MakeMusic Forum

The original version of this page can be found at : http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=411806

Posted By : Marc Bischoff - 11/9/2013 9:03 AM

Why why why why? This is the question I have constantly when using the demo of F2014. Is this what marketing departments do nowadays? Rush programmers into releasing unfinished software? Shame on them.

Why is Finale 2014 so slow? I opened a large orchestra file (34 staves) to put F2014 to the test. Conclusion? Unworkable. Scrolling with mouse-wheel has a 2sec delay. Every single time. It's so bad, it reminds me of the first Finale version on OSX. Simply dreadful and unworkable.
Why is the focus when editing expression on the description-field and not text-fiels as it used to be? Why change that? Why why why? it drives me nuts.
Why do things that obviously enhance productivity don't get included? Like as search field in the expression selection window. Why? Am I the only one having big expression libraries, every time scrolling through lists to find a specific one, or scribbling expression numbers on a piece of paper to remember them faster. I mean seriously. A simple search entry field. How hard can it be?
Instead we get magnetic palettes? What was wrong withe old ones? Nobody EVER complaint about them. I at least didn't even notice there was something wrong with them. Instead I would have loved to see more shortcuts. Finale is the most mouse-intensive program I use. I program my now shortcuts in the keyboard-preference window, but why do I have to do that. Compare the extensive (customizable) shortcut list of a program like Logic Pro, Protools or Cubase and see what I mean.
Now that would be productivity enhancement.

The new sound engine sucks big time. It stutters, doesn't run smooth at all, it has "ghost tails" when switching tools. And the new mixer isn't new at all. Just in a new coat of paint. Not all like previous versions of Finale.
Why change something that was good and make it worse?

Meanwhile: the hugely annoying font bug (discussed elsewhere on this forum) is still there. Why why? 3 years sinds the last update.

There are so many clear and user-demanded features and bugs that we would be happy to pay for to get them added or fixed.

I am startled why a company would make these kind of choices. Finale users are pro's that get dollars for hours. Every hour wasted on waiting for Finale to scroll or redraw the screen (did I mention that it is dreadfully slow?) is a direct loss in money.

And I didn't mention the countless crashhes I has, only trying to open the program for the first time. When Finale 2014 ttys to scan au-plugins it crashes countlessly. Why? Why? Other programs I use scanthem just fine, and report if a plug in is not validated.. Why the crashes? (I talking like 10-15 crashes!!!)
F2014 also crashes every time I try to delete a user generated expression- category. Why? Why? all that was working fine?

So disappointed. Happy I didn't pay for this.

Posted By : Zuill - 11/9/2013 10:36 AM

Ouch.

Which version of Finale are you currently using?

Zuill

"When all is said and done, more is said than done."

Finale 2002b, 2003a, 2004b, 2005b, Win XP SP3, 2011b Win 7 64bit, 2012a Bought and Paid For (Hopefully soon 2012b with some of the MAJOR BUGS fixed--well, now with 2012b and some of the bugs are fixed) 2012c, with some bug fixes. 2014 now.

Favorite Forum quote: "Please, everybody, IGNORE THE TROLL!"

Posted By : Jetcopy - 11/9/2013 10:56 AM

Marc Bischoff said...

Why is the focus when editing expression on the description-field and not text-fiels as it used to be?

Marc, I've experienced this same issue. I've reported this to MM, this is the reply I got.

This defect only occurs if your system preferences/keyboard shortcuts has Full Keyboard Access set to Text boxes and lists only.
It will behave normally when set to All Controls.

They've identified it as an issue and hopefully will be fixed in an update.

JT

Macbook Pro OSX 10.8.5, 2.66GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM

Posted By : Vaughan - 11/9/2013 11:15 AM

Marc, I'm sorry you're having such a bad time. FWIW, there are users who don't seem to be having those issues, so some of them might be things in your setup. Believe it or not, I haven't had Finale crash on me (yet) so there are several things you could try, like posting a crash log here (or sending it to MM) or creating a new user account and try running Finale from there. I thought that scrolling had actually been improved, compared to earlier versions. One thing that does slow this version down noticeably is when something is selected. I just tried it out on a 28-stave score and the delay when moving to a next page in Page View was about ½ second. If I change to the measure tool and select everything, scrolling speed does indeed slow down to about 1 second per page. It does speed up the scrolling, therefore, to be a neutral tool like the Select Tool and not to have anything selected. I sympathise completely about the focus of the expression edit window. I've often wanted to edit or create an expression and have started typing without looking (as I was accustomed to do), only to discover that I'd typed it into the description field. You've inspired me to put in a case to MM. That shouldn't be too difficult to change. And there has been a general outcry in the forums about the palettes. I can imagine that MM will try to return that functionality in a maintenance release. I've also noticed some stuttering in the sound engine. That can be a matter of a RAM allocation or a Disk Pre-caching setting, but I haven't had the chance to experiment with it yet. I suppose the point is, why should we have to? At any rate, there have been a lot of positive reactions to 2014 and MM is gathering the negative ones, so hopefully these issues will be addressed soon. I'd still try the new user account, though, and see how Finale behaves there. Good luck!

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2014, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.9
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Posted By : Vaughan - 11/9/2013 11:24 AM

P.S. Thanks for that, JT! I just changed my system preferences to accommodate Finale, although you can toggle it with Ctrl-F7, which might be a good habit to get into before MM releases an update.

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2014, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.9
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Posted By : Michael Mortilla - 11/9/2013 1:07 PM

Nothing like a positive first post to make a good impression... and such a subjective post title. Perhaps the o/p might want to try Sibelius? Or perhaps he already uses it?

It just leaves one question: Why? Why? Why?

Os X 10.9 Mac Pro 8 core; 20GB RAM.

Finale 2014; Digital Performer 8 [64 bit];

MIDI Life Crisis

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/9/2013 1:56 PM

I can understand mr. Bischoff's frustration. I too feel like I just flushed $170 (taxes included) down the toilet. Okay, I know it probably will not be a total waste, presuming that an update will fix the most prominent problems with 2014, but for now I have absolutely no use for an app that robbed me of five otherwise productive days. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Finale 2014, but switched back to 2012c
Mac OS X 10.9, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Posted By : Michael Mortilla - 11/9/2013 2:22 PM

I totally get the frustration and empathize completely with those having issues. No doubt they are real. But the way to approach the problem is (IMO) not to make your *first post* a total bitching session and instead, try to find answers to your questions. Add to that the fact that different people are experiencing different problems and some folks are not experiencing ANY problems. That would lead me to believe (know, actually) that SYSTEM and SOFTWARE conflicts are at the root and MM cannot possibly test out Finale for every possible combination of hardware, software and hacks that might exist on a system.

Yes, the app should (and will) work as required, but give the company and the members here a freakin' chance to fix the problems (or find out what conflicts exist in a particular system) before pronouncing the app and the update dead on arrival. That's what tech support is for (and MM has great tech support!) and why these forums exist. I just find it a bit disingenuous to make your first and one and only post so scathing and not provide any information on what system or machine you're using? Is he on OS 9 on a G4? Maverick on a new 12 core? Is he beta testing other software that might hack into his system?

His answer(s) to those questions might get a positive response, but a blanket post of all the things that don't work in isolation is counter-productive. And citing things that others have complained about but that he himself may or may not have experienced just seems like piling on, IMO. If he wants to get help and be treated fairly, he needs to calm down and provide a few clues. Otherwise it's a non-issue, IMO. As they say in Dragnet: "Just the facts ma'm, just the facts."

Os X 10.9 Mac Pro 8 core; 20GB RAM.

Finale 2014; Digital Performer 8 [64 bit];

MIDI Life Crisis

Posted By : Motet - 11/9/2013 2:35 PM

Michael Mortilla said...
...SYSTEM and SOFTWARE conflicts are at the root and MM cannot possibly test out Finale for every possible combination of hardware, software and hacks that might exist on a system.

I hate to keep harping, but in fact some straight-forward features get broken (this time, cross-staff) simply because not everything is methodically tested. Going through all the plug-ins and keyboard shortcuts documented in the manual would have taken someone at most one day.

Finale 2011b, 2005, TGTools

Windows XP

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/9/2013 2:39 PM

Motet said...

Going through all the plug-ins and keyboard shortcuts documented in the manual would have taken someone at most one day.

And this time, they had an extra year to do it!

Mike Rosen
www.specialmillwork.com

Bass with Choir of the Sound www.choirofthesound.org

Volunteer notation editor (The Gang of Eight) for the Barbershop Harmony Society
FINALE TIPS at www.specialmillwork.com/finaletips.htm

Finale 2010, 2011, 2012c, 2014 on Mac 10.9
Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.

"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker."

Posted By : Zuill - 11/9/2013 3:02 PM

MakeMusic is in good company. Microsoft is in hot water over Windows 8.1 for rushing it to market. Apparently there are a lot of problems and the accusation is that they didn't do enough testing.

Zuill

"When all is said and done, more is said than done."

Favorite Forum quote: "Please, everybody, IGNORE THE TROLL!"

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/9/2013 4:32 PM

Well, that's if you consider Microsoft to be "good company..."

Posted By : Michael Cook - 11/9/2013 5:01 PM

Motet said...
I hate to keep harping, but in fact some straight-forward features get broken (this time, cross-staff) simply because not everything is methodically tested. Going through all the plug-ins and keyboard shortcuts documented in the manual would have taken someone at most one day.

I hate to keep harping, but the fact that a certain bug exists in the release version does not mean that it wasn't found while testing. The developers do not have the time and the resources to eradicate all the bugs that are found. In the particular case you mention, the problem is with a plug-in from a third party developer, Tobias Giesen. MakeMusic cannot force independent developers to update their plugins to work with new versions.

Anyhow, if you are interested in Beta testing, send a message to Justin Phillips.

Michael Cook
Finale 3.0 - 2014
Mac OS 10.9

Posted By : Vaughan - 11/9/2013 5:35 PM

Read carefully what's been done in Finale 2014; hardly minor changes!

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2014, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.9
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Posted By : CCMP - 11/9/2013 5:41 PM

Maybe is minor not the 'good' translation (Dutch), wrong changes? Some are fine, but there are a lot of issues with the older versions. Look at the mixer, it's only an new look. Etc etc.

CCMP (Cees Coenen Music Productions)

WWW.CCMP.NL

Finale 2014 - Logic Pro X - Ableton Live

Garritan JABB - Garritan Concert and Marching Band - EZ Drummer - Superior Drummer - Spectrasonics Omnisphere and Trillian

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/9/2013 5:57 PM

CCMP said...
Look at the mixer, it's only an new look.

The mixer hasn't been reworked other than visually to match the new look. I'm a bit confused: would you like MM to spend more time on mixer issues than on where they actually spent their development time, or do you believe MM has claimed that the mixer was reworked?

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : Jamie Pettit - 11/9/2013 6:01 PM

Marc Bischoff said...

Is this what marketing departments do nowadays? Rush programmers into releasing unfinished software?

First, programmers don't decide release dates, project managers and marketing execs do, and these people are incentivized (in some cases lavishly so) to hit pre-determined dates.

But...yes, the company I work for does the same thing. Known bugs are earmarked for an immediate service pack before a release goes out the door because corporate demands release by a date determined before the initial release project is even scoped. Then we spend a fortune on our four (!!!) levels of tech support trying to keep unhappy customers from jumping ship...money that would have been better spent producing a solid release, IMO.

That said, if we as consumers want software with fewer defects, we must be willing to pay more, and be willing to wait longer between releases. Are we prepared for this? I think so, especially judging from the angry posts from the pros who make their living using Finale. Would you pay more for an upgrade if you knew you could install it and go right back to work?

Jamie Pettit

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finake 2008

GPO - Finale Edition

Win7 32 bit

Pentium Dual Core 2.7 gHz

4 gigs RAM

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The perceived object...is not a sum of elements to be distinguished from each other and analyzed discretely, but a pattern, that is to say a form, a structure: the element's existence does not precede the existence of the whole, it comes neither before nor after it, for the parts do not determine the pattern, but the pattern determines the parts: knowledge of the pattern and of its laws, of the set and its structure, could not possibly be derived from discrete knowledge of the elements that compose it.

That means that you can look at a piece of a puzzle for three whole days, you can believe that you know all there is to know about its colouring and its shape, and be no further ahead than when you started. The only thing that counts is the ability to link this piece to other pieces...

Georges Perec - Life: A user's Manual

Posted By : Marc Bischoff - 11/9/2013 6:04 PM

Ok. Here I am again. Of course I expected axxxxstorm. And surely I asked for it. A sincere apology to anyone who felt personally offended by my "first" post. It wasn't my intention, I can assure you that.
Having said that, I think making assumptions about a person, a person's computer skills or knowledge of technology in general without knowing facts or backgrounds is not the way to go either. But that might be just the way things are on this forum.
You see: to use procedural-technicalities as a counter argument is as old as the court-room. If someone make a point about something, referring about "the way that someone said it" is not making the problem less real. It is a nothing less than a diversion tactic. And here we are: most of us are talking about what's wrong with my post and not what we really should be talking about: what's wrong with F2014!

I am on this forum for as long as I have internet. Reading mostly and from time to time giving advice to others. I simply couldn't remember my password. And I decided to open a new account. It seemed easier. So, that's for the "first post" thing.
I consider myself a pro user of Finale using it since Finale 98, and being a loyal customer to MakeMusic all these years investing many euros into this software that I consider one of the foundations of my business, which is being a full-time musician, composer and arranger. I consider Finale to be superior to any other notation program I ever used (or tried to use) and my knowledge of the program is substantial. Although having said that I am not a wizard like Jari, and do often join the forum or Jari's brilliant site to find solutions I cannot come up with myself.

Software like Finale are complex and each individual's system is a special case. I am very aware of that.
I have installed countless updates over the past years including software for studio recording which handles an enormous quantity of data in and out and makes often big demands on the computers graphic card as well. Finale cripples at tasks that shouldn't cripple a modern day Mac Pro with plenty of RAM. I can use the same system I own, for complex audio routing and multi track recording in my studio. Dealing with plenty of audio i/o plus involving midi information being handled wirelessly.

Finale 2014 has trouble scrolling(!) a simple full score in scroll view (funny name if you think about it, that it doesn't scroll at all!)
If I switch from page view to scroll view I can literally see my tool palette redraw. As if it was in slow motion. Really?!?

Logic Pro X was my previous major update and everything I said about Finale 2014 is also true fro Logic X. Worst update ever.
Unfinished software that simply slows down the pro- user. In my opinion a victim of the marketing departement as well. Finale always gets released in the autumn. So it's version number sounds "ahead of time". Well if programming is anything like art is, it is never ready because of a deadline, but it is ready when it is ready.
Hey, but what do I know.

The forums are full of people complaining that Finale crashes on them when installing. Some of them never even seen it open yet.
My trial version did open eventually but after 20 crashes in a row, some of them were severe freezes though which managed to crash my otherwise rock-solid sound card (Metric Halo) which let to a full system reboot. Just because of F2014. In EVERY world that is a bad start for a piece of software. I only mentions the other users experience to confirm, I am not alone with this problem.

So what does MM want me to pay for: magnetic palettes, a recoded version that works so slow I can't even do the simplest tasks in a workable manner, and hairpins that latch to the beat?
I can easily come up with plenty of features we would like to see in a new version of Finale and we would be happy to pay for.
A couple of them I mentioned in my first post.
Please. I am not insulting the forum. I want MakeMusic too understand that we are all pro users. We want pro features. Not cosmetic changes and more bugs instead of less.

