pcartwright wrote:I'm a huge Notion fan, but I'm afraid that Sibelius or Finale could be one version away from perfecting VST custom playback and making Notion irrelevant.
it depends. i just had to go for the sib crossgrade for the video support. once you get things set up, it's pretty powerful. i particularly like that i can define ensembles, and sib will map appropriate staves to their relevant channels, controllers and all. it works well.
vst playback does have its drawbacks, though. while vsti midi instrument/stave support is better in sib, the mixer is far worse. sib's mixer does NOT deal with the actual audio outputs, like notion's does. it sends midi controller values to the instruments' output/pans. this is a HUGE problem if you opt to use, say...a multi-osc synth, with no master pan output (like zebra2). sure, you can assign the synth's volume and osc pan controls to receive midi messages from the sib mixer, but if you have a multi-osc stereo sound, and just want to shift the existing stereo image halfway to the right, you'd have to either do so on the instrument itself, or assign a separate controller to each osc's pan control, and deal with it that way, or just use it in rewire mode. so, there's benefits to be had, but different issues to reckon with.
otherwise, notion's gui is a shining example of "clean". i've always though sib and finale's were just a horrific mess by comparison. note entry in notion is also much easier, faster, and much more intuitive (for me, anyway...but granted, i'm still getting my head around "the sib way". it is more powerful, but it's more of a PITA, too).
for note entry, and banging out stuff quickly, i decidedly prefer notion's elegant simplicity. ensemble support like sib, video support and cc editing would really close the gap, imo.
k