Sibelius is unusable on Mac

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VroepVroep
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:29 am

Post by VroepVroep » Sun Apr 01, 2018 5:56 pm

Hi,

I've been using Sibelius since version 4. I've always been a Mac user. Back in the Sibelius 7 days Sibelius got so slow and sluggish on Mac OS I switched to Windows. It works way faster on Windows and I have been using it quite happily like that for a few years.
I recently switched back to the Mac ecosystem for other reasons, only to find that even now, about 4 years later on Sibelius 8.5, things have not improved one. single. bit.
Scrolling through orchestral scores is an absolute nightmare and inputting notes lags behind with about a second. Matters get worse the larger I make the Sibelius window and easen when I make it small, which is of course not usable either.
Audio playback is perfectly fine however, not a single problem there.

My hardware isn't the problem either; I'm running a recent Macbook Pro with dedicated AMD graphics, 16GB of RAM and an i7 processor and I'm also running a Mac Pro with a 6-core CPU, dual GPU's and 32GB of ram.

To make it even more obvious how flawed the Mac version of Sibelius really is: it runs even worse on the Mac Pro, which is way more powerful than the Macbook Pro. This is probably due the Mac Pro being connected to a 4K monitor whereas the Macbook Pro uses the built in display.

I'd love to hear if there are any plans for optimizing the Sibelius experience on Mac, or if there's any setting I'm missing (I already tried disabling font smoothing). Sibelius is seriously handicapped on Mac OS, neigh; unusable. I literally have to dual boot Windows on my Macs just to be able to properly use Sibelius which is of course is crippling to my workflow. Are there any plans for Sibelius to go use the new Metal framework, or at least have the GPU accelerate the visual appearance of scores?

I'd hate to leave Sibelius behind. I tried both Finale and Dorico in the past but neither of them offered me the workflow I'm used to with Sibelius, before it became unusable of course.


bobp
Posts: 1182
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:53 am

Post by bobp » Sun Apr 01, 2018 9:10 pm

All I can say is that three are plenty of Mac users that run Sibelius with very few problems.

There has been comment that very large scores run slower on a Mac. And the running with the Inspector open can slow down a Mac.
Other than that, I might suggest restarting your Mac before using Sibelius. If you don't like restarting because it takes a long time, that might be part of the problem. There might be a lot of unnecessary things running that slow things down. Having a lot of ram and cpu firepower might just me masking a problem.
I know you don't have any playback problems, but you might try other sound driver options in Audio Engine Options, if you have any.
I know on a PC, Sibelius installs a 32 bit and a 64 bit version. No idea if that happens on a Mac or even with version 8. But if you are trying to use the 32 bit version on a 64 bit OS, it might slow things down.
Bob Porter
Sibelius 7.5, W10,i5,16 GB ram,desktop

VroepVroep
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:29 am

Post by VroepVroep » Sun Apr 01, 2018 9:18 pm

bobp wrote:All I can say is that three are plenty of Mac users that run Sibelius with very few problems.

There has been comment that very large scores run slower on a Mac. And the running with the Inspector open can slow down a Mac.
Other than that, I might suggest restarting your Mac before using Sibelius. If you don't like restarting because it takes a long time, that might be part of the problem. There might be a lot of unnecessary things running that slow things down. Having a lot of ram and cpu firepower might just me masking a problem.
I know you don't have any playback problems, but you might try other sound driver options in Audio Engine Options, if you have any.
I know on a PC, Sibelius installs a 32 bit and a 64 bit version. No idea if that happens on a Mac or even with version 8. But if you are trying to use the 32 bit version on a 64 bit OS, it might slow things down.
Thank you for your response. I'm running Sibelius on a fresh Mac OS installation with almost no other programs installed. As these problems have been the same for me across multiple Mac OS devices over time I can not believe in good conscience that this is related to anything other than Sibelius itself. Mac OS only runs 64-bit applications. I don't have the inspector window open. Taking a look at the activity monitor (the Mac equivalent of Task Manager) it's apparent that Sibelius is barely using any system resources apart from a decent amount of memory. It just looks like Sibelius is terribly optimized.

I also confirmed Sibelius isn't using my dedicated graphics card, but rather it's running off of the intel integrated GPU, which is four-fold less powerful than the dedicated one. This indicates the Avid software developers haven't even bothered optimizing sibelius.

This really stresses me out. I rely on Sibelius for my productivity, heck, even my income. How does Avid even dare to charge a subscription fee for a program this badly written?

bobp
Posts: 1182
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:53 am

Post by bobp » Mon Apr 02, 2018 3:47 pm

Interesting.
Other than needing at least 8GB of ram, Sibelius doesn't really need a powerful computer. It is not graphics intensive, so on board gpu should be fine. Is your Mac an all-in-one unit,or a tower that hooks up the display? I wouldn't claim to know enough about a Mac to know how, if the display is plugged into a separate GPU, Sibelius could bypass it in favor of the on board GPU. Should be two different outputs.

I hope you aren't using Panorama view. That can be a problem, sometimes.

Also in Preferences/Playback, double check that maximum number of channels is set as high as it will go (128 in my case), and number of cores to use is set highest (2 is as high as mine goes).

Also, as an owner of Sibelius, you have access to the official user forum, and a certain amount of tech help from Avid.
Bob Porter
Sibelius 7.5, W10,i5,16 GB ram,desktop

VroepVroep
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:29 am

Post by VroepVroep » Mon Apr 02, 2018 4:00 pm

bobp wrote:Interesting.
Other than needing at least 8GB of ram, Sibelius doesn't really need a powerful computer. It is not graphics intensive, so on board gpu should be fine. Is your Mac an all-in-one unit,or a tower that hooks up the display? I wouldn't claim to know enough about a Mac to know how, if the display is plugged into a separate GPU, Sibelius could bypass it in favor of the on board GPU. Should be two different outputs.

I hope you aren't using Panorama view. That can be a problem, sometimes.

Also in Preferences/Playback, double check that maximum number of channels is set as high as it will go (128 in my case), and number of cores to use is set highest (2 is as high as mine goes).

Also, as an owner of Sibelius, you have access to the official user forum, and a certain amount of tech help from Avid.
Thank you for your reply. Like I said in my original post; I have no problems whatsoever with playback. My problems purely reside in the graphical parts of Sibelius. I do believe Sibelius is a relatively GPU-intensive app, especially when working on a large orchestral work.
As I don't pay a subscription fee to Avid I doubt they will let me access the official forums; Avid asks money for literally everything. I bought Sibelius years back before they started asking recurring fees (I miss the Sibelius 6 days...). I'll have a look there.

bobp
Posts: 1182
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:53 am

Post by bobp » Wed Apr 04, 2018 4:23 am

As far as I know, if you own a Sibelius license, which you must since you registered it on a new computer, then you can access the user forum.
Bob Porter
Sibelius 7.5, W10,i5,16 GB ram,desktop

drummerboyfarr
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:18 pm
Sibelius Version: 8.7.2
Operating System: Mac

Post by drummerboyfarr » Wed Apr 04, 2018 7:46 pm

Sibelius was running so slow on my super swanky mac pro I was pulling my hair out.

Turned out it was having Inspector pinned open! Once I closed the inspector window all was back to normal!

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