This is not a specific problem I have with my system. And I don't have a specific question about: how do I do this or that.
I want MM to read this and I want as many people as possible to chime in and give them the feedback they deserve: this type of update is simply not what we need.

Cheers and thanks for the comments.
Marc

Post Edited (Marc Bischoff) : 11/9/2013 5:13:12 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : CCMP - 11/9/2013 6:06 PM

Don't understand me wrong: Finale is an good product, I'm using it every day. But...........
I think there are a lot of other issues more important. See the first post from this topic. For me, exporting to midi is so important. With using Comb, Trillian, superior Drummer this is a great problem. There is nothing changed. Nice to see a new look at the mixer, but it is not changed. A newby will change the reverb level in the mixer, there is nothing happening when using Garritan.
The ambience settings....

Posted By : David Ward - 11/9/2013 6:07 PM

Apart from the inconvenience of having to have a new user account on my system to get it to work (an issue I've described at exhaustive length in another thread) I'm finding Finale 2014 rather pleasing. I like the fact that I can change the length of a hairpin in a linked part without b---ing up the score: that seems an immense improvement. There are a number of others, too. At some point I'll find the (I hope temporary) loss of the cross stave shortcut annoying, and I gather from this forum that there is a (again I hope temporary) loss of some of the tremolo options that used to be available through the full TGTools.

Of course, I'm moving up from F 2010, but even if I were moving from F 2012, I think I'd notice a number of useful improvements, albeit with one or two annoying losses that I expect (hope, anyway) will be dealt with in due course. All in all, I'm glad to have Finale 2014.

Now, if only I can (with MM tech support help) get it to work in my main user account …

David Ward
www.composers-uk.com/davidward

Finale 2010b
Mac 10.6.8, 10.8.5
full TGTools

Finale 2014 downloaded

Posted By : Philip. - 11/9/2013 6:07 PM

Here is a list of some known issues in Finale 2014:

forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=410956

Here is a link to what's new in Finale 2014:

www.finalemusic.com/UserManuals/Finale2014Mac/Finale.htm#Finale/What_s_new.htm

Here are the interface changes in Finale 2014:

www.finalemusic.com/UserManuals/Finale2014Mac/Finale.htm#Finale/Interface_Changes2014.htm

In the past, as best I can recall, MakeMusic has typically included a list of bug fixes as well as new features. Is anyone aware of where, or if this list exists? It would be helpful in determining which "bugs" have been fixed in Finale 2014, and which might remain.

Finale 2008b, 2009b, 2010b, 2011c, 2012c
Sibelius 5.2.5, 6.2, 7.1.3
Logic Pro 9
Mac 10.6.8
2x2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
14 GB RAM
www.nycmusicservices.com/

Posted By : Motet - 11/9/2013 6:17 PM

Michael Cook, there's a difference between releasing something with a bug and releasing something where a documented feature just plain doesn't work. It's not even obvious that the cross-staff function uses TGTools Lite--I had to determine that by experiment. I'll grant that the plug-in was out of MM's control, though I question the wisdom of depending on something that is. But had the keystroke been tested and the problem found, they could have either removed the documentation of the feature from the manual or else warned it was temporarily broken if they expect Tobias is going to fix it.

Finale 2011b, 2005, TGTools

Windows XP

Posted By : Count of Monte Verdi - 11/9/2013 6:24 PM

David Ward said...
All in all, I'm glad to have Finale 2014...

...Now, if only I can (with MM tech support help) get it to work in my main user account …

I like this one

Posted By : OCTO. - 11/9/2013 6:58 PM

. said...
Logic Pro X was my previous major update and everything I said about Finale 2014 is also true fro Logic X. Worst update ever.

Good to know (your opinion).
I will stay on my LP8, Fin 11 and OS X.SL.
Safe heaven. Everything works. Until the storm calms down.

Finale 2011c,OS X 10.6.8

Posted By : Flint - 11/9/2013 7:47 PM

One could save a lot of money simply by trying a demo out before instantly leaping at the UPGRADE NOW button. If the demo is not to your liking you can... not buy the upgrade. (*SHOCK*)

Buying something sight unseen and tested and then bitching about the changes is a user's problem.

woodwind specialist and doubler - Finale 2011b using Speedy Entry - no capslock, GPO 2nd ed. Full version, Garritan Jazz & Big Band, Garritan Concert and Marching Band, Windows 8 64-bit, 12GB RAM

UNABLE TO DOWNLOAD Finale 2014 DUE TO LACK OF CAT PICTURES.

If the composer says in effect to the performer: "I do not care whether you perform my music or not," we cannot argue the matter. But if he indicates: "I want you to perform and respond to this music," then his fundamental duty is to write his music so that it is accessible to interpretation. When the performer cannot approach the composer's meaning because of capriciously obscure notation, he may in effect say to the composer: "Why should I bother to puzzle out your music?" - Gardner Read

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/9/2013 8:22 PM

And you even changed your signature for this?

Whether or note software was bought on impulse or tested on trial basis, we still would have to voice our test results, wouldn't we? No one is asking money back, we're just informing MakeMusic of problems encountered, so they can prepare a number of fixes.
Btw, you're welcome.

Finale 2014, but switched back to 2012c
Mac OS X 10.9, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Post Edited (Writer of Music) : 11/9/2013 7:36:41 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : josefern - 11/9/2013 9:44 PM

Finale 2014 has a big audio problem.

Mac Pro Mavericks 10.9 Finale 2014 "Audio Engine failed to load." error.

I don't have any playback in either midi or audio units. I've tried doing all of MM's recommended fixes and it still does not work.

Do I have to wipe off all previous finale versions and instruments?

Finale 2012 works fine for audio, But 2014 is dead on arrival. Very time-wasting and frustrating. What else should I do?

Posted By : Count of Monte Verdi - 11/9/2013 11:15 PM

You need not to apologize for criticizing or even demanding the money back. It is manufacturer's/producer's job to ensure everything works with everything out of box.

Writer of Music said...
And you even changed your signature for this?

Whether or note software was bought on impulse or tested on trial basis, we still would have to voice our test results, wouldn't we? No one is asking money back, we're just informing MakeMusic of problems encountered, so they can prepare a number of fixes.
Btw, you're welcome.

Posted By : JustinP - 11/9/2013 11:47 PM

Marc Bischoff said...
Why why why why? This is the question I have constantly when using the demo of F2014. Is this what marketing departments do nowadays? Rush programmers into releasing unfinished software? Shame on them.

Why is Finale 2014 so slow? I opened a large orchestra file (34 staves) to put F2014 to the test. Conclusion? Unworkable. Scrolling with mouse-wheel has a 2sec delay. Every single time. It's so bad, it reminds me of the first Finale version on OSX. Simply dreadful and unworkable.
Why is the focus when editing expression on the description-field and not text-fiels as it used to be? Why change that? Why why why? it drives me nuts.
Why do things that obviously enhance productivity don't get included? Like as search field in the expression selection window. Why? Am I the only one having big expression libraries, every time scrolling through lists to find a specific one, or scribbling expression numbers on a piece of paper to remember them faster. I mean seriously. A simple search entry field. How hard can it be?
Instead we get magnetic palettes? What was wrong withe old ones? Nobody EVER complaint about them. I at least didn't even notice there was something wrong with them. Instead I would have loved to see more shortcuts. Finale is the most mouse-intensive program I use. I program my now shortcuts in the keyboard-preference window, but why do I have to do that. Compare the extensive (customizable) shortcut list of a program like Logic Pro, Protools or Cubase and see what I mean.
Now that would be productivity enhancement.

The new sound engine sucks big time. It stutters, doesn't run smooth at all, it has "ghost tails" when switching tools. And the new mixer isn't new at all. Just in a new coat of paint. Not all like previous versions of Finale.
Why change something that was good and make it worse?

Meanwhile: the hugely annoying font bug (discussed elsewhere on this forum) is still there. Why why? 3 years sinds the last update.

There are so many clear and user-demanded features and bugs that we would be happy to pay for to get them added or fixed.

I am startled why a company would make these kind of choices. Finale users are pro's that get dollars for hours. Every hour wasted on waiting for Finale to scroll or redraw the screen (did I mention that it is dreadfully slow?) is a direct loss in money.

And I didn't mention the countless crashhes I has, only trying to open the program for the first time. When Finale 2014 ttys to scan au-plugins it crashes countlessly. Why? Why? Other programs I use scanthem just fine, and report if a plug in is not validated.. Why the crashes? (I talking like 10-15 crashes!!!)
F2014 also crashes every time I try to delete a user generated expression- category. Why? Why? all that was working fine?

So disappointed. Happy I didn't pay for this.

Sorry to see you're having some issues, the slow behavior is not normal and not the experience we encountered internally nor in extensive beta testing, same for the crashes. Have you been in touch with support regarding this?

makemusic.custhelp.com/app/ask

Justin Phillips
Senior Product Manager
MakeMusic, Inc.

Need to contact Finale Technical Support? Click here to create a support case.
Twitter

Posted By : Peter West - 11/10/2013 1:17 AM

Finale's main headline marketing phrase is that it is the No 1 Notation software, yet it is becoming a dinosaur in Notation while pandering to playback and audio markets. For those of us who are only interested in notation this release is a case of the Emperor's New Clothes. Nothing here is helpful to anyone who has notation knowledge and skills, all that is new helps people who have no knowledge get a better looking score quickly.

For some clients now I have a choice: Use Sibelius or export every page to Illustrator to finish, simply because Finale will not let me use the type sizies that my client's style sheet requires.

I love the feel and efficiency of Finale at it's best (I've been using it since V.1 and it is comfortable and natural to me), and for me the best is Finale 2010, still is. Since optimisation was replaced with the "new" system, which after 3 years still doesn't work without many hours of creating new groups for each system, Finale 2010 was the last and most stable version that allowed me to work quickly.

Peter
Music Publishing Services

*********************
Mac 2.66GHz Intel Quad, 4GB RAM /OSX.8.6 /30 inch cinema display+20 inch Cinema Display
Finale 2008 2009 2010 2012/Logic Pro Studio

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/10/2013 3:31 AM

Peter West said...
I love the feel and efficiency of Finale at it's best (I've been using it since V.1 and it is comfortable and natural to me), and for me the best is Finale 2010, still is. Since optimisation was replaced with the "new" system, which after 3 years still doesn't work without many hours of creating new groups for each system, Finale 2010 was the last and most stable version that allowed me to work quickly.

Regarding the new layout system, I have never understood where the issue is. Set up basic groups for the whole document. You can then use JW Split Groups to split groups on the systems where they really need to be changed. And nowadays, it should even be possible to do different group setups depending on "optimization" automatically through scripting. Where do you need to spend the many hours?

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : Peter West - 11/10/2013 6:00 AM

SPLIT GROUPS PLUG IN… I never noticed that. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

Peter
Music Publishing Services

*********************
Mac 2.66GHz Intel Quad, 4GB RAM /OSX.8.6 /30 inch cinema display+20 inch Cinema Display
Finale 2008 2009 2010 2012/Logic Pro Studio

Posted By : Vaughan - 11/10/2013 6:53 AM

Jari's worth his weight in gold!

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2014, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.9
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/10/2013 7:11 AM

Indeed. For me, I found the changes to Layout introduced in 2011 to be a great improvement over the old way. So much faster, so much more flexible. Particularly when combined with Jari's Extend Selection plug-in, which easily allows to to select a region whose staves you can then adjust.

As for 2014, there are considerable improvements to notation: The layer fix for rests and accidentals and the improvements to hairpins et al were all very high on the list of Things Complained about.
Finale still retains all its ability to tweak and adjust that professional have always had. Yes, some lacunae are still there, particularly fractional point sizes. But for me every new version has brought something that improves my workflow and makes things faster and easier.
Admittedly, I'm not writing aleatoric symphonies for Patagonian nose flutes and ululating mezzos.

I've found 2014 to be solid, reliable, fast. Are there some rough edges to the UI? Yes. A few bugs need fixing? Yes.

"This is me helping."

Finale 2014, 2.6Ghz 2012 MacMini 16Gb RAM (10.9); 2009 MacBook
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410, HP Laserjet 5200 DTN
Ancient Groove Music www.ancientgroove.co.uk

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/10/2013 10:50 AM

Wiggy said...

Admittedly, I'm not writing aleatoric symphonies for Patagonian nose flutes and ululating mezzos.

And the world thanks you!

Posted By : Peter West - 11/10/2013 12:05 PM

YAY, thanks Jari, I can now confirm that 2012 is as good as 2010 for what I need.

I appreciate that some upgrades will suit some workflows better than others, and I can't expect everything to be designed for my benefit, but I don't expect an upgrade to actually downgrade my efficiency, so many many thanks for that Jari. Presumably the same will apply to 2014.

now all I need to work out is how to have 15.5 pt, 9.2 pt and 7.5 pt text all in the same file, using fixed 5mm staff.

Peter
Music Publishing Services

*********************
Mac 2.66GHz Intel Quad, 4GB RAM /OSX.8.6 /30 inch cinema display+20 inch Cinema Display
Finale 2008 2009 2010 2012/Logic Pro Studio

Posted By : Peter West - 11/10/2013 12:07 PM

Flint said

"UNABLE TO DOWNLOAD Finale 2014 DUE TO LACK OF CAT PICTURES."

You obviously don't befriend the right people on Facebook. I can send you links to people who will provide ample quantities without invitation.

Peter
Music Publishing Services

*********************
Mac 2.66GHz Intel Quad, 4GB RAM /OSX.8.6 /30 inch cinema display+20 inch Cinema Display
Finale 2008 2009 2010 2012/Logic Pro Studio

Posted By : Marc Bischoff - 11/10/2013 12:38 PM

Enchanting conversations about absolutly nothing.
Nothing to say on the topic? Then why bother?
Continue on facebook. Please!

Posted By : Michel R. E. - 11/10/2013 12:50 PM

Marc Bischoff said...
Enchanting conversations about absolutly nothing.
Nothing to say on the topic? Then why bother?
Continue on facebook. Please!

After 3 posts is NOT the very best time to be bitching at other forum users.
Particularly when your very first post to this long-standing community was a ridiculously melodramatic, over-the-top, tirade against Finale.

Now, since your topic actually WAS answered somewhere in the preceding messages, maybe you could take a couple of deep breaths and calm down a little?

People who start their tenure on this forum in the same vein as you have TEND to end up on peoples' ignore lists, which means you MAY end up not getting the future help you might require.

Finale (started with ver. 3.0) 2010, 2011, 2012b installed
Win XP
basically ALL Garritan sounds, plus XSample Chamber Ensemble.

"Art critics suffer from Pigeon Syndrome. Pigeons like to leave their mark on monuments. But at the end of the day, the pigeon remains a pigeon, and the monument remains a monument."

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/10/2013 12:51 PM

Marc, that's what we do, here. Most of us are friends of long acquaintance. If you're not happy with the fact that we're not falling all over ourselves to support your complaints, well, maybe you'll get the point.

Posted By : Motet - 11/10/2013 3:26 PM

Marc Bischoff, I think a little comic relief in the form of banter is a good thing.

