John Howell wrote:
At 10:19 PM -0400 9/25/06, Christopher Smith wrote:
I know Finale's default spacing is not up to professional standards,
for example. But unless they are seeing Finale output tweaked by a
pro, they aren't seeing what the program can do, and it is an unjust
criticism, in addition to being non-specific.
I hesitate to comment in this particular religious war, because I've
never seen anyone change their mind, but why in the world should a
product that claims to be "the best" ship with defaults that have a
long-time reputation for being "the worst"!?! Yes, the defaults give
results that look like they've been done by a computer, and a fairly
retarded computer at that. And then we get stuck playing from those
awful pages turned out by Nashville arrangers!!!
What percentage of Finale users do you suppose use it right out of the
box, expect it to give professional results because it's touted as a
professional tool, and are not power users? 90%? 95%? 99%? In my
opinion there is no excuse and never has been for shipping defaults that
are not of professional quality. At the very least, a choice of
carefully thought out designs should be offered as "house styles." And
isn't that exactly what the Sibelius designers did?
John
You nailed it in one! Finale's marketing department should be ashamed
of themselves for not requiring two default templates, one using Maestro
and the other using Jazz font, which are of the most professional
looking quality, and having all the various templates that the program
ships with match those two in every setting.
Much of Sibelius' reputation for ease of use comes from the fact that
one can enter music and produce great looking output with very little
inner knowledge of the program or its various adjustable settings and
still get good-looking output.
Much of Finale's reputation for obtuseness and difficulty of use comes
from the fact that one MUST gain inner knowledge of the program and all
its various adjustable settings to get good-looking output.
I don't really view this as a religious war, but rather as a statement
of fact. I continue to use Finale because I have learned how to produce
the sort of output that I and my few clients want. I don't use Sibelius
much at all because I have a harder time with the process that it takes
to get a piece of music from manuscript to printed output. That flaw is
mine, not the program's.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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