An interesting review, and almost a beginner's tutorial.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Interesting. I've been using MuseScore for a fair time, so know the shortcuts I use regularly and the odd quirks that I personally find. It was frustrating watching him try to change the tempo as my immediate reaction was to check if it was still in note-entry mode ... it was. Click the icon top left or hit escape. I did wonder that he didn't set the tempo during the initial score setup ... he did most else, but skipped that.
Watching someone who didn't use the manual but brought knowledge and methods from elsewhere made for some discoveries for me ... I've always selected the note (or bar for some) and clicked the icon from the pallet ... I hadn't tried drag and drop to the note. Doh! However my way does allow me to select multiple notes and double-click the item to apply it to all.
He appears to have no discovered the rest is a note 0 (zero) or that one can enter notes by typing their letter. Probably he also hasn't yet discovered that Ctrl-UpArrow and Ctrl-DownArrow shift the note just entered by octaves. Just those few things make like much easier. I hate having to use the mouse too much ... I have some RSI issues as a consequence of doing that in the past.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
In every notation program I have used, you aren’t really productive until you learn the keyboard shortcuts.
The notation software I use now, Notion 6, has a philosophy of not wanting anything to delay starting right in entering music. I like MuseScore’s approach of entering settings in the beginning.
Finale itself recommends converting to Dorico. I haven’t yet had the time to master it but the printouts look great. Interestingly, MuseScore 4 made some real headway with this and looks great printed.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
MuseScore 4 is no longer horrible but it's still not very good. MuseScore 5 is supposed to be chock full of AI goodies so that it can compete with the big boys and become the de facto notation app for Hal Leonard, the largest music publisher in the world—and wholly owned by Cyprus based Muse Group, flush with billion$ of cash from Russia based Ultimate Guitar.
We'll see...
Meanwhile, Sibelius and Dorico have attractive cross-grade offers for Finale customers. Dorico's includes an upgrade license to Finale 27 but it's available for current Finale customers. Dorico released a more "Finale friendly" upgrade a couple days ago.
Finale 27 runs on every Mac made between 2012–2025. Although I have licenses for Dorico, MuseScore, Notion 6 and a few other apps, I'm staying with Finale for now. I get a lot of work translating MuseScore into Finale for a few publishing houses.
If it works great over Windows, that's fine but I cannot recommend Notion 6 for Mac users. Too much of it including the playback engine is still 32 bit. Fender told us that Notion 7 was "coming soon", back in November 2021. They could have made Notion 6 64bit in the mean time. I am not holding my breath. My crystal ball predicts that we will never see Notion 7 — I'd be happy to be wrong.
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BIAB 2025 Audiophile Mac 24Core/60CoreGPU M2 MacStudioUltra/8TB/192GB Sequoia/Tahoe, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP Digital Performer11, Logic, Finale27/Dorico/Encore/SmartScorePro/Notion6/Overture5
Mike is more in touch with these developments, but my hope is that development of a Notion 7 (desktop version) might follow now that Studio One Pro 7 has been released. Although the marketing chose to omit mention of it, there were a few improvements to notation in Studio One 7. I haven’t given up hope for Notion 7.
And Encore 6 suddenly is back to being possible once again. If all it can do is read my hundreds of old Encore scores and export solid Music XML versions, I’ll be happy. Then I can compare the printouts from Dorico and MuseScore’s latest versions. While Notion 6 is my day-to-day workhorse, it was never positioned to make beautifully engraved printouts. If it ever could do that, in conjunction with the free tablet version, that could be outstanding.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
If it works great over Windows, that's fine but I cannot recommend Notion 6 for Mac users. Too much of it including the playback engine is still 32 bit. Fender told us that Notion 7 was "coming soon", back in November 2021. They could have made Notion 6 64bit in the mean time. I am not holding my breath. My crystal ball predicts that we will never see Notion 7 — I'd be happy to be wrong.
I'm in the process of moving all my software over to a new computer, so I've been assembling a long list of how to reinstall my many programs and sound libraries.
By coincidence, I was just getting around to Notion. I'm running Notion 4, and even for $50 don't see a compelling reason to upgrade to Notion 6.
One of the main reasons I was interested in Notion was that it integrated with existing libraries, like Garritan Personal Orchestra. That was back in the days where I had close to no spare money, and I leveraged the purchase of some other music notation program I'd gotten cheap from an auction site into a Notion crossgrade.
But I never found the built-in sounds that great, and Notion 4 seemed to work less well with third party libraries. The focus seems to instead be on integration with Studio One and nothing else.
It looks like I can't even buy the libraries that work with Notion without also getting a Studio One subscription. I tried to double-check that, but after ten minutes, I can't even find the Notion Expansion Sounds on their site again.
I'd be happy to upgrade if there were a reason for paying for a Notion upgrade, but as it is, I'll keep using Notion for the ease of use, but probably move on to Muse Score, which has much better built-in sounds.
But I never found the built-in sounds that great, and Notion 4 seemed to work less well with third party libraries.
That's exactly where Notion 6 for Mac falls down on the job. It cannot work with 64 bit only 3rd party libraries. More and more are this way 32/64 bit is becoming a thing of the past. That Fender never fixed this is the reason for my pessimism.