Finale 2011b, 2005, TGTools

Windows XP

Posted By : Michael Mortilla - 11/10/2013 3:51 PM

I don't see ANY cat pictures on Facebook! Man, what a ripoff! Facebook is the worst site EVER. Why, why, why? LMFAO

Os X 10.9 Mac Pro 8 core; 20GB RAM.

Finale 2014; Digital Performer 8 [64 bit];

MIDI Life Crisis

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/10/2013 4:01 PM

Michael Mortilla said...
I don't see ANY cat pictures on Facebook! Man, what a ripoff! Facebook is the worst site EVER. Why, why, why? LMFAO

That's because it isn't 64-bit.

Posted By : Michel R. E. - 11/10/2013 4:02 PM

Michael Mortilla said...
I don't see ANY cat pictures on Facebook! Man, what a ripoff! Facebook is the worst site EVER. Why, why, why? LMFAO

here you go... it's from the new GPO-5: Garrikitten Personal Orchestra

Posted By : Michael Mortilla - 11/10/2013 5:00 PM

Seven times nine lives is only 63 bit. LOVE the cat pict! Should be Finale's new splash screen. Speaking of which, I kind of liked the pictures of musicians they used to use. Or maybe it's something in my system that is preventing the pictures in the splash screen from showing?

Anyone know where the "Smug" preferences are to be found, or is that only on PCs... ☺ j/k my PC friends. j/k...

Os X 10.9 Mac Pro 8 core; 20GB RAM.

Finale 2014; Digital Performer 8 [64 bit];

MIDI Life Crisis

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/10/2013 6:41 PM

Off topic nonsens is more counterproductive than a negative first post (which, if you had cared to read the thread is NOT his first post) and there are quite a few "ridiculously melodramatic, over-the-top, bitching" posts since. Please people, if you want to fool around, create a separate thread, or better: a separate board, for your bantering. Make it a private thread or board, because your sense of humour is certainly not shared by all.
Can we now return to the problems reported? Thank you.

Finale 2014, but switched back to 2012c
Mac OS X 10.9, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/10/2013 6:44 PM

WoM,
You and Marc are gonna be mighty lonely...

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/10/2013 9:56 PM

Wow, gotta say I'll hold off on this update for several reasons. I was planning on upgrading over the Christmas break, in the middle of too many projects right now & don't want to deal w/ any updating issues. Now, I may wait even longer unless these bugs are resolved.

I seriously thought, be taking an additional year to provide a new version, that Finale was either going to be a major overhaul or at least be released close-to bug free. With beta testers & the additional time there is no excuse for all these bugs. If it wasn't ready for release they should have waited until it was fixed. Minor bugs are to be expected. Perhaps they rushed it to take advantage of the Sibelius debacle.

I'm very pleased w/ some of the new features Finale now has but there certainly could have been more. For now, I'll continue on with 2012...and Snow Leopard....and Logic Pro 9 etc. If it works it works.

Posted By : Philip. - 11/10/2013 10:10 PM

Vaughan said...
Jari's worth his weight in gold!

www.jwmusic.nu/jwplugins/donate/

Finale 2008b, 2009b, 2010b, 2011c, 2012c
Sibelius 5.2.5, 6.2, 7.1.3
Logic Pro 9
Mac 10.6.8
2x2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
14 GB RAM
www.nycmusicservices.com/

Posted By : Michael Mortilla - 11/10/2013 10:30 PM

Mike Rosen said...
WoM,
You and Marc are gonna be mighty lonely...

All work and no play. No sense of dealing with actual humans or that reading into the humor and o/t comments might provide some insight. No reading innuendo. No idea of subtext. No camaraderie or sense of a larger community with different perspectives than themselves. In short: not a clue.

What a dull existence to even contemplate. It always the very same set of members who, coincidentally, seem to be the ones with the one-off problems unique to their systems or "rare and unique" problems needing to be solved. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

Yes, the blocking feature is very helpful, indeed.

Os X 10.9 Mac Pro 8 core; 20GB RAM.

Finale 2014; Digital Performer 8 [64 bit];

MIDI Life Crisis

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/10/2013 10:44 PM

MowingDevil said...
Wow, gotta say I'll hold off on this update for several reasons. I was planning on upgrading over the Christmas break, in the middle of too many projects right now & don't want to deal w/ any updating issues. Now, I may wait even longer unless these bugs are resolved.

I seriously thought, be taking an additional year to provide a new version, that Finale was either going to be a major overhaul or at least be released close-to bug free. With beta testers & the additional time there is no excuse for all these bugs. If it wasn't ready for release they should have waited until it was fixed. Minor bugs are to be expected. Perhaps they rushed it to take advantage of the Sibelius debacle.

I'm very pleased w/ some of the new features Finale now has but there certainly could have been more. For now, I'll continue on with 2012...and Snow Leopard....and Logic Pro 9 etc. If it works it works.

This release doesn't seem to have any more problems than any others have had. And I say that as someone who took a week to get it running. But it wasn't Finale's fault, it was a conflict on my system. And there was no amount of beta testing that would have found it.

Sure there are issues. But I'm sure that the staff of MM is working overtime to fix as many of them, as quickly as they can. And I thnk that everybody on the forum would agree that in the middle of a heavy workload is no time to be upgrading. So wait until you have the time to deal with it, but don't wait for a bug-free relase. It just ain't gonna happen.

Posted By : ekringle - 11/11/2013 12:50 AM

Unfortunately (Fortunately?) my upgrading was postponed due to a shortage of $$, so hopefully there will have been a update released to address some of these issues by the time I upgrade.

I expect to update right after Christmas (Because apparently my kids think they should get toys around that time. So selfish.)

At any rate, it doesn't appear that there are any more bugs in this release than in the initial releases of any past versions, so eventually I'll take the plunge regardless.

Also, I am stealing the cat picture because it is awesome.

Finale 2012c.r13
Macintosh
OS X 10.7 Lion
2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Garritan GPO
Garritan JABB
Garritan COMB

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/11/2013 5:21 AM

Mike Rosen said...

I'm aware of that.....however, they took 2 years to release this. You'd think there'd be less bugs than the annual releases because of that.
I've had Finale 2000, 2008 and 2012 so I'm well aware of the bugs and subsequent fixes. One company that tends to get it right out of the box is Blizzard Entertainment. I think they test their software to a fault and take way too long to release games. However, when they do release it the bugs are a minimum. I'm sure by December MM will have some of the bugs worked out and be on Finale b by then.

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/11/2013 5:36 AM

MowingDevil said...
I seriously thought, be taking an additional year to provide a new version, that Finale was either going to be a major overhaul or at least be released close-to bug free. .

Finale 2014 DOES represent a major overhaul. Much of the Mac code has been entirely rewritten in Cocoa, rather than using ancient Carbon APIs from the turn of the century, which are already deprecated in OS X and likely to be discontinued in a future version of OS X. There is also a completely new audio engine.

MowingDevil said...
With beta testers & the additional time there is no excuse for all these bugs. One company that tends to get it right out of the box is Blizzard Entertainment. I think they test their software to a fault and take way too long to release games. However, when they do release it the bugs are a minimum.

MM is a VERY small company. The professional music notation market is TINY when compared to a Gaming company. Blizzard has several thousand employees and its profits and revenue are measured in billions. MM has fewer than 100 staff and its turnover is measured in millions. Its profits are slight.

The company is very aware of the bugs that need fixing: it's just a matter of time and money.

MowingDevil said...
If it wasn't ready for release they should have waited until it was fixed.

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.
There are long-standing, unfixed bugs in pretty much every piece of software. Illustrator has some nasty ones that haven't been addressed for years. OS X 10.9 has just come out, with several issues -- some of them disastrous. Every company has to weigh up the cost in time and money lost to fix the bugs against releasing the new version as it is. If you waited for all the bugs to be fixed, you would never release it.

Post Edited (Wiggy) : 11/11/2013 4:47:00 AM (GMT-6)

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/11/2013 7:57 AM

Michael Mortilla said...
All work and no play. No sense of dealing with actual humans or that reading into the humor and o/t comments might provide some insight. No reading innuendo. No idea of subtext. No camaraderie or sense of a larger community with different perspectives than themselves. In short: not a clue.

What a dull existence to even contemplate. It always the very same set of members who, coincidentally, seem to be the ones with the one-off problems unique to their systems or "rare and unique" problems needing to be solved. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

Yes, the blocking feature is very helpful, indeed.

Have we met?
If you can insult me publicly, you can also publicly offer your apologies. I'm waiting.

Apparently man enough to offend, but half a man to offer apologies. Speaking of human interaction.

Finale 2014, but switched back to 2012c
Mac OS X 10.9, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

[quote]… as the critic said to the composer: "It's not just your brownnose, your music really stinks".

Post Edited (Writer of Music) : 11/14/2013 3:52:11 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : BvdPress - 11/11/2013 9:19 AM

Wiggy said...

MowingDevil said...
I seriously thought, be taking an additional year to provide a new version, that Finale was either going to be a major overhaul or at least be released close-to bug free. .

MowingDevil said...
If it wasn't ready for release they should have waited until it was fixed.

But Wiggy, all of those are excuses and nothing more. A lot of us are just "1" on this forum and seem to produce music under very tight schedules without issues.

When the guy on the podium puts the stick in the air and gives a downbeat, they expect the group in front to make noise. If I didn't do my job, there would be no noise. There are also no excuses. MM has a lot of excuses all the time and many of us loyal users make excuses for them as well.

I still like the program, use it all day every day and defend it a great deal away from this Forum (here I generally gripe and hope MM listens), but I have no clue what MM has been doing for 2 years.

Bryan Doughty
BVD Press, Music Express and Cimarron Music
Oystein Baadsvik US tour coordinator - http://www.baadsvik.com/
bvdpress@snet.net or bryan@cimarronmusic.com
http://www.bvdpress.com
http://www.cimarronmusic.com/

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/11/2013 10:31 AM

I was countering the notion that Finale 2014 is not a major overhaul. I was also countering the comparison to a massively larger company. Those are facts, not excuses.

Is Finale 2014 perfect? No. Are there a significant number of bugs, inconsistencies and other issues? Yes. But to suggest that MM have been cooling their heels for 2 years shows a massive lack of understanding of the engineering tasks involved and the practicalities and pragmatic considerations that any company must make.

Finale has made a number of fundamental changes to the entire body of the program -- things like Unicode in 2012; Cocoa in 2014 -- that are dragging the program into the 21st century. It may not be glamorous, but it's entirely necessary.
Finale 2014 is hugely more responsive in scrolling and general object manipulation than previous versions on OS X. For me, that's almost enough to warrant it.

We seem to have these discussions every year. When 2012 came out, everyone said "Is that it?". Now, everyone's saying "2012 is good enough for me!".

BvdPress said...
When the guy on the podium puts the stick in the air and gives a downbeat, they expect the group in front to make noise. If I didn't do my job, there would be no noise. There are also no excuses.

And you've never gone on stage under-rehearsed, or made mistakes in a performance?

I'll happily sit with you and compile a list of things that need fixing in 2014. But I will not presume to suggest that MM has been slumming it.

Post Edited (Wiggy) : 11/11/2013 9:45:04 AM (GMT-6)

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/11/2013 10:55 AM

BvdPress said...
A lot of us are just "1" on this forum and seem to produce music under very tight schedules without issues.

Put a PDF page of your (or anyone else's) music here, and I'm sure users would find things that they feel to be issues.

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : BvdPress - 11/11/2013 11:30 AM

Wiggy: If I practiced for 2 years, I am fairly sure I wouldn't miss the first note or as many notes as MM misses with each initial release. Maybe under the hood 2014 is a major overhaul, but I just see them as "slumming it" again from the outside looking in. Just my perspective. You know much about programming than I so I would defer to you in regards to fundamental changes.

Jari: I have put up several pages here and there and there are always niggles. The point is, when you go into the studio or have to produce a score for live TV you don't get a second chance. Many times you don't get much time to produce the scores either. Why can't MM take that approach? They take the approach: throw it on the wall and hope it sticks. I guess it works for them, but for some of us we could never do this and be hired again.

A story: A while back I did an opera and forgot to add one cue to a viola part. There were thousands of pages. Guess what I heard about? Yep it was that one cue because apparently they couldn't count. That is the pressure I live under, but maybe I am abnormal. I have expectations heaped on me and expect my program of choice to also live up to expectations. It just isn't happening again.

And Wiggy is 100% correct we have these discussions every year (or maybe every two years now). Nothing changes. A release followed by complaints followed by an update followed by complaints, etc. until we are happy with what we have and then followed by "When is X version going to be ready?" or ||: Finale release :||

Please don't get me wrong despite the complaints, Finale is the best program out there. It is a simple choice to use it everyday.

Wiggy: If you are compiling bugs, in "Speedy Entry" we need to press "l" twice now to flip stems up or down instead of once. Another minor annoyance, but when you work fast and expect a certain behavior that is no longer occurring it drives me nuts.

Time to get back to work...

Posted By : Flint - 11/11/2013 11:36 AM

Wiggy said...
I was countering the notion that Finale 2014 is not a major overhaul. I was also countering the comparison to a massively larger company. Those are facts, not excuses.

We seem to have these discussions every year. When 2012 came out, everyone said "Is that it?". Now, everyone's saying "2012 is good enough for me!".

People who think that "nothing of consequence" was done are the same ones who thought that the Y2K problem was much ado about nothing. They are unaware of how much work actually went into solving the problem, how much time was spent making sure it worked, and how many MILLIONS of people worked on it.

The COMPLETE REWRITE OF THE MAC CODE FOR FINALE to Cocoa from an ancient deprecated programming language is apparently no big whoop. *iRoll*

woodwind specialist and doubler - Finale 2011b using Speedy Entry - no capslock, GPO 4 Full, Garritan Jazz & Big Band 3, Garritan Concert and Marching Band 2, Windows 8 64-bit, 12GB RAM
UNABLE TO DOWNLOAD Finale 2014 DUE TO LACK OF CAT PICTURES.

If the composer says in effect to the performer: "I do not care whether you perform my music or not," we cannot argue the matter. But if he indicates: "I want you to perform and respond to this music," then his fundamental duty is to write his music so that it is accessible to interpretation. When the performer cannot approach the composer's meaning because of capriciously obscure notation, he may in effect say to the composer: "Why should I bother to puzzle out your music?" - Gardner Read

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/11/2013 12:15 PM

BvdPress said...
Wiggy: If I practiced for 2 years, I am fairly sure I wouldn't miss the first note or as many notes as MM misses with each initial release.

"The first note" is hardly a valid comparison. Perhaps MM has replaced/changed something like half a million rows of code during the rewrites. (I have actually no idea, that's just a guess based on my own plug-in work.)

Btw, the Finale/Windows 2014 release seems to be pretty good. The main complaint there is about the toolbars.

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : Jim Balentine - 11/11/2013 12:25 PM

Analogies between skills are interesting, but don't always work. A friend of mine taught saxophone lessons to a professional basketball player, now retired. This hall of fame player had a career free throw percentage of roughly .75, which means he missed a quarter of the time. A saxophone player can't miss 25% of his notes and be a professional. I think MakeMusic is doing pretty well, even missing a few free throws.

