MakeMusic released a new version of Finale last week. 2005. I have to say, this version has the fewest visual changes in it since……I can’t remember. It looks and acts just like the last couple of versions of Finale, except for the new (improved? naw) Launch Window. That was the first thing I had to get rid of.
I digress though. Lets look at what Finale 2005 brings to the plate compared to 2004….
First, there has been a LOT of complaints about the OS X version of Finale. It was LATE arriving (promised in October, then delayed till December, then Delayed again until Jan 04 I think….), and was a performance hog. It seriously did not perform as well as Finale 2003 on the same system. Partly, this was due to it being a OS X first generation port, and partly it was due to the nature of OS X. Programs get allocated different priority in OS X, which is a true multitasking environment. Memory, disk access, just about everything is different on OS X.
Anyhow, that being said, I did notice a performance difference in 2004. It was a little slower. It didn’t really bother me, new features such as Expressions, and other things out weighed the performance issue. I noticed a big difference in screen redraws. My QuickSilver G4 with a Quartz Extreme video card refreshes a lot faster than my G4 cube without a Quartz video card. Course the Quicksilver is 933 MHz compared to 450 MHz.
Finale 2005 does not seem to really increase speed at all. Maybe, but I have no quantitive numbers, or specific things to point at. It feels the same. Under Windows XP, none of these performance issues are a problem. Finale 2004 and 2005 are really fast on my Athlon 2+ gigahertz machine.
New features: There are not a lot of new features that I would use. Things like Finale Performance Assessment, Marching Percussion sounds, Third Party Sound Fonts, Advanced Hyperscribe, and the afore mentioned Launch Window. These are fluff features, especially the Finale Performance Assessment thing. It’s basically a Smart Music component. Saving something to Smart Music, which you can do in 2005 (and 2004 I believe), is a good idea, but starting to incorporate Smart Music into Finale…..I dunno…..
The good new features are Intelligent Repeats, Spacing and Grace Note improvements, Transportable Staff Lists and Tuplet Controls. The last one, Tuplets, is 40 times better than what it was. Tuplets was a huge Achilles heal for Finale since they put in Engraver Slurs in 2003 (I think, or was it 2002). There is a little “bug” in it, where the number does not stay in the center of the bracket if you do large intervals. I expect this to be fixed in the first maintenance release. The Repeats finally make sense too, and you can either have them all displayed on a score or not. Grace notes spacing is a great boon as well.
Ok, so, the big question, is it worth it? The Tuplet thing easy made it worth it. Repeats as well. The other stuff was nice but, eh, I could live without. The upgrade price was more reasonable than before, $89, and both the Windows and Mac version are on the CD. Woohoo. AND, you can put Finale on TWO computers. So, if you have a PC and a Mac, you can put the ONE copy you have on both these computers. You still have to deal with the funky registration, but the licensing is very reasonable.
I still think Finale leads the pack, but it needs to add some things. More Jazz Notation. Make Chords easier to enter! Jazz Articulations! That is what I want in the next version.
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Also of note is that it appears that Finale is used, by the look of a couple of the pieces of music in the videos, specifically in the Week 4 video, about 4:21 into it. Looks like Finale using Bill Duncan’s
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