Chunky Posted October 21, 2014 Posted October 21, 2014 Hi All, We're currently running some PCs with Cubase (elements / older) , Sibelius (very very old) and ejay. We have some Audigy cards, and some mAudio 9624 cards. So, we're looking at replacing this old stuff with something up to date. Suggestions on hardware and software would be great. If anyone can suggest freeware / open source software that will meet the needs of the edexcel / gcse syllabus, that would be good. (from what I see, I'm looking at approx £40 for cubase 7 elements licences each, £74 for Sibelius 7 licences each, and ejay? it's discontinued?) Cheers, Chris.
ICTDirect_Dave Posted October 21, 2014 Posted October 21, 2014 Hi Chris If you want power at a good price look no further than Dell T5500 workstations. They're designed for pro audio/video/cad aplications. Drop me a PM if you want some fantastic pricing. With regard to software, I'd look no further than Ableton Live. It's a bit more expensive, but it offers something different to the standard sequencers whilst maintaining all the functionality of cubase (VSTi support, midi sequencing ect)
PotNoodleTech Posted October 21, 2014 Posted October 21, 2014 Running Sibelius 7.5 on Dell OptiPlex 3020 with on board sound here. Seems to work fine, (touch wood) music teachers have no complaints!
tomgrindle Posted October 21, 2014 Posted October 21, 2014 Our Music Department has had a look at MuseScore. It's a open source equivalent to Sibelius. Not sure how good it is myself, but main purpose of looking at it was for Students to download at home and be able to edit their Scores compiled in Sibelius at school. Reports back seem to be all positive. 1
bossman Posted October 21, 2014 Posted October 21, 2014 @tomgrindle: We use it site wide here and the feedback from the Music department is that its not Cubase or Sibelius but it is rather good at what it does, all for the price of nothing!
tomgrindle Posted October 21, 2014 Posted October 21, 2014 @bossman ... ahh I see. I can't say I have really played with it, but when asked to install it it looked fairly similar. If I'm right in thinking, if students do want to open their scores in MuseScore they have to output it from Sibelius as a MusicXML file, but yes you're right, not bad at all for free!
synaesthesia Posted October 21, 2014 Posted October 21, 2014 Strongly recommend against Cubase if you want anything to run smoothly. Sibelius is bad enough but it's forgivable for what it does, Cubase is shocking period. Mulab is reasonable for free, Reason is reasonable for cost.
Chunky Posted October 22, 2014 Author Posted October 22, 2014 Great feedback so far guys n gals. Please keep it coming! Also, any suggestions on good pricing for Sibelius?
7UD9 Posted October 29, 2014 Posted October 29, 2014 Great feedback so far guys n gals. Please keep it coming! Also, any suggestions on good pricing for Sibelius? We got Sibelius at £61/seat with Insight recently, there may be better out there but that's the best I could find.
Skibby Posted November 17, 2014 Posted November 17, 2014 We've used Music Village before, might be worth checking them out... Musical Equipment for Schools & Education at Music Village Education Also, GAK might be worth a look if you're buying any hardware, I've used them before and not had any problems... GAK Education Afraid it's been a couple of years since I've checked on software prices so I can't really offer any help regarding up-to-date prices.
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