Jim

Finale 2012c r.13 - MacPro 2.93 GHz, 6 GB RAM, OS 10.6.8 (home office); Macbook Pro 2.3 GHZ - OS 10.6.8 (portable office)
iMac 3.2 GHz, OS 10.6.6 (school office)

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/11/2013 12:41 PM

In the same line of thought, it doesn't always work to compare the appreciation of how well or less than well a piece of software is working for some and for others. What may be no more than a minor inconvenience for one is a huge annoyance for the other. Some users, I as well, have concluded that Finale 2014 for them is useless at this point. I very well understand the (our) grievance and why the grievance may not always be worded to everyone's satisfaction. The very last thing we want to hear, though, is to have our problems ignored, belittled or even ridiculed by other users, some not even having tried 2014 for themselves.

Finale 2014, but switched back to 2012c
Mac OS X 10.9, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Post Edited (Writer of Music) : 11/11/2013 11:46:34 AM (GMT-6)

Posted By : BvdPress - 11/11/2013 3:30 PM

Jari Williamsson said...

Btw, the Finale/Windows 2014 release seems to be pretty good. The main complaint there is about the toolbars.

I have not ventured over there yet (a little scared), but is it the size or just not working properly? On the MAC side, they seem to be working fine for me. They just are no longer able to be changed was is a bummer.

Posted By : Vaughan - 11/11/2013 3:34 PM

WoM said...
The very last thing we want to hear, though, is to have our problems ignored, belittled or even ridiculed by other users, some not even having tried 2014 for themselves.

And the very last thing we (users who are happy with Finale and have an inkling of how much work has gone into it) want to hear is what a bug-ridden, worthless, disappointing nightmare Finale 2014 is.

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2014, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.9
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Posted By : Vaughan - 11/11/2013 3:40 PM

Bryan, we've never had toolbars. It's not the Tool Palette the Windows users are talking about. Except for the ability to customise the look, it's pretty much the same as before. Windows users had the possibility of putting menu functions into a toolbar so they were always immediately available with a mouse click, without having to enter a menu, much the way QuicKeys has palettes (if you're acquainted with that macro program). I can well understand the inconvenience in no longer having them.

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2014, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.9
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Posted By : Flint - 11/11/2013 3:48 PM

BvdPress said...

You can arrange the icons in the toolbars any way you like, but cannot remove icons at this time (fine by me for now, just put the useless tools - lyrics, chords, hyperscribe, Simple - on the far end and ignore 'em... when the inevitable maintenance update restores the functionality I can excise them for good). The size of the toolbars is perfectly acceptable for me (at 1900x1240 res on a 24" monitor), and the only complaint I might voice is that the image for each icon could be slightly bigger within the button itself, just for clarity.

The interface is absolutely lightning fast; no delays in switching/dropping/entering/using tools. Can't wait to try it out on a large (50+ stave, 1000+ measure) score. I didn't even have to go through the bother of the usual Garritan library setup, they were detected without work on my part, and seem to play back in excellent form as well.

The only thing I'm not looking forward to is setting up my default Document Style (with my usual full set of expression libraries and custom lines)... but it's worth it to leave all the legacy bits in the dust for good.

I'll now return you to "Who Moved My Cheese?", the Forum.

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/11/2013 4:16 PM

Vaughan said...
And the very last thing we (users who are happy with Finale and have an inkling of how much work has gone into it) want to hear is what a bug-ridden, worthless, disappointing nightmare Finale 2014 is.

Last time I heard a refutation of comparable quality must have been in Kindergarten. Come on, it's so far beneath you to turn tables like that.

But, never mind. As far as I'm concerned this book is closed. Finale 2014 was published with a respectable list of known issues and a serious number of users have reported quite a few more. I'll accept my loss of $170 and am happy for you all since the software works for you. Too bad a tiny bit of empathy was proven to be asking for too much.

Finale 2014, but switched back to 2012c
Mac OS X 10.9, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Posted By : BvdPress - 11/11/2013 5:02 PM

Vaughan said...
Bryan, we've never had toolbars. It's not the Tool Palette the Windows users are talking about. Except for the ability to customise the look, it's pretty much the same as before. Windows users had the possibility of putting menu functions into a toolbar so they were always immediately available with a mouse click, without having to enter a menu, much the way QuicKeys has palettes (if you're acquainted with that macro program). I can well understand the inconvenience in no longer having them.

Thanks. I have never even looked at the Windows version so I am completely clueless on what is and is not there.

Flint: Thanks for your post as well. I would like them bigger as well, but also understand that they are plenty big for those with small monitors. Ideally adjustable seems like the best option.

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/11/2013 5:03 PM

Writer of Music said...
[I'll accept my loss of $170

What no refund?

Posted By : Michel R. E. - 11/11/2013 5:06 PM

Wiggy said...

Writer of Music said...
[I'll accept my loss of $170

What no refund?

yes, it seems like an odd comment to make.

if the $170 is too important a loss, then why not simply ask for a refund?
I was refunded for Finale 2004, no questions asked. MakeMusic have excellent customer support.

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/11/2013 11:14 PM

Wiggy said...
I was countering the notion that Finale 2014 is not a major overhaul. I was also countering the comparison to a massively larger company. Those are facts, not excuses.

Is Finale 2014 perfect? No. Are there a significant number of bugs, inconsistencies and other issues? Yes. But to suggest that MM have been cooling their heels for 2 years shows a massive lack of understanding of the engineering tasks involved and the practicalities and pragmatic considerations that any company must make.

Finale has made a number of fundamental changes to the entire body of the program -- things like Unicode in 2012; Cocoa in 2014 -- that are dragging the program into the 21st century. It may not be glamorous, but it's entirely necessary.
Finale 2014 is hugely more responsive in scrolling and general object manipulation than previous versions on OS X. For me, that's almost enough to warrant it.

We seem to have these discussions every year. When 2012 came out, everyone said "Is that it?". Now, everyone's saying "2012 is good enough for me!".

Your counter was not strong. Yes Blizzard is a much larger company but they also produce much larger products. The comparison is valid, its not about the size its about the delivery of product. Its MM's prerogative to release a product before its ready to collect the earnings and then fix the problems if they chose. All I was saying is perhaps a little more beta testing and a later launch date could have been in order considering this is a tool a lot of use in our profession. I just see Blizzard as a company that does things right in terms of releasing a solid product, however I did note they may go too far w/ this approach. There are loads of companies that big that don't take enough time prior to releases so I fail to see how the size of a company matters. Its about the mindset, large or small.

I wasn't saying the release had to be perfect w/o bugs as has been implied. I also never said there weren't important changes made. I said, since it took over 2 years I would have expected EITHER mind blowing changes or a release w/o serious issues.

I'm certainly excited about some of the changes they've made such as how they handle rests in layers and scores w/o key sigs + accidentals. Bravo to that. I'll wait until I have an opportunity to upgrade and hopefully some of the known issues can be corrected by then.

Posted By : saxop - 11/11/2013 11:42 PM

MowingDevil said...

Your counter was not strong. Yes Blizzard is a much larger company but they also produce much larger products.

I disagree with that. In terms of complexity, the logic in a program like Finale is more difficult to write than many of Blizzard's top games. It's much more open-ended. Finale also has been in ongoing development, whereas games are started and finished over a much shorter period of time. Games also lend themselves easily to modular code that can be easily tested, proven and re-used without need of modification or retesting down the line (a path finding or flocking algorithm, for example). You obviously do this with notation software as well, but there tend to be more changes that disrupt existing pieces and force some measure of rework.

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/12/2013 3:24 AM

saxop said...

MowingDevil said...

Your counter was not strong. Yes Blizzard is a much larger company but they also produce much larger products.

Seriously? How many years has Finale been in existence? Its not like the idea of notation has changed all that much in that time either. AND, where it has changed & evolved Finale has ignored it for the most part. I'm thinking in terms of graphic notation, stopwatch scores etc. Finale begins & ends w/ school band charts, piano music, symphonic scores, pop music, chamber etc. They've added guitar tab but haven't exactly catered to new music composers to say the least and thats where the boundaries of notation have been pushed the most. So considering all this, Finale just has to make the process more logical and improve the work flow in the next version. In other words, its not like they're reinventing the wheel each time they release a new version. They've got a foundation that is there, all they have to do is improve upon it. This year is the exception because of all their foundational changes....but thats why they took an additional year.

NoteAbility Pro is the only notation software out there that is focused on the new music composer and can pretty much do anything including (soon) Chinese prescriptive notation. Its continually evolving and being updated. I dabble in it but still prefer Finale for most of my work primarily because I learned on it and know it the best. I'm enthused w/ some of the new features in 2014 but they really need a new music composer on their development team.

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/12/2013 4:33 AM

MowingDevil said...
NoteAbility Pro is the only notation software out there that is focused on the new music composer and can pretty much do anything including (soon) Chinese prescriptive notation.

Do you have a PDF sample of a complex NoteAbility Pro score that's hard to do in Finale? I looked at the samples on the home page and they all seemed easy to do in Finale as well.

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : saxop - 11/12/2013 7:29 AM

MowingDevil said...

saxop said...

MowingDevil said...

Your counter was not strong. Yes Blizzard is a much larger company but they also produce much larger products.

As I said, the number of years Finale has been in existence is one of the reasons it's likely a bigger and more complex program than many of Blizzard's games (StarCraft, Warcraft, and Diablo). Finale's intended uses aren't nearly restrictive enough to protect it from complexities and challenges that will at times twist the minds of the best software engineers. Give it a try. I guarantee you will run into things that you didn't anticipate.

Posted By : Philip. - 11/12/2013 7:37 AM

Michel R. E. said...

Wiggy said...

Writer of Music said...
[I'll accept my loss of $170

What no refund?

Yes, MakeMusic offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for all their products, if that's what you wish.

Finale 2008b, 2009b, 2010b, 2011c, 2012c
Sibelius 5.2.5, 6.2, 7.1.3
Logic Pro 9
Mac 10.6.8
2x2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
14 GB RAM
www.nycmusicservices.com/

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/12/2013 7:41 AM

Michel R. E. said...

Wiggy said...

Writer of Music said...
[I'll accept my loss of $170

What no refund?

Writer of Music said...
I can understand mr. Bischoff's frustration. I too feel like I just flushed $170 (taxes included) down the toilet. Okay, I know it probably will not be a total waste, presuming that an update will fix the most prominent problems with 2014, but for now I have absolutely no use for an app that robbed me of five otherwise productive days. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Really? Is reading that hard?

Finale 2014, but switched back to 2012c
Mac OS X 10.9, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

… as the critic said to the composer: "It's not just your brownnose, your music really stinks".

Post Edited (Writer of Music) : 11/14/2013 3:54:33 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/12/2013 11:13 PM

Jari Williamsson said...

Do you have a PDF sample of a complex NoteAbility Pro score that's hard to do in Finale? I looked at the samples on the home page and they all seemed easy to do in Finale as well.

I'm not an expert on NAPro but I'll ask a friend who uses it regularly and post it here. What I can tell you, w/ my limited experience on it, is you can use quarter tones and have them playback at pitch as easily as selecting any accidental. Finale can handle quarter tones but its a pain in the butt and totally convoluted. Wth? Why aren't they in the palette w/ the accidentals? How long have composers been using quarter tones in western music? Its hardly the latest thing. I have no idea about Sibelius in this regard. Have things changed w/ 2014? I haven't heard anything yet. If not thats a total FAIL.

Another big thing is, if you use Max/MSP you can network between the two of them. In other words you can write Max messages into the score so that as the score plays back it triggers events in Max. You can take it even further to include score following w/ a camera so NAPro will follow the performer....in real time, slow down w/ the performer....wait for the performer, speed up w/ the performer and playback the score while triggering anything in Max. I think thats one helluva feature if you're into live performance w/ real-time electronics.

NAPro can be intimidating at first because almost every parameter can be changed w/ very few limitations....including not being restricted by the time sig etc. Those restrictions are perfect for basic traditional notation but can be limiting if someone wants to push into new territory.
Its very open that way and a composer's notation program. Its very easy to use for graphical notation and even has some basic graphic designers built in, although like all programs the shapes are best cerated in an illustration program and imported.

Why aren't there more extended technique symbols in Finale? There are in NAPro. You shouldn't have to "create" these for the most common ones. This is a big thing for me.
Why isn't there an "n" and a circle in the dynamics section for niente? *Very* common to use in composition. Boggles the mind, I can only hope they corrected this in 2014.

You can do early notation, going back to chant. I don't believe you can do that w/ Finale or Sibelius. As I mentioned earlier, Chinese notation is coming soon (great for Chinese and world music composers).

You only have one cresc/decrescendo wedge tool....which is all Finale should have since you it forms its shape based on which way you drag it. Having 2 is redundant.

Nevertheless, it shows what is possible and the team who develops NAPro is only 1 person.

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/13/2013 4:41 AM

MowingDevil said...
I'm not an expert on NAPro but I'll ask a friend who uses it regularly and post it here. What I can tell you, w/ my limited experience on it, is you can use quarter tones and have them playback at pitch as easily as selecting any accidental. Finale can handle quarter tones but its a pain in the butt and totally convoluted. Wth? Why aren't they in the palette w/ the accidentals? How long have composers been using quarter tones in western music? Its hardly the latest thing. I have no idea about Sibelius in this regard. Have things changed w/ 2014? I haven't heard anything yet. If not thats a total FAIL.

But that's not notation, that's playback. Is it as easy to do 1/6 note playback in NoteAbility Pro?

MowingDevil said...
Why aren't there more extended technique symbols in Finale? There are in NAPro. You shouldn't have to "create" these for the most common ones. This is a big thing for me. Why isn't there an "n" and a circle in the dynamics section for niente? *Very* common to use in composition. Boggles the mind, I can only hope they corrected this in 2014.

If you need it, just create it. Once. Delete the stuff you don't need. Save to your template(s).

MowingDevil said...
You can do early notation, going back to chant. I don't believe you can do that w/ Finale or Sibelius.

Yes, you can...

MowingDevil said...
You only have one cresc/decrescendo wedge tool....which is all Finale should have since you it forms its shape based on which way you drag it. Having 2 is redundant.

Well, it might be redundant for some users, but not if you're a left-to-right drag user. You can use just one of the Finale tools for hairpins and drag the other way to get the opposite shape, if that's what you want.

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/13/2013 5:19 AM

Jari Williamsson said...

But that's not notation, that's playback. Is it as easy to do 1/6 note playback in NoteAbility Pro?

Incorrect, its both. There is no accidental in Finale that indicates a 1/4 tone. Regardless, I prefer to reasonably hear back what I see if I'd hit play. What are you referring to w/ "1/6 note", 1/6 of a tone?

Jari Williamsson said...

If you need it, just create it. Once. Delete the stuff you don't need. Save to your template(s).

Ridiculous for standard extended notation. Sure, if you want to invent your own notation - fair enough. There's no excuse for several notational symbols that have been neglected for years.

Jari Williamsson said...

MowingDevil said...
You can do early notation, going back to chant. I don't believe you can do that w/ Finale or Sibelius.

Yes, you can...

How, by creating your own again? The symbols are already there in NAPro, thats my point. They are not in Finale unless they're hidden Easter eggs somewhere.

Jari Williamsson said...

MowingDevil said...
You only have one cresc/decrescendo wedge tool....which is all Finale should have since you it forms its shape based on which way you drag it. Having 2 is redundant.

Ok, here you're just being contrary. That makes no sense. You click and drag either left or right. It doesn't matter if you have a crescendo or a decrescendo hairpin. They're both the same depending on which way you drag.

