Notation - Finale or Sibelius ?

Hi folks,

this is a question for those who use Finale / Sibelius or have experience with both of these products.

The time has come where i really do need a good notation program - I am going to have to provide real scores, not what I can print from X1 staff view.

The obvious choices would be Finale or Sibelius, but it rather hard to decide which would be best choice for me.

Any advice or opinions on why one program is better than the other would be greatly appreciated.

My main concerns are (in no particular order);

1)  Ease of use / learning curve.

2)  Video support -eg: tools for composing to film/video.

3)  64bit support / compatibility.

4)  Anything that you think makes one really shine above the other.


Using a notation program is something I've been avoiding, but I simply cannot avoid it any longer.


Cheers - Cliff

I'm a Sibelius fan for ease of use.  There is currently no 64bit notation program on the market.

I use both. I lean towards Finale, mainly because I've been using it since its beginning. My wife prefers Sibelius, mainly because her composition teacher prefers it. Finale has made huge improvements in user-friendliness over the past few versions, so now I don't think it's any more difficult to learn/use than Sibelius. They can both import a video to score to.

I don't remember if Finale has a demo, but Sibelius does. For sure, try the demo.  Really, what it boils down to is that they both suck in their own special ways. For your own uses, you have to find out which areas suck the least in each of them.