Neuratron Press Coverage

WHAT THE PRESS SAY!

9 out of 10
"PHOTOSCORE ULTIMATE IS A MUST; EXTREMELY ACCURATE; EASY TO USE"

"PhotoScore Ultimate 6 dealt almost impeccably with everything thrown at it for this evaluation, from a set of pages from a pristine score by a contemporary composer (George Benjamin) who had actually used Sibelius to write his music in the first place to dog-eared pocket scores from the nineteenth century!"

"It�s not just the printed page that PhotoScore converts exceedingly well. You can use a graphics file in BMP, TIFF, PDF etc format as well."

"It�s truly a very well thought-out piece of software."

"It's well worth the price."

8 out of 10
"THE UPGRADE TO AUDIOSCORE ULTIMATE IS VERY WELL WORTH IT"

"The process of using AudioScore has been well thought-out, is not unduly complicated, yet has just the right number of options and degree of flexibility."

"The documentation is very good and the end result integrating with Sibelius very good. As a way to capture live, recorded or externally-originated music, AudioScore is well worth a look."

"YOU WON'T FIND A MORE FEATURE-COMPLETE OR EFFECTIVE PROGRAM"

"If you're looking to turn your old sheet music into playable, editable MIDI or notation files, you won't find a more feature-complete or effective program than Neuratron's PhotoScore 6 Ultimate."

"It works very well with a wide variety of music."

"One unique PhotoScore feature that I found very handy is the alternate recognition engine for handwritten music. It performed much better on my old music class exercises than any musical OCR I'd tried to date. I wish it hadn't--my compositions weren't very good."

"ONLY HUMANS DO IT BETTER"

"AudioScore is the most robust program on the market for converting audio into editable MIDI and notation files."

"AN EXCELLENT TOOL THAT CAN SAVE HOURS OF NOTE-INPUTTING"

"I tested out PhotoScore with various orchestral and vocal scores and was extremely impressed with the results. Overall, there was very little editing required and the reading of the music and text proved accurate. I also experimented with hand-written scores and this is an area that has improved greatly with this new release."

"Overall, this is an excellent tool that can save hours of note-inputting."

"A USEFUL AND RAPIDLY IMPROVING PROGRAM WHICH IS GREAT FUN TO USE. 4/5"

"I was pleased to see that the music had been quite accurately calculated and all the notes had been placed in a piano score."

"I found AudioScore was quite accurate in detecting simple melodies that were not too complex or syncopated."

"Overall, this is a useful and rapidly improving program which is great fun to use."

"SOME OF THE MOST INGENIOUS MUSIC PROGRAMS EVER CREATED"

"These two programs [PhotoScore and AudioScore], in my opinion, are some of the most ingenious music programs ever created."

"The amount of accuracy it [PhotoScore] reproduces is astounding. I use this program on an all-most daily basis."

"Sibelius 6 comes bundled with Lite versions of both PhotoScore and AudioScore; however, it is worth every penny to make the investment to upgrade to the Ultimate versions."

"AUDIOSCORE DOES A GOOD JOB"

"Sibelius 6 ships with the Lite version of AudioScore, an application that lets singers input music via microphone. It's always been easy to hook up a synth with MIDI or an electric guitar with a cable, but voice has been tough to capture. AudioScore does a good job with it, though the $249 AudioScore Ultimate is required if you want to create multiple tracks or display pitch."

"THE RESULTS WERE CLOSE TO PERFECT"

"If the spacing of the accents hadn't changed I would have thought I was looking at the scan itself, not the resulting notation file."

"Setup was hassle-free. PhotoScore had no trouble communicating with my HP OfficeJet J5870 scanner."

"The results were close to perfect - PhotoScore captured all the notes, accidentals, slurs, dynamics, staccato dots, and accent marks."

"PhotoScore is an excellent choice."

"SIGNIFICANT EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS FROM USING THE PROGRAM"

"AudioScore adopts the novel approach of creating musical scores through musical performance rather than manually entering the notation."

"There are some significant educational benefits from using the program: firstly, it is possible to use AudioScore to tell you if you are singing or playing out of tune; secondly, you gain inside knowledge of how the performance of a piece and the score relate to one another."

"AN UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT APPLICATION"

"If you are not MIDI savvy, fret no more. AudioScore Professional by Neuratron is an unusually intelligent application designed for microphone-to-score input."