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And Encore 6 suddenly is back to being possible once again. If all it can do is read my hundreds of old Encore scores and export solid Music XML versions, I’ll be happy.
Yes, me too. I decided not to wait, however.
I have found PDFtoMusic Pro to be surprisingly good with Encore pdf files. Encore 5's MusicXML cannot handle Lyrics, Expressions and most Text. That information is contained in the fonts and PDFtoMusic Pro can export it as MusicXML 3.0. It gets some things wrong, especially if an expression is too close to a text but it is far more accurate with Encore than any of the scan software I've used (PDFtoMusic Pro cannot scan).
It's available for Mac/Win/LINUX and will run in demo mode without restriction except one: It will only export the first page without a license. I know people who use their PDF engines to export single pages rather than pay the $199. I paid the two bills.
There is a non Pro version that does not export MusicXML but Encore already exports MIDI so I have no use for it.
BIAB 2025 Audiophile Mac 24Core/60CoreGPU M2 MacStudioUltra/8TB/192GB Sequoia/Tahoe, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP Digital Performer11, Logic, Finale27/Dorico/Encore/SmartScorePro/Notion6/Overture5
Well, I guess I found a reason to upgrade to Notion 6.
I recently moved from my old PC to a new one, installed Notion 4 (from the download on the Prosonus website) and tried to register.
It was unable to contact the server, so I opened a ticket.
Notion 4 is no longer support. I can download the installer, and install it. I just can't register it to use it.
They did try to upsell me to a subscription to Studio One+, I guess on the assumption that I must really love buying things that expire.
Well done, Prosonus.
In fairness, the also suggested I download their free Notion Mobile app, which will load my simple Notion leadsheets. But it's not Notion, and it's a mobile app running on a PC.
Well, I guess I found a reason to upgrade to Notion 6.
I recently moved from my old PC to a new one, installed Notion 4 (from the download on the Prosonus website) and tried to register.
It was unable to contact the server, so I opened a ticket.
Notion 4 is no longer support. I can download the installer, and install it. I just can't register it to use it.
They did try to upsell me to a subscription to Studio One+, I guess on the assumption that I must really love buying things that expire.
Well done, Prosonus.
In fairness, the also suggested I download their free Notion Mobile app, which will load my simple Notion leadsheets. But it's not Notion, and it's a mobile app running on a PC.
I suggest NOT upgrading to Notion 6. After several years of being unable to contact the update server, I wrote off my significant investment in Notion and all of its instrument libraries, and uninstalled it. PreSonus has improved notation support in Studio One and the market for notation software is almost certainly smaller than the market for DAW software, which isn't all that large anyway. Ever since Fender bought PreSonus, things have just gradually gotten worse from this customer's perspective. I started with Studio One Pro v2, and have paid for every major upgrade since. They have moved too much to the subscription product, so v7 will be my last paid upgrade for Studio One.
For notation options, MuseScore v4 is quite capable and it's free. I installed MuseScore after uninstalling Notion, but mostly, I use Guitar Pro 8. It works the best for what I do. It's not free. However, until December 1st, it's 30% off for Black Friday. A license for a new user is 48,97 € vs 69,99 €, and an upgrade to v8 from any earlier version is 24,47 € vs 39,95 €. I assume prices in US dollars are about the same. Highly recommended.
I’m a beta tester for Notion and formerly a tester for Encore. All the notation programs do pretty much the same thing but how they do it can be quite different and the most important thing is to try them to see which fits your interface and workflow preferences. I don’t happen to like MuseScore for data entry but I’m very impressed with the new font they use for printouts. Finale and Sibelius were always dreadful to work with and the reason we put up with it was for extreme control over the printed output.
Notion by Presonus has indeed concentrated on the free mobile version of Notion, and notation in Studio One. That doesn’t mean there won’t be an upgrade to Notion 6 for desktop, even though it is several years old now. Notion is now my favorite notation program. If you have a specific question you cannot get answered, let me try. If I don’t know, I’ll get it to the developers.
Notion 6 is still not subscription. Even my Studio One 7 was not subscription; you can buy it standalone.
Notation in Studio One and Notion Mobile is the direction that they are going but it is lacking a few features that are special in Notion 6 for Desktop, notably the ability to control playback tempo on the fly.
Finally, the free Notion Mobile runs on most platforms and is especially good on tablets (where it recognizes my Apple Pencil handwritten notes). The files are interchangeable with the desktop version. As an example, I frequently write in Notion 6 but switch into Notion Mobile to use one-click erase, then go back to desktop.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Thanks for starting the thread and special thinks to those contributing. Coincidentally, an interest to me, since, after taking some time off from music, I've only recently revived the interest, especially in the public domain hymnbook. I've been using NCH Crescendo for several years. Reactivating, I thought I might look into the state of the art in notation software. Last week I downloaded MuseScore Studio 4 and have been busy exploring the features. I see there are more sophisticated programs; but, at my level, it seemed a good choice for what I do, which is lead sheets in C and G, melody line, chord changes (absolute for BIAB) and musical staffs, often treble only. One constructive consequence is improvement of efficiency of rehearsals by including some work at home preparation. Thanks, again. I'll continue to be very interested in what each of you has to comment.
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