On 9/16/2013 6:07 AM, David H. Bailey wrote: > But I expect that if it can weather the current financial woes, Avid > will continue to develop Sibelius. Certainly if one can say that > Sibelius is a mature cash cow that doesn't need any more development, > the same can be said for Finale, yet we wait and hope for new versions > of Finale all the time.
I get a negative reaction when we talk about "mature" product and cash cows. I don't think any of the notation products are anywhere near mature. Everything is way too tedious with all of these programs. Yes, computer-based notation was an impressive achievement for 1995. But since that time I've rarely had the feeling that we're looking at any breakthroughs -- only little improvements at the margins, on a 20-year-old platform. In other words, these companies have ALREADY had their cash cow period. It was 2000-2008. In other parts of the music technology world, we see truly amazing things. I have been spending time reviewing VST effects that might be useful to my work (not necessarily related to notation or realistic playback of notation). Some of these are truly amazing in the reach of the concept and the quality of delivery. And they are coming fast and furious. So some people have figured out how to deliver a lot of function quickly without requiring a football stadium full of developers. So I am not thrilled with the idea of waiting 2 years between releases unless the result is truly revolutionary. >> Steinberg.....until they ship something, who knows. There are plenty >> of other notation packages out there that are nice, but don't have a >> real substantial user base. Plus people using Sibelius or finale >> generally won't switch. I mean, I sure would have switched to sibelius >> 5 back in the day, but the ONE thing that kept me from doing that is >> being able to open my finale files in Sibelius. Not XML or conversion >> program. If a new player in the notation market wants to get people to >> switch, then offer native ability to open up Sibelius or finale files. >> If the notation thing from Steinberg is amazing and leaves finale and >> Sibelius looking like 1980s cell phone AND offers the ability to open >> Sibelius and finale files within the program.......then I'd be >> interested. >> > [snip] > > Daniel Spreadbury has already publicly said that they will not be > reverse engineering the Sibelius file format -- aside from the possible > legal issues (a former development team might have a hard time > convincing a judge that the file format was truly reverse engineered and > not simply stolen), they feel no need to do so. > > MusicXML in its full version does a pretty good, although not perfect, > job of transferring files from one program to another and I am hopeful > that it will continue to be developed and improved. For me, I think XML would work OK. Let's say that Steinberg produces a real breakthrough product that is a clear generation ahead of the other products -- a product that is so good, you want to do all your new projects on that platform (that is a huge assumption, of course). That does present a question what to do with the old scores. In recent years, I have made sure to freeze the scores and parts to PDF whenever I finish a project. I expect PDF will survive as a standard longer than MUS files. As long as I don't have to make any changes, the PDFs are fine, of course. If I need to make revisions, I could either do those directly in Finale or convert the score to Steinberg using XML. That would all depend on the scope of the change. If we're talking about changing a lyric or inserting some repeat marks, that could easily be done in Finale as long as that program will still run under my current OS. If the changes are more extensive, then it would be worthwhile to go through the conversion process. I don't see that as a big problem. The problem I would see is if Finale support were to go the way of Rhapsody (or name your own defunct notation program.) There would come a time when you couldn't even run the final version. Then you are in trouble. I think I'll start a systematic process of going back through all my old Finale projects and create MIDI and XML dumps of those scores now so I'll have all my bases covered. Regarding Steinberg not having a user base, that is true, but they have some real assets. A lot of people who use Cubase also use notation programs, so in that sense they have a marketing base. Moreover, they are distinguishing themselves from Avid and MakeMusic who are providing absolutely zero communication to their loyal customers. Steinberg, in contrast, has adopted a very open approach. To be sure, Daniel is not committing any features and dates, but just the act of communicating regularly is building a strong following. I bet thousands of people are following his development blog now, and many of them will have signed up for email updates. If they have a strong product, they have an opportunity to make a very rapid introduction. Personally I'm not sure Steinberg will have a commercially competitive product by 2016. All the functions he's talked about so far are components, building blocks and prototypes -- nothing like a real product yet. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
