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Sibelius began life in 1993 as an application for the Acorn Archimedes computer – it was an instant hit and has since become perhaps the most popular scorewriting program of them all.

The latest version for PC and Mac makes a very serious first impression, with a 140-page handbook to prime you on the basics, and a mighty reference tome of 700-plus pages.

Following installation, our attempts at Internet registration were frustrated by repeated Sibelius server crashes, but a painless telephone call later and we were finally up and running.

Sibelius 6 will open files created in earlier versions (except the ancient Acorn one), but it's worth noting that it no longer reads Finale or Score files. MusicXML import has been improved, however, to give better results than Finale import in previous versions.

Sounds

The previous version of Sibelius used NI's Kontakt Player to provide playback of sampled instruments, but v6 does away with this entirely thanks to a new integrated sound player engine (and enhanced mixer) that needs no setup. This comes courtesy of Avid's AIR division, which is behind Pro Tools instruments such as Strike, Transfuser and Structure.

Of course, a player is no good without sounds, and to this end, v6 includes not just a whole new GM soundset but Sibelius Sounds Essentials, which incorporates over 150 patches from Garritan and Tapspace soundsets.

The Kontakt Player that came with v5 can still be retained for use with older files, but if you bought extra soundsets for those earlier versions, they won't work with v6 as is. However, updates of these can be downloaded from the Sibelius website.

Magnetic layout

Given that a scorewriter's most important task is, of course, the writing of scores, any improvement to workflow in the process of assembling a neat and tidy score will be a major plus.

As anyone who has attempted to create a professional-looking score can attest, a lot of time tends to be taken up with formatting and making relatively minute adjustments to the spacing of dynamics (and the like), slurs, hairpins, instructional text and so on. If you don't do this, the chances are that your score will look very scrappy, with overlapping symbols in some places and big gaps elsewhere.

Or at least, this is how it has been, prior to the advent of the brand new Magnetic Layout.

This intelligent feature immediately spots where you've been sloppy in your mouse positioning when inputting symbols of all kinds and automatically moves them around, so that they don't overlap.

"Magnetic Layout immediately spots where you've been sloppy in your mouse positioning when inputting symbols of all kinds and automatically moves them around."

Thankfully, it still gives you the option of overriding Sibelius to put things where you really want them, in those cases where you disagree with its placement choices. It even moves things when you view transposing instruments in concert pitch or change the stave spacing.

And, where appropriate, it lines symbols up, both vertically and horizontally – eg, dynamics and tempo markings.

It's not perfect, and you may have to adjust staves by hand to create room for really crowded environments, but Magnetic Layout prompts you when you might need to do this anyway. No doubt something similar will be implemented in Finale very quickly, but Sibelius definitely has the edge in this area for now.