Customer Rating: 
Summary: Sibelius delivers again
Comment: This is my review of the Professional Edition of Sibelius 5.
At our conservatory we have Sibelius 4, which I really liked. You can easily write out a whole compositions with time signature changes, different claves, dynamics, you name it.
<>The only few things that I found faulty is
1>There isn't a preference options menu. Everytime you start a new score, you need to re-input your preferences again.
2>Some graphic inputs are not so logical to do (very awkward), even though with some of them I understand it's hard to come up with a way to program it.
For instance if you want to input a triplet feel symbol you need to make one of your own by selecting a quarter note, paste, selecting an eight note, paste, select a triplet bracket, paste it on top, and so on. Okay, so maybe there's a better way of doing it, but this is the way the official reference guid explains it!
3>I really love the jazz notation font, but there's just something I find missing with all the other fonts. This is more of a aesthetic thing, and very subjective. That you can't zoom in the example page when selecting a house style is weird, though.
I think that's it for Sibelius 4, on to Sibelius 5.
Yesterday I got the package, it costed me $599 USD, and it was delivered very safely. It includes:
1>the installation CD with:
Sibelius 5 (notation software)
Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 (software you need for Sibeliu 5 to run)
Sibelius Sound Essentials (High Quality sound samples)
Scorch (browser plug-in, which is freeware by the way)
Photoscore Lite (Music scanning programme, which isn't that great, from what I've heard.)
2>The Sibelius 5 Handbook of 156 pages.
After installing the software, I felt like home right away, because the look is basically the same as Sibelius 4. There is a new Panorama thing, which lets you see the music bars only next to each other.
Kontakt 2.0 with the Sound Essentials give some decent Garritan sounds when playing .sib files, but I find it actually a bit disappointing. I wouldn't want to buy the Garritan Personal Orchestra by this 'demonstration' of sounds from the same company, even though I know that packages is a whole lot better than these 'Sound Essentials'. Sure, if you're normally only using standard GM-synthesized midi, this is a sure plus, but for others having experienced GigaStudio, Reason or the like, this is really nothing interesting.
I tried the new "reprise" House Style, which resembles handwritten notation. It does look quite nice, especially the font for the Title, but other than that, like with lyrics, it's a bit messy. Time signatures exceed the 5-staves bar, which I actually find quite unpretty. Again, this is a very subjective part, as I guess it's a very well done compared to the 'style' of the era, when this handwriting was used for notation.
Point 1 and 2 of my complaints (starting at <>) hasn't been resolved, unfortunately, or maybe I need to read the handbook better.
To be honest with you, I haven't tried anything more as of yet, I just wanted to give a very first impression, as it seems I'm the first one who got the product (or who BOUGHT it, then).
That is a point I do want to give concluding my review. This software, the professional one, costed me $599 USD, as I said earlier on. I bought it from amazon.com, as here in Europe (I'm Dutch), in the store it would've cost me 800,- which is $1174.21! That's almost TWICE as much. I agree about the market being more expensive in Europe, but this is preposterous. No wonder it's been pirated pretty badly.
This review will continue later.
Manuel
