Oh man, I've had nothing but issues, and I have no idea why. I have tried every iteration of Overture 5, every version, with plugins, without plugins. It just is not stable on my system. And it doesn't even crash with any sort of message or anything. It simply vanishes. One moment you're working, next moment you are staring at your desktop. When you open Overture again, it has no memory of the file you were working on, and I need to manually go get it, and I usually lose the last few mins work. This happens at random, and for no reason - maybe I clicked somewhere I shouldn't have, or selected an articulation, or did nothing, or someone in the next room coughed too loudly, and poof! Overture is gone. I've uninstalled, reinstalled, tried everything. And this is on a freshly rebuilt system (made of good components) with a brand new Windows 10 install on which everything else runs without problem. Sonar never crashes, Cubase never crashes, everything else is rock stable, and I have an RME interface with stable drivers. But Overture 5? Almost can't be used. I would regret spending $50 on it, except it allowed me to crossgrade to Notion 6, and the discount off the full price of Notion exceeded what I paid for Overture. So, that helps. A shame though -- I think Overture 5 is a beautifully designed program with a ton of features and a lot of potential.

Amicus717
Oh man, I've had nothing but issues, and I have no idea why. I have tried every iteration of Overture 5, every version, with plugins, without plugins. It just is not stable on my system. And it doesn't even crash with any sort of message or anything. It simply vanishes. One moment you're working, next moment you are staring at your desktop. When you open Overture again, it has no memory of the file you were working on, and I need to manually go get it, and I usually lose the last few mins work. This happens at random, and for no reason - maybe I clicked somewhere I shouldn't have, or selected an articulation, or did nothing, or someone in the next room coughed too loudly, and poof! Overture is gone. I've uninstalled, reinstalled, tried everything. And this is on a freshly rebuilt system (made of good components) with a brand new Windows 10 install on which everything else runs without problem. Sonar never crashes, Cubase never crashes, everything else is rock stable, and I have an RME interface with stable drivers. But Overture 5? Almost can't be used. I would regret spending $50 on it, except it allowed me to crossgrade to Notion 6, and the discount off the full price of Notion exceeded what I paid for Overture. So, that helps. A shame though -- I think Overture 5 is a beautifully designed program with a ton of features and a lot of potential.

Oh man, that would be terribly frustrating!  I wouldn't even know where to begin to solve that one.  There is clearly a conflict going on somewhere, but without any error messages or logs to work from it would be very difficult to find the cause.
 
Only thing I could maybe suggest is that if you have a spare PC or laptop with no other music stuff or audio drivers loaded on it, to try loading Overture over there to test it.
 
But at least you ended up with Notion, and that's not at all bad! 

abacab
But at least you ended up with Notion, and that's not at all bad! 

True enough! I like Notion a lot, in fact. Solid and useable, and the included sounds are perfectly fine. And it's quick. Not as deep as programs like Overture or Sibelius, but you can get things done quickly, and I like that. And it's way more intuitive than Dorico. I downloaded and fired up the Dorico 2 trial a little while ago, and meh -- uninstalled it a day later. Seems pretty powerful, but I found it really counter-intuitive and awkward. Just didn't enjoy using it at all.

+1 for Notion. I found it pretty easy to learn, and the sounds are fine for notation, where you mainly need them to do an ear check, so you know all the notes are right. You can also use GPO and EWSO with it, but I found the native sounds work fine.
 
I do my projects in CbB, then import to Notion to make a professional score. It would be nice to do it all in one program, but we ain't there yet. Cubase's notation is not at the level of a true notation program. Maybe Motu's is, I haven't tried it. But now that we have CbB, I can't see myself ever going to another DAW.

Available now!  https://sonicscores.com/amadeus/
 
Intro price is $119 for everyone, and Don has emailed a discount code to Overture forum users.

I got it and it's great!  I've only played with it for a couple of hours, but I can strongly recommend it to anyone who dabbles in orchestral composition.  You can choose specific instruments or you can play the whole orchestra. The GUI is well thought out and it sounds FAR FAR better than you would expect for a $149 program.  It's extremely light on both your CPU and RAM.   I got it with a discount code for $99 - that's a steal for this kind of quality!

Already have a few of these for sketching but it sounds nice. Does it feature separate outs for sections & instruments?

Don is getting ready to release an update for Overture 5 that contains a new SoundMap for Amadeus.

Some of the comments about  Armadeus  library by the pros are that it's a nice sounding beginner or compo library. Keep in mind these guys have thousands of dollars rolled up in sample libraries, so that's a fairly high compliment.
 
I don't know if it really surpasses the basic Kontakt factory library. They are in the same league IMHO. You could do a lot worse for that money. Armadeus sounds pretty good to my ears. Nothing like the Arc 1 and 2 on sale at NI though. 
 
Just purchased Notion with a mind to input to it from my DAW. Haven't used it much. My plan was to minimally use the actual program and let the DAW input the midi for it to translate. That should do much of the work for me. I don't enjoy writing notation. Would rather play it in on the DAW.

Can anyone comment on how it compares to Garritan Personal Orchestra? They are both in the same price range. I have GPO, and use the woodwinds and brass and percussion, but rarely the strings as they are the worst of it. It would be nice to expand my budget-level eclectic library of sounds. Especially if the strings are usable.