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/13/2013 6:18 AM

MowingDevil said...
There is no accidental in Finale that indicates a 1/4 tone.

Yes, there is, and I have seen many pieces that uses these accidentals by composers. I personally don't like the look of those accidentals, so I tend to use accidentals from other fonts.

MowingDevil said...
What are you referring to w/ "1/6 note", 1/6 of a tone?

Yes. Or the Makam system?

MowingDevil said...
Ridiculous for standard extended notation. Sure, if you want to invent your own notation - fair enough. There's no excuse for several notational symbols that have been neglected for years.

It's only standard notation for certain types of music, and I agree with you that the default file is aimed toward traditional western notation. I don't know if any of the standard libraries includes a pre-defined niente definition, but it takes a couple of seconds to create one from scratch: select the dynamics expression definitions, duplicate pppp and replace the pppp character with slot 150 in the Maestro font. Sorry, I can't see the problem here.

MowingDevil said...
How, by creating your own again? The symbols are already there in NAPro, thats my point. They are not in Finale unless they're hidden Easter eggs somewhere.

There are several different fonts and other approaches. None built in to the default document, though.

MowingDevil said...
Ok, here you're just being contrary. That makes no sense. You click and drag either left or right. It doesn't matter if you have a crescendo or a decrescendo hairpin. They're both the same depending on which way you drag.

I don't understand what you write here, but in Finale:
* Drag a crescendo left-to-right to get a crescendo
* Drag a crescendo right-to-left to get a diminuendo.

I can see that NoteAbility Pro might be a good composer's tool, but the sample PDFs on the web page are certainly not good enough for publishing. Cross-staff notation that sometimes lacks stems inside the beams, all sorts of strange collisions, etc, etc. And it doesn't seem to include MusicXML export?

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : David Ward - 11/13/2013 6:30 AM

MowingDevil said...

Jari Williamsson said...

MowingDevil said...
You only have one cresc/decrescendo wedge tool....which is all Finale should have since you it forms its shape based on which way you drag it. Having 2 is redundant.

Maybe I'm just getting old (due to be 73 in February), but I like to think forwards not backwards and always like to drag from start point to end point, ie left to right. I'm very glad that there are both types of hairpin quickly accessible via the shortcuts < and > when in the tool.

David Ward
www.composers-uk.com/davidward

Finale 2010b, 2014
Mac 10.6.8, 10.8.5
full TGTools

Posted By : Michael Good - 11/13/2013 2:39 PM

NoteAbility Pro supports MusicXML export and import, as listed at www.musicxml.com/software. Import was added in version 2.34 and export in version 2.462.

Michael Good
Director of Digital Sheet Music
MakeMusic, Inc.

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/14/2013 12:27 AM

Jari Williamsson said...

MowingDevil said...
There is no accidental in Finale that indicates a 1/4 tone.

Yes, there is, and I have seen many pieces that uses these accidentals by composers. I personally don't like the look of those accidentals, so I tend to use accidentals from other fonts.

Really? Where?

If it is there why isn't in w/ the other accidentals? As far as I know, to do 1/4 tones its a totally long convoluted work-around and to play them back you need to utilize pitch bend.

Jari Williamsson said...

MowingDevil said...
What are you referring to w/ "1/6 note", 1/6 of a tone?

Yes. Or the Makam system?

I have no idea, I'm not a regular NAPro user. I'll inquire.

Jari Williamsson said...

The niente is not a problem, its just a small example of the dozens of omissions from Finale. I've created my own niente ...but seriously, why isn't it there? Why don't we just create all of the dynamics while we're at it. Niente is certainly more standard than pppp. The problem is the big picture. You shouldn't have to do work-arounds for common extended notation. Yet, they have some (often rarely used) extended notational symbols. Its a massive oversight that could be EASILY rectified.

Jari Williamsson said...

MowingDevil said...
How, by creating your own again? The symbols are already there in NAPro, thats my point. They are not in Finale unless they're hidden Easter eggs somewhere.

There are several different fonts and other approaches. None built in to the default document, though.

Jari Williamsson said...

I don't understand what you write here, but in Finale:
* Drag a crescendo left-to-right to get a crescendo
* Drag a crescendo right-to-left to get a diminuendo.

EXACTLY my point, why do you need 2 tools when they both do the exact same thing?!? David Ward please try it out. Why not have one hairpin tool?

Jari Williamsson said...
I can see that NoteAbility Pro might be a good composer's tool, but the sample PDFs on the web page are certainly not good enough for publishing. Cross-staff notation that sometimes lacks stems inside the beams, all sorts of strange collisions, etc, etc. And it doesn't seem to include MusicXML export?

Please see Michael Good's response and yes it most certainly looks good enough for publishing from what I've seen. If you see any collisions etc in those PDFs I would say its just examples of the software in use. Avoiding collisions is up to the user regardless of program. I haven't done a comparison but the scores I've seen are certainly the same quality as Finale.

Posted By : saxop - 11/14/2013 9:21 AM

MowingDevil said...
Niente is certainly more standard than pppp.

No chance. I can show any 7th grader a pppp and they'll get the point. I could find a class of music majors where not one of them is familiar with the term "niente."

Creating expressions is not a workaround. That's the program working as intended. The reason for not including a lot of symbols is obvious to any good software designer. Making people search through a ton of crap that they'll never need to find what they do is bad design. You don't slow down 90% of users to accommodate the needs of 10%. Instead you look at ways to make it easy for the 10% to customize the program to their needs (which Finale does perfectly in this instance).

The 2 hairpins are also there for usability. First, it doesn't leave new users wondering where the decrescendo is. It also doesn't confuse existing users who started using Finale in the days before dragging either direction was possible. Finally, it allows 2 metatool keys to be mapped, < and >. When working forward in a score, especially when drawing hairpins that go between multiple systems, it's nice to be able to work left to right.

Try it. Make a software program that allows a particular hairpin workflow for 20 years that your users become accustomed to, and then change things so that people have to add hairpins a different way. See what kind of response you get. I'd think that after seeing people's response here to missing "redundant" toolbars that you might see why it would be a mistake.

Posted By : Flint - 11/14/2013 9:40 AM

saxop said...

MowingDevil said...
Niente is certainly more standard than pppp.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Bravo! (particularly about the cliché of niente)

Posted By : Zoots - 11/14/2013 9:45 AM

saxop said...

MowingDevil said...
...
Try it. Make a software program that allows a particular hairpin workflow for 20 years that your users become accustomed to, and then change things so that people have to add hairpins a different way. See what kind of response you get. I'd think that after seeing people's response here to missing "redundant" toolbars that you might see why it would be a mistake.

Indeed, unfortunately that is Finale's situation regarding the program as a whole. Even less than ideal things get entrenched. Probably why the QWERTY keyboard still is highly dominant. It is the reason why the IBM-PC had to ensure any development was backwards compatible for their business users while Apple was able to introduce the completely new and innovative Mac.

Being a new Finale user and being aware of the great work that is done with it, I have no business giving much of an opinion about it. However I will say that the UI seems somewhat of a kludge at times.

Finale 2012c

JABB3/Aria

MuseScore interest

Smartscore Pro X2

Windows 8

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/14/2013 9:07 PM

saxop said...

MowingDevil said...
Niente is certainly more standard than pppp.

Bollocks. Whether or not a 7th grader gets it doesn't make it more standard.

You also contradict yourself. Reducing the hairpins to one button would reduce the "crap" as you put it. Is it really that hard to comprehend since they are both *exactly the same* whether you go left to right or vice versa? Its simple really. One streamlined button w/ an icon that has both hairpins on it. Finale has made way bigger changes than this, c'mon.

Consider how Finale lays out all the symbols. They've got them broken into categories and then they've got an "all" category which sums everything together. They could easily have an extended techniques category which would be useful to composers who use them. That way all the school band arrangers wouldn't be scared away.

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/14/2013 9:11 PM

Flint said...
Couldn't have said it better myself. Bravo! (particularly about the cliché of niente)

Going to or from silence in music is cliché is it?

Posted By : BvdPress - 11/14/2013 9:53 PM

MowingDevil said...
Niente is certainly more standard than pppp.

I have worked with hundreds of composers, arrangers, etc. over the last 10+ years and only 1 composer* has ever used niente. It is perfectly fine to use it, but most definitely not standard. I would say seldom to ever used at least for what I have done and seen.

*and this composer specifically stated he read about it in a music engraving book rather than seen it in practice.

Posted By : Michel R. E. - 11/14/2013 10:20 PM

BvdPress said...

MowingDevil said...
Niente is certainly more standard than pppp.

how odd.

even as a pianist I have come across numerous occasions of the notation "niente" in scores over the lest 30 years or so.

Posted By : BvdPress - 11/14/2013 11:05 PM

It very possible niente is used in certain types of music much more than others. I really don't know for sure on that and can only relay my own experiences.

As a side note, I never really understood pppp or ffff. They both seem to be overkill to me, but I think Tchaikovsky or the editors used them every now and then.

Posted By : saxop - 11/14/2013 11:39 PM

MowingDevil said...

Bollocks. Whether or not a 7th grader gets it doesn't make it more standard.

The standard concept that people understand is that the more P's the composer writes, the quieter you play. That's the rule. Any musician who reads ppp and pppp in the same song will know which is quieter, because they understand the rule.

But I understand that you're talking about which is more common. And I believe you're incorrect, at least here in the United States. I would have a difficult time finding a musician who has never come across pppp. I'd have the opposite problem with niente.

MowingDevil said...

You also contradict yourself. Reducing the hairpins to one button would reduce the "crap" as you put it. Is it really that hard to comprehend since they are both *exactly the same* whether you go left to right or vice versa? Its simple really. One streamlined button w/ an icon that has both hairpins on it. Finale has made way bigger changes than this, c'mon.

First of all, one additional symbol on a palette that fits easily on the screen is not the same thing as adding tons of extra symbols to dig through. Secondly, I already explained other reasons, including workflow. Sometimes it's faster to work left to right. The opposite might be true at times as well. If you're limiting yourself to working one direction because you don't press < >, then you are slowing yourself down. That's your choice. Don't try to take away mine.

Posted By : Michael Cook - 11/15/2013 1:13 AM

BvdPress said...
As a side note, I never really understood pppp or ffff. They both seem to be overkill to me, but I think Tchaikovsky or the editors used them every now and then.

The famous example is the bassoon solo in the first movement of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, marked pppppp.

Michael Cook
Finale 3.0 - 2014
Mac OS 10.9

Posted By : Michel R. E. - 11/15/2013 1:32 AM

Michael Cook said...

BvdPress said...
As a side note, I never really understood pppp or ffff. They both seem to be overkill to me, but I think Tchaikovsky or the editors used them every now and then.

The famous example is the bassoon solo in the first movement of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, marked pppppp.

where the bassoonist basically just waves his instrument around, pretending to play.. the symphonic equivalent of Marcel Marseau?

Posted By : David Ward - 11/15/2013 2:53 AM

Michel R. E. said...

Michael Cook said...

BvdPress said...
As a side note, I never really understood pppp or ffff. They both seem to be overkill to me, but I think Tchaikovsky or the editors used them every now and then.

The famous example is the bassoon solo in the first movement of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, marked pppppp.

where the bassoonist basically just waves his instrument around, pretending to play.. the symphonic equivalent of Marcel Marseau?

Where it almost always gets played on a bass clarinet, although there's none in the original score, because, unlike a bassoon, a bass clarinet can play extremely quietly. Verdi's personal vocal scores have ppppppp marked by hand over some high tenor notes, as an encouragement not to belt them out ff. There are exaggerated dynamics in published full scores by Italian opera composers, including Verdi and Puccini, in an attempt to counteract the Italian provincial opera orchestras of the time from playing everything mf. I've heard a rehearsal recording in which Toscanini is explaining to the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London that a particular ppp singing legato line for the cellos in Verdi should be played p to mp .

In other words, it's all relative.

David Ward
www.composers-uk.com/davidward

Finale 2010b, 2014
Mac 10.6.8, 10.8.5
full TGTools

Posted By : jim dukey - 11/15/2013 4:56 AM

"waves his instrument around, pretending to play."
You know too much…

Molecular Computer, Powered by Fusion in a Jar. Finale 3000, Wireless ESP Module, No Physical Interface, Printed Parts Manifest by The Universe,
SOOOO Boring! Now Everybody is Friggin' Mozart.

Posted By : RV - 11/15/2013 9:33 AM

- I am SO happy that I bought this fine update!
Unfortunately, my 2012 version (that I also updated) just cost me a mere 150 Euros. (thats about $180).
That was a FANTASTIC update as well.
- apart that I couldn't use it at all, as I wanted to…

NOW;
- there is Finale 2014 shipping!!
I am SO HAPPY that I decided to give MakeMusic/Finalemusic/Coda… (or whatever they are called now) ANOTHER chance to make up for things they might have done wrong…
I got my package today in the Post. Also, a mere 150 Euros… (It's good I am MADE of money!)

- it's a BEAUTIFUL package! I'd say! (Good design-department!!).

I immediately installed the software on my -admitted- COMPLETELY out-of-date iMac (i5 from 2010 - only with 4GB of Ram).
- I guess it must be my darn old unusable computer that just can't handle this amazing piece of software…
Because - my App CRASHES before I even see a splash screen…

Bummer.

Well.
- I guess Finale just don't WANT to make good softwares anymore…
I got my (very) old version.
- Weirdly enough - this works fantastic. (even if it says it shouldn't be working on my system…).

Now - you all go write some fabulous scores, ya people!!
GO-GO-GO!

RV
iMac (12,1), 2,5GHz, 8Gb RAM
Finale 2012 c.r13 (2008 b r1, 2005, 2003, v.3, v.1.1)
Logic Pro 8
Lexicon i-ONIX FW810S
OS 10.5.8
OS 10.8.2

www.aenigma-edition.com

Posted By : RV - 11/15/2013 10:09 AM

OCTO. said...

. said...
Logic Pro X was my previous major update and everything I said about Finale 2014 is also true fro Logic X. Worst update ever.

Good to know (your opinion).
I will stay on my LP8, Fin 11 and OS X.SL.
Safe heaven. Everything works. Until the storm calms down.

The storm WON'T calm down. I don't believe in this anymore...

It's just friggin' amazing!
- we are living in a BAAADtime for computer softwares!
There ARE too many descent small-companies doing the life unbearable for the big ones, so they can't do the proper stuff anymore in time…
Finale CONSTANTLY try to compete with Sibelius, although they shouldn't be "rivals" but more two softwares with a different approach!
(in the end - they both look pretty darn identical in the score-output…
I think it would be wise to split-up the two paths apart, instead of going so close in parallel all the time!)

Why don't they make Finale for the "geeky Pro's (Now REALLY!!) and sibelius for the sometimes-users and teachers/schools?
In that way, we all might become happier, in terms of dedicated functionality!
(Of course; the company that makes the less money, whichever that would be, will be in trouble… so we would never see this coming…).

oh, well…
- maybe I'd just accept the fact that making music is old-fashioned…
(not to mention creating SCORES!! )

RV
iMac (12,1), 2,5GHz, 8Gb RAM
Finale 2012 c.r13 (2008 b r1, 2005, 2003, v.3, v.1.1)
Logic Pro 8
Lexicon i-ONIX FW810S
OS 10.5.8
OS 10.8.2

www.aenigma-edition.com

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/15/2013 10:16 AM

RV said...
Because - my App CRASHES before I even see a splash screen…

Are you sure it isn't an AU that crashes?

