@Jgcomposer said:

 Well I tried Sibelius 7, and well, theres some things I did like, but the sound was just the same as Sibelius 6 and I was not too thrilled.....

If you "tried" the Sibelius 7 demo, then you did have the same Sibelius 6 sounds, because the demo version does not give you the 34Gb sound library.  You will find in the new library that articulations are now complete sounds and not just dynamic/time variations of a single sample set.

The biggest issue with Sibelius 7 is that it's GUI is so radically different, and that takes some getting used to, but nothing has beern removed from the program,  you just may not be able to locate things initially until you know where they are on the ribbon. 

 I am not using the demo I am using the full version installed, and no the sound quality is not better. If it was I wouldn't be using vienna symphononic library.   Maybe thats the problem vienna sounds are soo far superior that I expect the sounds of sibelius to be just that. And yes I know GUI is different layout but thats not the problem. That 34Gig library sounds horrible. And the only thing I liked was the implementation of the Musicxml export feature. The constant crashing of Sibelius 7 on an I7 12 Gig ddr3 seems to be the main issue for me, and it seems a little slow. If 12 gigs of ram is not enough for this program I don't know what is.  I load 15 instruments through VSL in Cubase and have no issues of laggy choppiness, and the new patch for Sibelius 7 did nothing to solve the issue.

Personally I find a lot of the sounds from the new library to be quite good and miles better than GPO which just lengthened or shortened the samples it had rather than offering say, staccato, whole tone or half tone trills, coll legno, snap pizz, things like that.

But c'mon, is it fair to compare a built in library with VSL's full set which exceeds 500 gb?  No!  I love VSL but don't use it too much with notation programs because I find the qualities that make it so good are lacking when interfaced with Sibelius or even Notion.  I'd rather go with the built in set or EWQLSO Gold because it's a little lighter on the CPU.  VSL shines when you use it with DAWs like DP or Logic or even PT.  It's expressive beyond measure but this kind of programming needs the finesse of a DAW and not a notation program IMO.

So, really it's not fair to compare the Sibelius library with VSL.  If you want to compare it to NOtion's built in library, then okay.  They are comparable and I find some of Notion's performance playback of articulations to be more evolved than Sibelius 7 which still feels like it's working out the bugs...but Sibelius is a far better notation program than Notion will ever be, and that's coming from a Notion user since ver1.

 Sibelius 7 is not without it's issues (possible understatement of the day), I have 24Gb of RAM and it crashes still, so I don't believe it's a memory issue. Actually, I have found Sibelius 7 is generally OK, if you work on a song that was created in Sibelius 7, I find it crashes if you continue with a file that was created in a previous version (V6.2 in my case).

Sibelius 7 sounds are a lot better than Sibelius 6 Essential sounds (and will be better once they get the dynamic levels a bit more balanced), but neither is anywhere near VSL.

I have never found a workable way to get my VSL library to work in Sibelius. I have the complete VSL super package, and it is just too unmanageable to work in Sibelius.  I guess the SE version works OK in Sibelius?

I would really like to know how to get my VSL library to work in Sibelius (remember, I don't have SE), I did set up my own template once, but it took an eternity to just start up.

 You guys are maybe right, I might being too hard on Sibelius 7. I just expect it to be all great but not everything new comes out problem free. But yes  with VSL Library nothing compares. I just love the fluidity of sounds coming from VSL. I am just surprised no one has mastered what VSL can do for such a long time. But 599 dollars for Sibelius and only $475 for special edition from VSL, you expect sibelius to give a bit more.

Well you still cannot compare by prices.  Sibelius first and foremost is a notation library.  VSL is a straight out sample library meant to be used in a DAW or notation program.  Most of its R&D goes to this and not the sound set.  Jon Loving has been doing some great work on sound sets for 3rd party libraries.  However, I fear that regardless of your RAM and processor, the sheer # of samples and articulations that the average orchestral composer needs is demanding on any computer system.  That said, when I load up a Classical Orchestra with the Sibelius sounds, I look at my activity monitor on my Mac and it shows about 5 gbs taken up for the sounds.  I have 15 gb so it's not even close to using up my RAm and I do also find it sluggish.  But I find the same with Notion or Finale as well when using their libraries.