libraries.

I agree. I think Sibelius is a great piece of software, and more composer friendly than Finale and in general. It's just not friendly with other sample companies and the higher level of sound and fine-tuning involved.

Notion attempted. I got a free SLE when it came out but I hardly use it because I feel it's still not where I want it to be and I don't want to be stuck with presets. I want to build a flexible instrument and have it play for me, using notation. I technically can, but the amount of work in setting it all up is something I avoid... very tedious.

-Sean

@iscorefilm said:

I want to build a flexible instrument and have it play for me, using notation.

I think you perfectly defined all my frustrations with that single statement.

@Tralen said:

I think you perfectly defined all my frustrations with that single statement.

That's part of why I wonder if the only way is through a VSL notation software...

Unless Sibelius improves I imagine the only way is if VSL somehow made something to allow a conversion of our presets to sibelius presets. I realize I can do this myself but the problem is that I create a new template from time to time.... and it would take so long to build the sibelius info each time I set things up again. I always find new ways to build a better setup and because Sibelius is horribly unfriendly in setting up 3rd party libraries... there's just no hope there.

If I had to define what I want most in digital music in two things, they would be:

Divisi, as much as possible. I'd want 12 F Horns and a 34 Violin I section that were both 100% divisible if I could... but I'm dreaming...lol

A way to compose with Notation (I prefer Sibelius), with as good of playback results as Cubase can get. BUT with far faster and easier ways to fine-tune for that natural sound. (Things like humanize)

Ultimately I want to spend most time composing, with only a little time 'programming' the performance. I can get this with other libraries, but only in sacrificing the great quality of VSL... which I just can't do 😊

-Sean

About presets, I'm still trying Notion prules (I'm on the demo), and have found that I can set a rule system for ALL instruments, which means, in comparison with Sibelius soundsets, that as long as I make my matrices in VI consistently, they all work instantly. If I remember correctly, when creating a new soundset in Sibelius, you have to create rules for each instrument individually, is that correct?

I wonder if there's a way of accomplishing the same thing, setting a general soundset for all my instruments and adding exceptions if needed. I noticed that on VSL soundsets, the instruments are declared as part of a switch-category, which contains the instructions for the articulations, thus, If one uses an undeclared instrument, it would be unaffected by the articulations. So I would need to know all instruments I would need beforehand. Is it possible to make Sibelius apply the instructions to ALL instruments, regardless?

@Tralen said:

I wonder if there's a way of accomplishing the same thing, setting a general soundset for all my instruments and adding exceptions if needed. I noticed that on VSL soundsets, the instruments are declared as part of a switch-category, which contains the instructions for the articulations, thus, If one uses an undeclared instrument, it would be unaffected by the articulations. So I would need to know all instruments I would need beforehand. Is it possible to make Sibelius apply the instructions to ALL instruments, regardless?

I have no idea, but you've got my attention. Hopefully someone else could answer. I'll certainly look into it when I have time.

My custom presets are all as consistant as possible so I'm definately interested!

-Sean

What would be a fantastic feature of such a software would be a function that creates matrices while the piece increases, so you start with only one basic articulation per instrument (probably a sustain with a mediium or hard attack, so that you can play around on the keyboard), and the first time you add for instance a staccato symbol in the music, a new cell in the VI will be created, along with the corresponding control change settings to trigger it. When you later decide to remove this articulation, you can let check the software for unused patches, delete them and shift the other ones.

THAT would be a real Time saver!!!

That was my concept. Patches and articulations would be loaded and triggered according to musical typography; if VI Player "saw" a violin line with a slur, that included some repetitions, beginning on mezzo-piano and going all the way up to fortissimo at [8]= 120 for example, it would load the appropriate patch(es) for the articulation(s) and the expression(s), choosing the right repetitions for the tempo and automatically X-fade the dynamics. Of course not all users would agree with the default interpretation and - like with Sibelius/Finale - would adjust the values to their liking, however that kind of integration would save me tremendous time, even in the compositional stages (sketching, etc.).

P.S.: Where the text reads 'BLOCKED EXPRESSION' I have written 'e-x-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n-(s)' without the dashes, it won't allow me to write the word by itself without turning it in caps and adding 'BLOCKED'. I have no idea what browser bug that is...