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : Shnootre - 11/15/2013 10:17 AM

I am grateful for the o/p. I am in the midst of the biggest project of my life, and if Finale 14 were an update that was running smooth across all platforms (are the original releases, before the updates, ever?) I would consider upgrading my operating system so I could run it. The new features look practical and helpful, though none get me really excited (like improved page formatting would). I will sit tight and continue to read reports, and am happy not to be a beta tester at this time. I have faith MM will make the changes necessary to get this upgrade running right.

Daniel Sonenberg
Macbook Pro 2 GHz Intel Core i7
OSX 10.6.8
4 gig ram
GPO4 full and JABB3
Finale 2012

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/15/2013 10:21 AM

What I find interesting about all the comments, is that (remembering the 2012 release) I haven't seen a single mention about the continued lack of magnetic positioning.

I guess the lack of 64-bit is more important, this time.

To me? Not.

Posted By : Shnootre - 11/15/2013 10:31 AM

magnetic positioning lack is a bummer, and page formatting in general is a bummer. I'll never switch to Sibelius (because I think Finale is a vastly superior tool for composition), but I have Sibelius envy every time I work w/ students on formatting their scores in that program. In particular, the way systems just snap correctly to fill up the whole page when dragged is a dream. If portability were a more viable option (without too many things getting screwed up), I would definitely compose in Finale and format in Sibelius.

Daniel Sonenberg
Macbook Pro 2 GHz Intel Core i7
OSX 10.6.8
4 gig ram
GPO4 full and JABB3
Finale 2012

Posted By : saxop - 11/15/2013 11:47 AM

RV said...

Why don't they make Finale for the "geeky Pro's (Now REALLY!!) and sibelius for the sometimes-users and teachers/schools?

MakeMusic's footprint on the music education market is quite a bit stronger than Sibelius'. And there's no reason right now for MakeMusic to back away from any notation markets. Sibelius is the product that's in trouble, with a large number of its formerly enthusiastic users now watching Steinberg. The notation market is small enough as it is, especially with more popular than ever free alternatives available (Noteflight and MuseScore).

Posted By : Motet - 11/15/2013 1:36 PM

RV,

It is possible to get a refund on 2014, but your problems may not be insurmountable.

Finale 2011b, 2005, TGTools

Windows XP

Posted By : BvdPress - 11/15/2013 2:51 PM

saxop said...

RV said...

Why don't they make Finale for the "geeky Pro's (Now REALLY!!) and sibelius for the sometimes-users and teachers/schools?

Isn't Steinberg essentially still an idea?

Posted By : MowingDevil - 11/15/2013 2:53 PM

saxop said...

MowingDevil said...

Bollocks. Whether or not a 7th grader gets it doesn't make it more standard.

Different worlds perhaps. Niente (or a circle as a symbol to start from silence) turns up 10x more in scores I read than pppp.

saxop said...

You really think clicking back and forth between 2 tools and then dragging the same way is more efficient than one tool which you drag either way? I see it as the exact opposite, it would speed things up and simplify the tool palette/bar. Now that they allow for each symbol to do both (but opposite of each other) it would be more intuitive. They got rid of the mass mover, I could see this coming in down the road.

I already addressed how extra symbols could easily be handled.

Posted By : Michel R. E. - 11/15/2013 3:10 PM

MowingDevil said...

You really think clicking back and forth between 2 tools and then dragging the same way is more efficient than one tool which you drag either way? I see it as the exact opposite, it would speed things up and simplify the tool palette/bar. Now that they allow for each symbol to do both (but opposite of each other) it would be more intuitive. They got rid of the mass mover, I could see this coming in down the road.

I already addressed how extra symbols could easily be handled.

you DO know that you can easily assign metatools to shartshapes right?

I just choose the smartshape tool, and from there S = slur, D = diminuendo, C = crescendo, etc...

no need to go back and forth to change the tool.

Posted By : Motet - 11/15/2013 3:23 PM

Haven't the hairpin tools worked both ways for a very long time? I only use the crescendo tool.

Finale 2011b, 2005, TGTools

Windows XP

Posted By : Michael Cook - 11/15/2013 3:33 PM

BvdPress said...
Isn't Steinberg essentially still an idea?

Steinberg's notation application is certainly more than an idea: the team has been working at it for a year now. Of course it will need a lot more work before it's ready for the public, but there's no doubt that Steinberg and the development team are committed to getting that work done. It has high chances of being a worthy competitor for Finale when it does come on the market.

Michael Cook
Finale 3.0 - 2014
Mac OS 10.9

Posted By : Christopher Smith - 11/15/2013 3:49 PM

Michel R. E. said...

you DO know that you can easily assign metatools to shartshapes right?

I just choose the smartshape tool, and from there S = slur, D = diminuendo, C = crescendo, etc...

no need to go back and forth to change the tool.

In fact, out of the box Finale assigns cresc. to < and dim to > (or more accurately, comma and period). If I have a cresc. followed by dim, my mouse is already in the correct position. I just hit the other key with my left hand.

I leave the Smart Shape tool permanently on Slur and just use the metatools for everything else. But Mowing Devil could drag either way and not be bothered about it. I don't know why he is so incensed by that one little thing that some other people find useful. I get way more upset about grace notes breaking in voiced linked parts (am I to understand that's fixed in 2014?), and the articulations which in a recent version of Finale suddenly started flipping to below the staff when invoking Rhythmic Notation staff styles. THAT's a lot of useless mousing I have to put up with.

Christopher Smith

Mac 2 x 2 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
Finale 2011b and 2012c r.13
or
Mac iBook G4 733 Mhz
OSX 10.4.11
Finale 2010b r.1

Posted By : saxop - 11/15/2013 7:21 PM

The technique has been stated several times in this thread. Hold <, double click drag. Hold >, double click drag. Like Christopher, I leave it on the Slur tool. Try this test. Give yourself 3 measures, and in each one enter a crescendo followed by a decrescendo. Try it both ways. Working left to right continually results in less mouse movement and makes it easier to keep your mouse in the same vertical position.

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/15/2013 7:26 PM

Pretend one of the icons isn't there. In your mind's eye, imagine that the one that remains has cresc. and decresc. both indicated. Hold down the arrow, and drag whichever direction you want.

Satisfied?

Posted By : Flint - 11/15/2013 9:31 PM

Why is it those who complain the loudest about Finale's shortcomings tend to be the ones who don't know how to use it effectively or efficiently?

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 11/15/2013 10:24 PM

Because complaining is easier than learning.

Posted By : BvdPress - 11/16/2013 12:13 AM

Michael Cook said...

BvdPress said...
Isn't Steinberg essentially still an idea?

I truly hope it will be a competitor, but without an actual product all we can do now is speculate.

The one huge plus they do have a is a team who has already "done it". I guess we just wait and see...

Posted By : Vaughan - 11/16/2013 5:35 AM

If RV is still following this thread, one of problems with Finale crashing right after installation can be solved by clearing all font caches (with a utility like OnyX) and restarting. I'm afraid a lot of people, unfortunately but understandably, got put off the entire program because of this initial problem with the font caches.

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2014, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.9
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Posted By : RV - 11/16/2013 9:04 AM

Vaughan said...
If RV is still following this thread, one of problems with Finale crashing right after installation can be solved by clearing all font caches (with a utility like OnyX) and restarting. I'm afraid a lot of people, unfortunately but understandably, got put off the entire program because of this initial problem with the font caches.

- yes I'm still looking - at the moment, mostly because I think it's so silly… (The upgrade… I mean, and what people/fellow-users say about this…)

Hey; could somebody please take my side and explain why I shouldn't be able to use a "chosen" font to make my scores?
- why the He** doesn't my own fonts work properly in 2012? - is there ANY reason for this?
(That got my quite upset the last update… - understandable?)

Now; in 2014 "update" - I can't even START the friggin' thing anymore!
- I don't CARE if I "have to clean font cashes, UnInstall ALL my AU's, pickmynosewashmyclothesanddrinkabeer…"

THIS IS INSANE!

It is a MUSIC-Software. And it works a little bit with graphics too…
- could you PLEASE give me ONE example of another "new" software coming out, where one asks to do such silly things??
MakeMusic should bloody darn well learn NOT TO release a update unless IT WORKS!
Nobody gets happy like this!

(Now, OF COURSE, it can be so, that it's only MY computer that is completely messed up… Of course!
But, then again; how come ALL my OTHER (Music) Software work MORE than well?)

-

It's just history repeating…
I just remember how upset I was some year ago.. haha! Exactly the same!
(I must just admit - it's solely my stupidity to believe it would change… - sorry for this).

RV
iMac (12,1), 2,5GHz, 8Gb RAM
Finale 2012 c.r13 (2008 b r1, 2005, 2003, v.3, v.1.1)
Logic Pro 8
Lexicon i-ONIX FW810S
OS 10.5.8
OS 10.8.2

www.aenigma-edition.com

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/16/2013 9:53 AM

RV said...

Hey; could somebody please take my side and explain why I shouldn't be able to use a "chosen" font to make my scores?
- why the He** doesn't my own fonts work properly in 2012? - is there ANY reason for this?
(That got my quite upset the last update… - understandable?)

Now; in 2014 "update" - I can't even START the friggin' thing anymore!.

Finale should (and does for the most part) work fine with any fonts you have. There are some bugs and issues, sure, but we don't know what your problem is at this time -- it could be nothing to do with Finale, for all we know.

If you look round forums of any software -- Photoshop, Logic, Office, anything -- you will find people complaining that it crashes immediately. Mostly, these things can be fixed on the computer itself. Occasionally, something needs to be updated.

Posted By : Christopher Smith - 11/16/2013 3:34 PM

There is a fonts sticky at the top of this forum addressing font problems with MacOS. I keep getting problems and I can't remember what to do, so I have to keep checking the sticky and performing the routines.

Christopher Smith

Mac 2 x 2 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
Finale 2011b and 2012c r.13
or
Mac iBook G4 733 Mhz
OSX 10.4.11
Finale 2010b r.1

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/16/2013 3:43 PM

Christopher Smith said...
There is a fonts sticky at the top of this forum addressing font problems with MacOS. I keep getting problems and I can't remember what to do, so I have to keep checking the sticky and performing the routines.

From what has been said on the forums here and my own experiences, Finale <sometimes> gets its font knickers in a twist when it installs. I've never had to re-empty the font cache again in the general running of Finale. Your experience is unusual and I would suggest possibly being caused by something else.

You're running 2010 on Tiger...?

Posted By : Stringman - 11/24/2013 7:10 AM

I've been using Finale since 97. 2014 is the worst "upgrade" ever. I'm experiencing buyer remorse over such a waste of money. For me the most serious bugs are: 1. Simple entry- when i click on a line or space to place a note, the note is placed on the line or space below it. 1a. The mouse in simple entry is too jerky as it locks onto a line or space. 2. On the template page when opening a new document, the return key functions like the tab key allowing only one line of text per text box. 3. Overall slower productivity due to dealing with these issues. 4. Ugly interface by Mac standards (looks like an ugly windows interface- no offense windows users but Mac people like their eye candy). The Mac interface is getting uglier due to Maverick so this may not be a Finale issue.

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/24/2013 8:02 AM

Stringman said...
I've been using Finale since 97. 2014 is the worst "upgrade" ever. I'm experiencing buyer remorse over such a waste of money. For me the most serious bugs are: 1. Simple entry- when i click on a line or space to place a note, the note is placed on the line or space below it. 1a. The mouse in simple entry is too jerky as it locks onto a line or space. 2. On the template page when opening a new document, the return key functions like the tab key allowing only one line of text per text box. 3. Overall slower productivity due to dealing with these issues. 4. Ugly interface by Mac standards (looks like an ugly windows interface- no offense windows users but Mac people like their eye candy). The Mac interface is getting uglier due to Maverick so this may not be a Finale issue.

1. I don't have this issue. Simple Entry behaves as previously (except it's now much more responsive!). Submit a case to MM and maybe it can be fixed.
1a & 3. You'll be be MASSIVELY more productive if you use the computer keyboard to enter notes, rather than clicking in place with the mouse.
4. The interface shouldn't LOOK considerably different from 2012, but it's been re-written using more modern OS X code, rather than ancient code dating from Classic Mac days.

Posted By : Christopher Smith - 11/24/2013 8:16 AM

Wiggy said...

I can't remember the cat names; I go by number. What's wrong with 2010 on 10.4? Actually, that's the system that hasn't given me any trouble; it's my bigger, newer computer running the latest Finale that messes up sometimes, usually after an update.

Christopher Smith

Mac 2 x 2 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
Finale 2011b and 2012c r.13
or
Mac iBook G4 733 Mhz
OSX 10.4.11
Finale 2010b r.1

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/24/2013 11:04 AM

Wiggy said...

Christopher Smith said...
From what has been said on the forums here and my own experiences, Finale <sometimes> gets its font knickers in a twist when it installs. I've never had to re-empty the font cache again in the general running of Finale. Your experience is unusual and I would suggest possibly being caused by something else.

I have been getting font id conflicts and a corrupt Tamburo font for as long as I have software to analyse fonts and font issues (must have somewhere in the 1990s). I have had many changes of hardware (cq. clean installs) since and many an upgrade/update from Finale (cq. clean installs), but always the same issues. Cleaning the cache solves nothing in this case — but given the clean installs, these issues could or even should be present on just about everyone's system.

Finale 2014, but switched back to 2012c
Mac OS X 10.9, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

… as the critic said to the composer: "It's not just you're a brownnose, your music really stinks".

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/24/2013 11:21 AM

Writer of Music said...
I have been getting font id conflicts and a corrupt Tamburo font for as long as I have software to analyse fonts and font issues (must have somewhere in the 1990s). I have had many changes of hardware (cq. clean installs) since and many an upgrade/update from Finale (cq. clean installs), but always the same issues. Cleaning the cache solves nothing in this case — but given the clean installs, these issues could or even should be present on just about everyone's system.

I have Tamburo active on my system with no problem. Are you saying that you've reinstalled the font from MM with each new version and have problems?

Christopher Smith said...
What's wrong with 2010 on 10.4? ..... Mac iBook G4 733 Mhz

I can't find a 733MHz G4 iBook on Mactracker. The first G4 iBook have 800MHz CPUs, so all of them should run 10.5. While 10.4 is within the minimum requirements for Finale 2010, it's a 2005-vintage OS. 2010 was designed to run on 10.5 (and released just before 10.6 came out

) I would upgrade to 10.5 if you can: the benefits are immeasurable.

Posted By : rpmseattle - 11/24/2013 1:22 PM

Motet said...
not everything is methodically tested. Going through all the plug-ins and keyboard shortcuts documented in the manual would have taken someone at most one day.

I strongly agree on this point. There needs to be a (better and different) systematic approach to in-house testing, logging and tracking bugs and external beta testing. Historically, not only are new bugs introduced with new features (a certain small amount of this is statistically inevitable) but also old bugs are brought forward into new versions at an unacceptable rate.

