Sibelius 5

[crimson]

I heard about the announcement of Sibelius 5 just yesterday, and having briefly read about the features, I have to say it really seems like they have improved it.

The most interesting new feature for me seems to be the VST support. It sounds like it's easier to setup Sibelius to play back using any VSTi now, which definitely is a step towards the right direction. However, I doubt that those third party VSTis can play articulations automatically from the score. That would be a really nice feature.

There were other good-sounding improvements, too, like the panorama view, ideas hub, etc. I guess I'll be buying an upgrade as soon as possible.

What do you guys/gals think about Sibelius 5?

[MaestroX]

Just had a peak at the new features and I must say I'm very impressed. The improvements from 3 to 4 were minimal but it seems they've really got some good features this time. The power tools look great too:

Clefs change where necessary if you switch between sounding pitch and transposing score
Transpose to specified key (rather than by interval)
Add blank pages up to next left/right-hand page (for page turns in complex parts)
Go To Bar steps through each occurrence of the bar number if it recurs in several movements or songs
Select & delete system/page breaks & other layout marks
Export graphics in PNG format, plus BMP on Mac too
Cue-sized graphics
Graphics scale on small staves
400+ different instruments
Delete Bar menu item

If you check out the "more improvements" page ther're quite alot of new little tweaks which have bugged me in earlier versions. I'll be definatly upgrading myversion when this comes out!

You can pre-order now but it shipps end of June! Not long to wait

However, I doubt that those third party VSTis can play articulations automatically from the score. That would be a really nice feature.

I think developers or the community will bring out patchs in no time to achieve this I just hope they don't limit it to just GPO, there are other sample libaries out there

[andreasvanharen]

Sibelius 5 still has lots of problems that they need to fix. Have a look at the site here:
http://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/help...upid=3&guest=1

I really want to buy it but as long it stays like this, I stay with version 4.1

[MaestroX]

I received my upgrade for sibelius 5 the other day. I spent some time backing up my originalfiles just in case of problems.

Overall I'm still trying to get to grips with the new features butat the moment they're nothing to write home about. For some reasons I can't work out how to load VST's (the very reason I upgraded!) Sibelius only seems to want to use its own fairly average sample set.

Anyone else working with Sibelius 5 yet?

[crimson]

I just received my upgrade to Sibelius 5 today. I got the VSTis up and running fairly easily, and I was impressed when the program could use SIR Impulse Reverb as an insert effect. A handy feature. However, one thing I'm not quite sure about is Sibelius' automatic articulation playback.

The oboe for example seems to lack a staccato "id" and other articulations too in the Standard SoundWorld collection. I'm also not totally sure that Sibelius plays my EWQL stacc horn samples through Kontakt 2 as it should. I wonder if there's a way to somehow edit the "sound ids" or SoundWorlds in Sibelius. I think it would be useful, if not essential, to be able to define which samples/midi channels are played by which articulation marks. Does anybody know whether this is possible?

Aside from that, I liked the idea hub. It sure comes in handy while working or just doodling around. The panorama view is also a nifty addition.

[Gazzura]

I've downloaded a sibelius 5 demo a while back and I wasn't too happy about it. The only addition I really liked was the ideas hub, but that was it.

So I'm keeping with Sibelius 4 at the moment. My friend, however, prefers Sibelius 3 to 4.

[crimson]

I can't believe it! After some fiddling around, I was able to make Sibelius play custom samples throught Kontakt 2 so that the correct samples are played on various articaltions. Now that that's settled, I don't have much to complain about Sibelius 5 I have to say now that Sibelius has this functionality, I may have a future with sample libraries afterall. It's unbelievable how much pain this automatic articulation switching takes away from work with sample libraries. Now I don't have to do much "sample programming" at all.

[MaestroX]

This is great news! I haven't messed about with Sibelius 5's VST capabilities yet, I've just been using the standard Midi setup. I did manage to test Ivory though and it works brilliantly for such a big library.