But then again, I don’t know if I really like this. Judging from the comments, most musicians seem to enjoy it, but I am just having a horrible time trying to rearrange pieces for the piano!

The bits that it “helps” you with are a pain – No, I don’t need the full amount of beats in my first bar! (Please don’t insert rests automatically, that can’t be deleted!)

And how come every time I try to put a chord (playing several notes with the same hand), it just deletes the other notes!

Before I had these 2 sticky “situations” (the second one being huge! I can’t write out a piece without it!), I was loving this program.

I look forward to se even more programs like that and also with use of midi files.

Thank you GOTD team

Guess I — and many others — won’t be using this program unless GAOTD makes a new activation file accessible — AND fixes their problems.

FYI, I operate with no firewall restrictions except for non-standard ports, and no anti-virus software (go ahead, cringe in disbelief). So there’s NO REASON WHATSOEVER that the activation program should have failed, except unless it communicates over something other than port 80 (in which case why not just tell us what that port is!) … or unless GAOTD had a problem on their end which they’re not admitting.

If this happens once more I’ll just unsubscribe and stop wasting my time. GAOTD is a great idea in concept, but too often poor in execution.

When I saw today’s GiveAway I first played a bit with the previous version that was offered here which I had installed on my main computer. The main computer runs XP pro sp2 and it is the host of a VirtualBox guest running XP pro sp2 as well.

I have been installing all new software on the guest OS first just to check the installation procedure. This way I know what to expect ant it is less likely that I will make a mistake when I install on the host. Additionally I have Ashampoo Uninstaller Platinum installed on the VirtualBox which I got for free from the friendly folks at the forums so I can see all the changes made by any software installation.

The installation on the VirtualBox went without any problem. I don’t understand why people are complaining about not getting a serial code or having trouble activating. The software is activated by running activate.exe first. You let it run until you get to the GAOTD window that says ‘What Next?”. After that you run setup.exe to install the actual software. I looked at the changes made by the install and it all seemed ok.

Since the installation on the VirtualBox went flawlessly I uninstalled the old MagicScore version and I installed the new one. After playing with the new version for a bit, I could swear that the old version of MagicScore had more options than today’s version.

For example, I can’t find the news pop up, even though I have the option to received the turned on. Also I remember being able to insert lyrics and I could also run the ‘Using Guitar’ lesson. Now those are only available on the Maestro or the Classic version. I can’t test this theory anymore because the old version is gone. Maybe somebody still has the old one and can check this?

I read one the first few comments that stated that

(MagicScore School) Does not even compare remotely with Band In the Box, which does everything I need…

well ‘duh’ mister lobster, BIAB comes in different packages. The cheapest is $100, unless you want to buy an old edition, and the prices go all the way to a $550 ‘Audiophile edition’. Seriously, tell me how you can seriously compare a $30 product to a $500 one.

At any rate, even though I have Realtek’s HD 7.1 in board sound, I can’t (and couldn’t on the previous version) get MagicScore to detect anything but the MIDI music playback. Upon closer inspection the MIDI playback is the ‘Microsoft Wavetable’ device and when I open the information of the Wavetable it states that it is using the RealTek card.

My surround sound card has never given me any problems. I keep the drivers up-to-date and I get great surround on all the games that support it, but when I run a playback on MagicScore the output comes out as stereo sound from the two front speakers only. The weird thing is that the playback of the same MagicScore files played on the version installed on the VirtualBox it uses all 5.1 speakers.

Other than that I have found no other problems running MagicScore. I tried some of the examples and everything that is not blocked works fine. I tried making a simple song and it worked without a glitch. The sound quality seems to be above par and the interface is easy and intuitive to use.

I hope I am wrong about this version having less features because I could have kept the older version installed on the host OS and the new one on the VirtualBox which didn’t have the older version installed. Live and learn.

Also I want to find out what’s wrong with the 5.1 channels because I think that it is possible to make use of them to create better music.
Meanwhile I will keep using the VirtualBox version.

I’m done,

AxCut

In any case, I have installed this. Even though I might not use it to it’s full potential (since I haven’t composed music), I feel it’s usable. The only issues that I found appear to be minor, or otherwise resolved by reading the documentation or experimenting.

Some MIDI files played through this application sound a bit different then if the OS was playing it – this appears to be an imporation issue since some of the tracks were moved around by about a few seconds.