The current Quality Control approach, systematic or not, obviously isn't working successfully; in fact, compared to other similar software might be considered an Epic Fail. Solution is clear: (a) Isolate ineffective processes and figure out why the current Quality Control arm is not producing a much higher rate of bug-free software and implement changes so that MakeMusic's software releases are consistently more bug-free and perhaps concurrently with that (b) HR needs to isolate ineffective employees and replace them with people who are more skillful with the particular and very important position of Quality Control. Let's hope that this latest round of corporate reorganization will address both of these things.

Finale 2012, 2011 | Mac Pro 8 Core Xeon | OSX 10.6.x
www.musicprep.com/makemusic
www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/category/finale/

Posted By : saxop - 11/24/2013 3:45 PM

rpmseattle said...

Motet said...
not everything is methodically tested. Going through all the plug-ins and keyboard shortcuts documented in the manual would have taken someone at most one day.

It's easy to complain about the job others are doing until we try to do it ourselves. I don't find Finale's quality to be significantly different from other content development applications I use. I believe the Finale team is both smart and dedicated, and I don't think that any of us would do a better job. This forum makes us aware of a lot more problems than we would know about if we each used the program in isolation, and that's affecting perception. I doubt the general consensus matches.

Posted By : rpmseattle - 11/24/2013 4:58 PM

saxop said...
I don't find Finale's quality to be significantly different from other content development applications I use. I believe the Finale team is both smart and dedicated, and I don't think that any of us would do a better job. This forum makes us aware of a lot more problems than we would know about if we each used the program in isolation, and that's affecting perception. I doubt the general consensus matches.

While I don't argue that the Finale team is qualified, I'm surprised to hear that you think Finale's quality control is what you experience with other software, actually, unless you are perhaps comparing MakeMusic to Microsoft, which for a long time had a history of rolling out software before it was fully baked.

The Finale team can be both smart and dedicated, and still require a more effective and systematic approach for finding and eradicating bugs in the software than it has now, as well as its "UI-think". With the professional level users I know, the only ones I hear saying Finale is "great" and "awesome" without adding some sort of caveat are people giving soundbites for MakeMusic's press releases. That is to say, we initially talk about how wonderful the new keyless instrument feature is, but the discussions following that are more about what didn't get cleaned up. Every version.

You imply that it takes special skill to be a programmer. Absolutely, but I'm not a programmer; I'm a pro level end user. I don't *care* how everything works under the hood, or how hard something specific is to fix, change or create (although I appreciate the amount of work that is required to build a well-designed and stable new release). What I do know is that I use the program every working day, and I can see where Finale's competitors are, and what their level of quality control is, and how intuitive (or not) their UI's are. And I use more than one notation program, so I *know* what I'm missing currently in Finale. The fact that I can export Finale files into a competitor's program via Music XML should be the *last* think I consider for each job, not the first.

Perhaps you are a Finale beta tester; my intent is not to offend you or anyone; it's to lobby for more stable releases of the software with a more consistent UI. New features are great, and consistently are higher on the "wow" scale which translates to sales, but I use the software every working day. To me, little bugs or a UI niggle that has been subtly interrupting my workflow on a daily basis until I'm trained to put up with it, or to turn it off because it breaks under my workflow are important enough for MakeMusic to fix, IMO.

I don't know the exact method that MakeMusic uses to prioritize whether or not resources are thrown toward something, but I believe good product development should be more than just assigning a statistical value to a report of a bug; e.g. how many times it gets reported. There are many Finale users who will never even use certain features of the program. Professional users of the program are in a position to provide excellent feedback to MakeMusic; they shouldn't be penalized because their numbers don't represent a significant lobbying force (if prioritizing what gets fixed is purely by user statistics).

I would agree that by sharing findings on this forum, we are at least aware of issues we need to avoid. But I would argue that a better scenario would be for the forum to be primarily about users helping other users; where understanding of how a well designed and bug free feature works is the biggest obstacle to overcome.

Robert Puff

Finale 2012, 2011 | Mac Pro 8 Core Xeon | OSX 10.6.x
www.musicprep.com/makemusic
www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/category/finale/

Post Edited (rpmseattle) : 11/24/2013 4:05:11 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : Motet - 11/24/2013 5:27 PM

What I don't quite understand is why beta testing doesn't catch the obvious problems that always turn up on day one of a new release. Are the beta testers only trying the new features to make sure they work? It's likely the developers have already done that, so it's not terribly useful. What's really wanted are beta testers that are willing to use the new version for actual work--that's the way real testing and regression testing are going to happen.

And my just-quoted suggestion that plug-ins and keyboard shortcuts be tested is obviously not being done.

Finale 2011b, 2005, TGTools
Windows XP

Posted By : saxop - 11/24/2013 5:41 PM

rpmseattle said...

While I don't argue that the Finale team is qualified, I'm surprised to hear that you think Finale's quality control is what you experience with other software, actually, unless you are perhaps comparing MakeMusic to Microsoft, which for a long time had a history of rolling out software before it was fully baked.

No, I wasn't talking about large companies. But let's not pretend that Finale 2014 is anything close to the PR disaster that Apple had on its hands when it rolled out its maps replacement. I mean, Apple actually had to recommend its competitors' products.

And then of course there is HealthCare.gov...

I encounter occasional crashes with a lot of software I use, mostly programming IDEs and audio/art creation tools. Finale is more stable than the majority of those, so I give them credit. I also can't really say that I ever have to ask questions about how to achieve something with it or that any bugs are impossible for me to work around. For my particular needs, Sibelius' bugs and shortcomings are much more inconvenient, so Finale is definitely better for me.

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/24/2013 7:00 PM

Wiggy said...

I have Tamburo active on my system with no problem. Are you saying that you've reinstalled the font from MM with each new version and have problems?

Since Tamburo was always found to be corrupted (by FontBook, FontDoctor, Suitcase, etc.), I always removed it after installation, which means that it will get reinstalled with every upgrade/update. I have no use for Tamburo, so I'll remove it again. If I remember well, Seville was another problematic font, but I never had any use for that one either.

Posted By : rpmseattle - 11/24/2013 8:03 PM

Motet said...
What's really wanted are beta testers that are willing to use the new version for actual work--that's the way real testing and regression testing are going to happen.

I would agree with that.

I run into bugs in 100+ bar orchestral scores that frankly, would never show up in a virgin 32 bar lead sheet.

Another issue is that it or not, users continue to update old files to create new templates, which makes it harder for Finale to effectively find and fix bugs. Finale users typically feel it's far too labor intensive to build a pro level template from scratch for each new version (it shouldn't be).

For instance, Finale hasn't made it easy to import Category settings (new categories are always added with Expression Libraries even if the Category name is identical). There is no Category Designer Library item specifically, so one must update the fonts and placement of each item in each category manually. Furthermore, a number of Document Settings do not update immediately when you import a house style, so for instance, one must go into each staff to change the font, size and style of individual instrument names, rather than being able to do this globally as part of the Import House Style.

This makes it extremely labor intensive to build a new template from scratch, because so many things have to be set manually. User's templates get messier with each new update because it's so labor intensive to build a new template from the ground up. Some basic house style housekeeping improvements to Finale that reduced the need to rely on old files would really make a positive difference.

Additionally, it is my opinion that the beta program itself needs some kind of systematic overhaul - obvious things are currently not being caught, and the vanilla release of each version of Finale is historically buggy.

Concurrent with that, there needs to be someone at the helm who really understands good design UI. Someone needs to make more user friendly and efficient UI decisions than what is currently implemented. In fairness, we are seeing lots of improvements. Nevertheless...

A very basic improvement would be reducing the number of keystrokes and mouse clicks for any and all operations where this is possible to do so. An example of this would be showing text in the part which is hidden in the score. Current steps are (1) right click (2) select Unlink in Part (3) Hide in score. Easier would be " Show in Score", "Show in Part" and "Show in All" contextual menu items. Any of these choices represents a single operation.

Finally, when something like the above is implemented for one object, follow through and add this functionality for other similar objects. If history is any indication, we would see the above implemented for expressions but not for hairpins. Which means that whoever has been at the helm has not been aware of the larger workflow picture, IMO.

Robert Puff

Finale 2012, 2011 | Mac Pro 8 Core Xeon | OSX 10.6.x
www.musicprep.com/makemusic
www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/category/finale/

Post Edited (rpmseattle) : 11/24/2013 7:15:04 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : Christopher Smith - 11/24/2013 9:41 PM

rpmseattle said...
one must go into each staff to change the font, size and style of individual instrument names, rather than being able to do this globally as part of the Import House Style.

Robert Puff

You can do this for every staff at once, or for a set of staves, using the Global Staff Attributes plugin.

But I see your point that this should be importable.

Christopher Smith

Mac 2 x 2 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
OSX 10.6.8
Finale 2011b and 2012c r.13
or
Mac iBook G4 733 Mhz
OSX 10.4.11
Finale 2010b r.1

Posted By : rpmseattle - 11/24/2013 11:31 PM

Christopher Smith said...
You can do this for every staff at once, or for a set of staves, using the Global Staff Attributes plugin.

Yes, thanks for the reminder, Chris. And in the spirit of completeness, this works for Group Attributes, too, (although the Global Staff Attributes plugin is still a secondary, discreet step from importing the Document Options / House Style). Of course, the main point of my post was that updating a virgin Finale file to incorporate all of a users settings and house style is currently an enormous amount of work, which encourages users to keep updating old template files, which are more prone to issues in the first place.

For instance, if you open an old Finale file in a new version, delete a few staves and then added some new ones, it's interesting to note that Finale retains the old deleted staff numbers somewhere in the file, and that the new staves which are added are numbered as if the deleted staves still existed. This might be an explanation for why, when new staves are added in a large score, sometimes Chord Symbols or staff attached text will appear along with the new staff. Definitely a reproducible bug in an old file with a lot of staves, but not one that will be reproducible in a virgin document, because the staff number assignments haven't become messed up.

Making a greater number of the internal Document Options and other house style settings available to save and load as part of a master house style, so a new score can be updated in real time, and more users will be encouraged to work smarter, in new files that are leaner, and less prone to bugs.

Robert

Finale 2012, 2011 | Mac Pro 8 Core Xeon | OSX 10.6.x
www.musicprep.com/makemusic
www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/category/finale/

Post Edited (rpmseattle) : 11/24/2013 10:46:49 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : saxop - 11/24/2013 11:39 PM

rpmseattle said...
An example of this would be showing text in the part which is hidden in the score. Current steps are (1) right click (2) select Unlink in Part (3) Hide in score. Easier would be " Show in Score", "Show in Part" and "Show in All" contextual menu items. Any of these choices represents a single operation.

That design would confuse users some, since it wouldn't be clear that movement was also unlinked by the change in visibility. Since the critical action that's taking place really does involve linking/unlinking, it's probably clearest to make the commands reflect that. The show/hide action is really separate, like movement, and only relates to linking in that its effect varies based on whether the link exists.

Posted By : rpmseattle - 11/24/2013 11:57 PM

saxop said...
That design would confuse users some, since it wouldn't be clear that movement was also unlinked by the change in visibility.

In this particular case, the critical action is user control of visibility. The fact that Finale needs to "unlink" the text in order to hide in one view separately from the other is a technical programming consideration which IMO should be kept under the hood.

There is no menu selection or label required when you *move* text in a part; it is understood that by moving the text, you are unlinking it from the score. The indicator that tells you is a color change.

If you select a text object and select "Show In Parts", and the text object becomes color coded in the part and grayed out in the score, the meaning would be very clear, and the action would be a single step rather than 3.

Finale 2012, 2011 | Mac Pro 8 Core Xeon | OSX 10.6.x
www.musicprep.com/makemusic
www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/category/finale/

Posted By : saxop - 11/25/2013 12:37 AM

rpmseattle said...

saxop said...
That design would confuse users some, since it wouldn't be clear that movement was also unlinked by the change in visibility.

No, I'm afraid I can't agree that design would be better. It's not just a technical programming detail, it's a design intention that I think is preferable. I don't want two separate types of linking, one controlling visibility and another controlling position. It's simpler for the user if unlinked means unlinked, and the color difference serves to alert the user that both visibility and position may differ between the parts and score. Having separate commands for show in part/score/all would also become a problem when an object is shown/hidden in multiple parts but not all of them. There are more than three potential visibility states for an object.

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/25/2013 2:23 AM

rpmseattle said...
Easier would be " Show in Score", "Show in Part" and "Show in All" contextual menu items. Any of these choices represents a single operation.

What if things should show in all grand staff parts but not anywhere else? Or in the score and the piano part only? Or just in the percussion or string parts?

rpmseattle said...
Yes, thanks for the reminder, Chris. And in the spirit of completeness, this works for Group Attributes, too, (although the Global Staff Attributes plugin is still a secondary, discreet step from importing the Document Options / House Style). Of course, the main point of my post was that updating a virgin Finale file to incorporate all of a users settings and house style is currently an enormous amount of work, which encourages users to keep updating old template files, which are more prone to issues in the first place.

IMO, the Document Options is not the house style. A house style is the part of the "look" that never changes, regardless of which kind of piece that is notated. There are Document Options that should not be change in a house style change. And there are elements that are not controlled by settings that are part of the house style. I agree that a house style change should be one step, but it should go deeper and more selectively than just some predefined settings. I'll try to prepare a demo video for you.

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : rpmseattle - 11/25/2013 4:31 PM

Jari Williamsson said...
There are Document Options that should not change in a house style change. And there are elements that are not controlled by settings that are part of the house style. I agree that a house style change should be one step, but it should go deeper and more selectively than just some predefined settings.

I would agree completely that more configurability is desirable. As an example, Finale currently has 18 discreet Library items. But that list could be expanded upon; for instance, the Category Designer settings mentioned earlier could ideally be a library item.

Fonts are currently a multi-step process to update properly in a document. The Category Designer handles the fonts for expressions, which are most typically related to the various font choices for text in the Document Options (a font "family" is used as part of a House Style), but it is several steps to update the related fonts of Page text, measure numbers, articulations etc. currently, using different tools and dialogs.

What Document Options do you believe should not be changed as part of a House Style description?

Finale 2012, 2011 | Mac Pro 8 Core Xeon | OSX 10.6.x
www.musicprep.com/makemusic
www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/category/finale/

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/25/2013 5:26 PM

rpmseattle said...
What Document Options do you believe should not be changed as part of a House Style description?

From a quick scan, I'd personally not want these in a house style: The layer options, Use cross-layer accidental positioning, some of the Close barlines options, Punctuation to Ignore, some of the Beams options, how time signatures are abbreviated and how key/time courtesy sigs are displayed. Everything that are connected to the specific musical contents rather than the look of the document should be excluded from a house style IMO.

I also want to clarify that apart from settings and libraries, a house style should include other things that are part of a style sheet but not part of any settings: how hairpins ends on long notes, distance between dynamics and hairpins, how hairpins ends before rests, if dynamics are fully or partially aligned below/above a staff, if angled hairpins are allowed or not, etc, etc. A house style "action" should create as good starting point as possible towards the style sheet. In one step. I'm soon there.

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/27/2013 6:33 AM

Michael Mortilla said...

Mike Rosen said...
WoM,
You and Marc are gonna be mighty lonely...

Mr. Mortilla, I'm still waiting for apologies. If you're man enough to insult someone publicly, you should also be man enough to publicly offer apologies.

