A finale to Finale

[(poco) Sforzando]

Are any of you out there users of Finale for your music notation? If so, you most likely know that MakeMusic Inc. is discontinuing the program, and other vendors are offering crossgrades for their professional software. I myself after a 25-year love-hate relationship with Finale, have started learning Dorico which is clearly feature-rich but also quite difficult to learn and use too. Sibelius is also making a crossgrade offer, and Musescore is another option.

How are any Finale users here handling this news?

[San Antone]

Are any of you out there users of Finale for your music notation? If so, you most likely know that MakeMusic Inc. is discontinuing the program, and other vendors are offering crossgrades for their professional software. I myself after a 25-year love-hate relationship with Finale, have started learning Dorico which is clearly feature-rich but also quite difficult to learn and use too. Sibelius is also making a crossgrade offer, and Musescore is another option.

How are any Finale users here handling this news?

I haven't used Finale since 2015 - my music writing has changed and I no longer use notation software. However, I was disturbed to hear about this and immediately went to see about my options. 

Since I upgraded my Mac my old software no longer works, even with the latest update.  So my choice is to purchase Dorico with the Finale user discount.  I will probably do this since I never know if/when I will want to use notation software for something in the future.

[Karl Henning]

I switched from Finale to Sibelius long ago, but I have a number of colleagues who are finding this development distressing.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I switched from Finale to Sibelius long ago, but I have a number of colleagues who are finding this development distressing.

They feel they are losing their life's work and having to master a totally different software design. And although Finale files can be exported to XML, there's no certainty that they will arrive in Dorico intact. My first export from Finale/import to Dorico has already had some problems, and I am hardly a heavy Finale user who relies on the program for his career.

[Karl Henning]

They feel they are losing their life's work and having to master a totally different software design. And although Finale files can be exported to XML, there's no certainty that they will arrive in Dorico intact. My first export from Finale/import to Dorico has already had some problems, and I am hardly a heavy Finale user who relies on the program for his career.

My experience with xml transfers is that cleaning them up is dogsbody work.

[relm1]

I left Finale 20 years ago and never looked back.  Been on Sibelius ever since but my experience is that none of these are flawless.  Some do things great and other things poorly (head scratching why they either can't do it or do it in a very cumbersome way) and each of these tools does a different feature clumsily that the other tool does easily.  There is quite a lot of positive feedback from Dorico users and the staff who are very engaged and easy to connect with, but it doesn't seem that easy to learn OR you need to set aside a week or two to learn the fundamentals because it does seem quite different from Finale and Sibelius.  But I don't think I've heard any negative comments from those who've learned it other than some basic features aren't yet present.  I think this is just a reflection of the other programs have been around for decades and Dorico is still building up but it seems to be a very solid, professional level program with a passionate development team. 

Regarding XML, the advice from the dev team is get Finale 27 which has the latest XML or download the full XML app for Sibelius for transferring files and they and professional copyists all recommended export with the latest XML and as PDF for archival purposes but the XML will not be flawless.  Think of it as getting you 90% there.  They also mentioned the XML import in Dorico is quite sophisticated and worth playing around with the options but again, expect you will get to 90, maybe 95% import success so still have to fix/refine the score in Dorico.  I don't think XML does lyrics well for example.  I have Dorico, but just haven't learned it yet.  Really should.