So when Avid announced Sibelius 7.5 early last year, it was a break from the reliable release cycle stretching back to 1999. The 2011 release of Sibelius 7, love it or hate it, was equally significant, not only with its change to the Ribbon interface but with a complete 64-bit rewrite and impressive advances in type and typography features, a brand new heavy-duty sound library, and a number of other things.

Sibelius 6 introduced a whirlwind of upgrades in 2009 including Magnetic Layout, Versions, playback upgrades, ReWire support, not to mention vastly improved engraving features with slurs, articulations and chord symbols seeing marked improvement. After all, some of us spend more time with Sibelius than with anything, or anyone else!Įach major release brought with it a bevy of changes. Devoted users still have their favorite versions, recalling the highlights and quirks of each one like the personality traits of close friends. Sibelius users have generally come to expect major new features and engraving improvements once every two years. Like new car models that follow a similar schedule, each update offered up a few new important features but, owing to the short development cycle, progress was more incremental. Finale released yearly updates for over a decade corresponding to the next year following the release, until abandoning that plan with Finale 2014. The recently released MuseScore 2 came five years after version 1, and its myriad new features are true to what one would expect after such a long period and a doubling of the version number. In the world of music notation applications, each numerical update has historically represented significant new features and a new file format. On the PC side, maybe Microsoft saw an opportunity to catch up to Apple in version numbering, or maybe they were just in a hurry when they breezed past 9 on their way to Windows 10.

Technically speaking, desktop Macs are still running version 10 (OS X), meaning that students will be writing their college application essays on the OS that was born at the same time they were. Operating system versions are equally curious. When it comes to software updates, what’s in a version number? There are updates to desktop browsers and mobile apps, which most people don’t concern themselves with (Quick: which version of Facebook is your smartphone running?). Various license plans are available for purchase, and a 30-day trial is available. Today Avid released Sibelius 8.0, or what is being called the “next generation” or “new Sibelius”.

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