Post Edited (Writer of Music) : 11/29/2013 5:19:40 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : Bret Boulon - 11/28/2013 4:53 AM

Hate 2014 so far; buggy and slow beyond hope.
Hated 2012.
back working with 2011 ,and I think I will never buy any upgrade from mm again (until my machine can work)

People, go back to fundamentals : music notation and modernisation of finale 1.0 areas.

Bret

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 11/28/2013 7:03 AM

Bret Boulon said...
Hate 2014 so far; buggy and slow beyond hope.

Most impressions of it are that it is significantly faster and more responsive than previous versions. That's certainly been my experience. Perhaps this slowness on your computer can be sorted out?

Bret Boulon said...
Hated 2012.

Any particular reason?

Bret Boulon said...
back working with 2011 ,and I think I will never buy any upgrade from mm again (until my machine can work)

You might be cutting off your nose to spite your face there. Compared to 2012, I can't see what was so special about 2011. (And indeed, if you search this forum, you'll find posts saying that 2011 wasn't half the version that 2010 was.

)

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/28/2013 8:29 AM

As far as I have tested 2014 it was faster than 2012 in most areas. The score manager of 2014, however, was horrifically slow on my system.
And, speaking of the score manager, the same 2012 score manager bug existed in 2014: any change in score setup results in instrument groups changes or even disappearances as well as staff attributes changes, which for me more or less defied the entire benefit of the score manager. 2014 being as slow as it is (score manager wise) turned the score manager into a nuisance, rather than a useful tool.
Other's mileage varying, of course.

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/29/2013 4:17 PM

I said...
I agree that a house style change should be one step, but it should go deeper and more selectively than just some predefined settings. I'll try to prepare a demo video for you.

Here's the video (which also celebrates that it's exactly 3 years since I was finished with the first plug-in using my then-new PDK Framework):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fePNFYsPtE&hd=1

Unfortunately, there's a technical issue on the finaletips.nu site right now - I'll post the JW Lua beta 0.12 and the scripts that were used for this demo once that has been resolved!

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : BvdPress - 11/30/2013 10:28 AM

Wiggy said...

Bret Boulon said...
Hate 2014 so far; buggy and slow beyond hope.

Most impressions of it are that it is significantly faster and more responsive than previous versions. That's certainly been my experience. Perhaps this slowness on your computer can be sorted out?

Bret Boulon said...
Hated 2012.

For what it is worth, I bought a new Retina MacBook Pro a month before Finale 2014. I did two very small vocal charts and gave up on Finale 2014. It was slow, SUPER buggy and just not worth it to deal with the many problems.

Back to 2012 for me with lots of bitterness towards MakeMusic for the 2014 release.

As Writer of Music states, "Other's mileage varying, of course."

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 11/30/2013 3:54 PM

Writer of Music said...
And, speaking of the score manager, the same 2012 score manager bug existed in 2014: any change in score setup results in instrument groups changes or even disappearances as well as staff attributes changes, which for me more or less defied the entire benefit of the score manager.

If you mean the behaviour where the sound setup changes automatically (based on the Sound Map Priority) when you change the instrument in ScoreManager, that's by design.

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : Writer of Music - 11/30/2013 4:17 PM

No, I'm actually speaking of the nasty habit to spontaneously change staff groups and staff attributes, whenever one adds or deletes an instrument in the score manager — which it was intended for in the first place. E.g., when I add, say, a percussion line, the woodwind grouping afterwards extends to the 2nd horn, two extra, empty groups have been created and the grouping of the divisi violin I is gone altogether; violin I is now incorporated into the grouping of the divisi violin II. Additionally, many more instruments suddenly show measure numbers, when neither the score list nor the staff attributes settings allowed them to show these.
I understand that it is not really an issue for typesetters, but I dread every change I need to make in the instrumentation, because it means I will need to spend yet again quite some time on repairing groupings and staff attributes. As useful as the score manager otherwise is, this is a serious bug to me. Add the horrendous inertia of the same in Finale 2014 and I ran into one more reason to give up on 2014, at least until the next update.

Post Edited (Writer of Music) : 11/30/2013 3:21:00 PM (GMT-6)

Posted By : korgo - 1/13/2014 7:00 AM

I've only been working with Fin2014 Mac for about two weeks, now, and I have written already 15 emails to the German support about bugs. The newest addition is that the delete key on the mac keyboard (not the backspace key) is not working at all. I cannot delete the content of a bar, nor a note out of a chord, nor turn a note into a rest. All those things I frequently used the delete key for. However, if I navigate thru menus and hit the exact same function (with the delete key displayed as shortcut next to it) it works.

And that's only one of many issues.

The most obvious and frankly most annoying and questionable feature is, that EVERY operation in Fin2014 is at least half as fast as it was under Fin2011. Scrolling thru large scores is absolutely impossible and drives me nuts. There is a huge delay before audio playback starts and on and on and on... I am on a 2.8GHz Quadcore iMac with 8GB RAM and an SSD... Fin2011 still runs fast es ever. Clean installed Mavericks!

Why, why, why is a program published in 2013 running drastically slower on a recent OS, than an old program published in 2010 on the same OS? Fin2011 isn't even officially supported to run on 10.8 or 10.9!

Makes absolutely no sense at all!

Posted By : David Ward - 1/13/2014 8:06 AM

FWIW, lack of response to a key command MAY possibly be cured if you click once on the top menu bar. I found various keyboard shortcuts, including ones that are already part of the programme, were dead after my briefly going into another application and then returning to Finale. Clicking once on any Finale menu, or on the Apple menu at the extreme left, would cure this.

David Ward
www.composers-uk.com/davidward

Finale 2010b, 2014a
Mac 10.6.8, 10.8.5
full TGTools

Posted By : Jari Williamsson - 1/13/2014 8:15 AM

korgo said...
The most obvious and frankly most annoying and questionable feature is, that EVERY operation in Fin2014 is at least half as fast as it was under Fin2011. Scrolling thru large scores is absolutely impossible and drives me nuts. There is a huge delay before audio playback starts and on and on and on... I am on a 2.8GHz Quadcore iMac with 8GB RAM and an SSD... Fin2011 still runs fast es ever. Clean installed Mavericks!

Why, why, why is a program published in 2013 running drastically slower on a recent OS, than an old program published in 2010 on the same OS? Fin2011 isn't even officially supported to run on 10.8 or 10.9!

Makes absolutely no sense at all!

The Carbon Code in 2011 got about 10 years of optimization work, while the Cocoa code in 2014 has a couple of months since its initial release?

Anyhow, on my iMac 2014 runs faster than 2012 in terms of drawing speed, so it might be hardware/driver-dependent. Make sure to get the performance issue confirmed for your configuration (perhaps would be better to get MM's attention on the subject rather than the German support).

Smartshape pre-processing using HP is much slower during playback in 2014 than in 2012 on both Windows and Mac, but I believe that's a confirmed issue.

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

Posted By : korgo - 1/13/2014 11:15 AM

I don't even use any sort of playback processing... I just play from left to right, no dynamics, nothing. Garritan J&BB library. That's it. I found soooo many bugs within just two weeks, it drives me nuts. Is there a place where all the bugs are listed in short form on this site?

Posted By : E*L*B* - 4/29/2014 5:59 PM

I am through with Finale. Seriously finished. I tried to resolve my problems with tech support - the guy had never heard of the raft of problems I was experiencing: crashing every half hour, random music being deleted and then re-pasted in random other parts of the score, inability to work with arrow keys. And the biggest, hugest problem: auto save does not work. I had it set to save every minute (because it kept crashing) I just worked on a complex piece for three hours. Crash. NOTHING WAS SAVED. Even the saves I did manually every time I remembered were not registered. I tried to reply to the message I'd gotten from Make Music about the tech support call but apparently I'm not even 'in the system' any more, even though I replied to the message I had been sent.

This has been fourteen years of working with an incredibly buggy, problematic, unwieldy and astonishingly user-unfriendly program. This is the last straw. I am switching to Sibelius, as dozens of my composer friends have urged me to do.

xxxx you, Finale. xxxx you forever.

Posted By : Mike Rosen - 4/29/2014 7:03 PM

While I don't fault your complaints, why don't you just revert to an earlier version? I assume that something must have worked for you.

Mike Rosen
www.specialmillwork.com

Bass with Choir of the Sound www.choirofthesound.org
Volunteer notation editor (The Gang of Eight) for the Barbershop Harmony Society
FINALE TIPS at www.specialmillwork.com/finale-tips-and-tricks/index.html

Finale 2010, 2011, 2012c, 2014a, but using 2012 again, on Mac 10.9.2
Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.

"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker."

Posted By : Flint - 4/29/2014 7:23 PM

E*L*B* said...
I am through with Finale. Seriously finished. I tried to resolve my problems with tech support - the guy had never heard of the raft of problems I was experiencing: crashing every half hour, random music being deleted and then re-pasted in random other parts of the score, inability to work with arrow keys. And the biggest, hugest problem: auto save does not work. I had it set to save every minute (because it kept crashing) I just worked on a complex piece for three hours. Crash. NOTHING WAS SAVED. Even the saves I did manually every time I remembered were not registered. I tried to reply to the message I'd gotten from Make Music about the tech support call but apparently I'm not even 'in the system' any more, even though I replied to the message I had been sent.

This has been fourteen years of working with an incredibly buggy, problematic, unwieldy and astonishingly user-unfriendly program. This is the last straw. I am switching to Sibelius, as dozens of my composer friends have urged me to do.

xxxx you, Finale. xxxx you forever.

Wait, you forgot your ball!

woodwind specialist and doubler - Finale 2014 using Speedy Entry - no capslock, GPO 4 Full, Garritan Jazz & Big Band 3, Garritan Concert and Marching Band 2, Windows 8 64-bit, 12GB RAM

If the composer says in effect to the performer: "I do not care whether you perform my music or not," we cannot argue the matter. But if he indicates: "I want you to perform and respond to this music," then his fundamental duty is to write his music so that it is accessible to interpretation. When the performer cannot approach the composer's meaning because of capriciously obscure notation, he may in effect say to the composer: "Why should I bother to puzzle out your music?" - Gardner Read

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 4/30/2014 12:13 PM

E*L*B* said...
the guy had never heard of the raft of problems I was experiencing: crashing every half hour, random music being deleted and then re-pasted in random other parts of the score, inability to work with arrow keys. And the biggest, hugest problem: auto save does not work. I had it set to save every minute (because it kept crashing) I just worked on a complex piece for three hours. Crash. NOTHING WAS SAVED. Even the saves I did manually every time I remembered were not registered.

There are problems with 2014, certainly. But these don't sound like them. Although Finale's auto-save has long been flaky, and I prefer not to rely on it.
However, Manual saves not working? That sounds more like catastrophic disk failure, frankly. Or PEBCAK.

(Ooh, forum fans: if you quote his text, you get to see what he really wrote instead of "xxxx"!! The lameness filter doesn't extend to quoting.)

"This is me helping."

Finale 2014a, 2012 MacMini; 2012 MacBook Pro (10.9.2)
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410, HP Laserjet 5200 DTN
Ancient Groove Music www.ancientgroove.co.uk

Posted By : OCTO. - 4/30/2014 2:55 PM

Wiggy said...

(Ooh, forum fans: if you quote his text, you get to see what he really wrote instead of "xxxx"!! The lameness filter doesn't extend to quoting.)

I beg your pardon, I don't have 2014 and it is not a topic I should respond to, but this was THE STORY!

Great Wiggy!!!! :)

p.s. I believed that x means KISS. So: xxxx Finale means kiss kiss kiss kiss Finale! Forever!

Finale 2011c, OS X 10.6.8

Post Edited (OCTO.) : 4/30/2014 2:58:14 PM (GMT-5)

Posted By : Charles Lawrence - 4/30/2014 5:35 PM

Wiggy said...
if you quote his text, you get to see what he really wrote instead of "xxxx"!!

It must have been cleaned up, but it doesn't take much to imagine what it was.

The fact that this user joined the forum over 10 years ago and in the mean time has only made 8 posts tells me he must not really be much of a Finale user or shows an enormous lack of curiosity.

"Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about!"

Dell XPS 600, GenuineIntel Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz [Intel64 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 4] (2 processors)
8GB Ram
HT Omega Striker 7.1
MSI N430GT 2GB GPU
1TB x 4 internal HD's
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Edition, (06.01.7600.00)
Finale versions: 2011b.r2, 2012c.r13, 2014a.v3535

GPO4

"There is a world of difference between a person who has a big problem and a person who makes a problem big." – John Maxwell

Posted By : BobRock - 4/30/2014 6:15 PM

Charles Lawrence said...

Wiggy said...

if you quote his text, you get to see what he really wrote instead of "xxxx"!!

It must have been cleaned up, but it doesn't take much to imagine what it was.

The fact that this user joined the forum over 10 years ago and in the mean time has only made 8 posts tells me he must not really be much of a Finale user or shows an enormous lack of curiosity.

Or doesn't tend to overestimate the importance of this forum.

Posted By : gracenote - 5/1/2014 12:18 AM

I cannot even open the 2014a update on my Mac so, while he may be exaggerating, I have seen very bad performance and multiple crashes even after a fresh install of the program with all elements deleted. Reverting to 2012 in my case was a necessity although i also have the original version of 2014, which does work on my machine. Not sure why the A update, which was supposed to fix a multitude of bugs, has made the program unusable. Waiting with hope for update B.

GN

Specs: Mac Mini, OS 10.9x; 2.5ghz, 4GB ram

Finale 2012, 2014 (not a), Casio Privia 88keys

Posted By : Vaughan - 5/1/2014 4:22 AM

GN, have you read the posts about why the 2014a update doesn't load on some systems? It was pretty easy for me to pinpoint; it opened fine on my MacBookPro but not on the MacPro. It turned out to be my non-Thunderbolt Apple Cinema Display which has two cables, one for video and the other for microphone/camera. This latter was mono which turned out to be the problem, as it made Finale unable to load its audio engine. Unplugging this made me able to use 2014a on the MacPro. Perhaps 2014a is having problems with one of your peripherals (sorry, I know that sounds rude).

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2014, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.9.2
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Posted By : gracenote - 5/1/2014 2:30 PM

Vaughan said...
GN, have you read the posts about why the 2014a update doesn't load on some systems? It was pretty easy for me to pinpoint; it opened fine on my MacBookPro but not on the MacPro. It turned out to be my non-Thunderbolt Apple Cinema Display which has two cables, one for video and the other for microphone/camera. This latter was mono which turned out to be the problem, as it made Finale unable to load its audio engine. Unplugging this made me able to use 2014a on the MacPro. Perhaps 2014a is having problems with one of your peripherals (sorry, I know that sounds rude).

That could be. I have an external Logitec Web cam which is set as the default mic. I could change it to the basic internal mic and try it. The Logitec app has a pull down menu so I can switch back easily. Thanks for the info. Weird that 2014 (no A) works ok.

GN

Specs: Mac Mini, OS 10.9x; 2.5ghz, 4GB ram

Finale 2012, 2014 (not a), Casio Privia 88keys

Posted By : Dr. Wiggy - 5/2/2014 3:36 AM

FWIW, I have a Logitec Webcam (a 910 or thereabouts) and have not had any problems with Finale 2014 relating to that. I haven't installed any Logitec software, though.

"This is me helping."

Finale 2014a, 2012 MacMini; 2012 MacBook Pro (10.9.2)
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410, HP Laserjet 5200 DTN
Ancient Groove Music www.ancientgroove.co.uk

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