In terms of scanner hardware, it's pretty much a commodity market. Any $99 scanner should be fine. As James mentioned, be sure to get a flatbed scanner for laying books and scores flat. You may also find a legal-size scanner to be helpful compared to a letter-size scanner - or an even bigger area if you have the room and money - and those will cost a bit more. I use a Microtek scanner here, but there are lots of good choices.
In terms of software and ease of scanning, as you can see the answer is "it depends". SharpEye Music Reader is generally the most accurate music scanner, but it's only available on Windows. Johannes is on a Mac, so he hasn't used SharpEye with its accurate handling of polyphony, and unfortunately condemns the whole area of music scanning. Since you're on Windows, you can get very good results. (On OS X, some people also get good results with the full versions of SmartScore and PhotoScore Professional.) The critical factors are: - How complicated is the music? - How well printed is the source material? - How fast are you at Finale? We have plenty of customers who save enormous time using SharpEye and MusicXML to get music into Finale. How well it works for you will depend on your situation. You can download SharpEye and try it free for 30 days from: http://store.recordare.com/sharpeye2.html Best regards, Michael Good Recordare LLC www.recordare.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