"AudioScore has a number of unique features; to automatically create high-quality pitch scores, Mic-To-Score� is used instead of MIDI keyboard; no prior musical knowledge and virtually no user intervention are required."

"Accurately converts monophonic wave audio to MIDI, MusicXML and NIFF."

"ACCURATE RESULTS ... SIMPLE WORKFLOW ... IT DOESN'T DISAPPOINT"

"Digitise your sheet music with this ingenious app."

"A superb tool... PhotoScore is a real time-saver."

Incorporated Society of Musicians Music Journal

"PRODUCES REMARKABLY ACCURATE RESULTS"

"PhotoScore Professional 4 is a very useful program which will save enormous amounts of time."

"an admirable product producing remarkably accurate results."

"MUST BE SOMETHING SPECIAL"

"PhotoScore Professional makes a remarkably accurate job of [scanning a page of sheet music]."

"PhotoScore Professional does a fantastic job of interpreting a wide variety of music scores."

"Did you know that Toyota has invented a trumpet-playing robot? It's true: you can read all about him [here]. 'It may be better-looking than me', commented one trumpet player, 'and it probably won't need as much oiling - but can it read music?'. Possibly not, but if Toyota was to implant a copy of PhotoScore into this mechanical muso's brain he and his buddies (he's forming a robot band) would probably be able to add sight reading to their list of talents."

"SCANNING COMES OF AGE"

"I approached this review with a bit of skepticism, I walked away a believer."

"Doing even a bad job of sorting a sharp from a flat from a natural, correctly interpreting bar lines and brackets, and deciphering complex rhythms is a noteworthy accomplishment; doing it well is miraculous. PhotoScore does it well, and I found that I could scan a page of material and have it in Sibelius ready to edit, annotate, transpose, or print in a matter of minutes."

"SERIOUSLY IMPRESSIVE!"

"The tempo, title, clef and all markings were picked up without a single error. After I had stopped looking at the screen like a goldfish for a minute, I then hit playback, and heard the whole first page of the score played back accurately using the default piano voice of my midi soundcard. This was seriously impressive!"

"Any musical director, arranger, composer, or other musician who regularly works with printed manuscripts has to have this software, it is as simple as that. Photoscore is one of those utilities that once used become an essential part of the way you work, simply because it saves many hours of tedious work. The scanning and reading of scores is of an accuracy comparable to the best OCR software for text, and the software performs this minor miracle quickly and efficiently."

"Put simply, a mature and effective solution that makes you wonder why you didn't buy it before. Highly recommended!"

"AN IMPRESSIVE PIECE OF SOFTWARE"

"The overall results were impressive and the whole process certainly didn't take as long as first expected."

"PhotoScore Professional is an impressive piece of software that produces quick and, on the whole, reliable results."

Incorporated Society of Musicians Music Journal

"A MOST USEFUL PROGRAM"

"It proved very simple to use... I experimented with some quite complex piano music, some chamber music and an orchestral score: I was impressed with the results... Scanning music in via PhotoScore certainly saves time... Manages to make a complex and sophisticated process easy to operate."

Yippee.net awards PhotoScore a maximum 5 out of 5 rating.

"I can imagine this [PhotoScore] saving A LOT of time for many people out there who have to slave over a score putting it into MIDI by hand. PhotoScore also has amazing accuracy when reading from the music sheet. Brilliant. A recommended download."

The French edition of Macworld gives PhotoScore an outstanding 4� out of 5 rating.

"[PhotoScore est] un programme simple � utiliser et remarquablement efficace... une conception sans faille... un v�ritable tour de force... En conclusion. PhotoScore, tr�s r�guli�rement mis � jour, garantit une reconnaissance de plus en plus fine des partitions musicales... un bien beau logiciel qui fera gagner des heures de copie aux musiciens amateurs et professionnels."

[English translation] "[PhotoScore is] a simple to use and remarkably effective program... a conception without fault... a real tour de force... In conclusion. PhotoScore, which is very regularly updated, guarantees an increasingly accurate recognition of musical scores... a very beautiful piece of software that will save amateur and professional musicians hours of copying."

Top music industry magazine Music Week explains the importance of PhotoScore.

"Breakthroughs in computer technology have also brought benefits to sheet music company backroom boys... software development house Neuratron has recently launched a PhotoScore software programme which will allow publishers for the first time to make high speed and fully accurate archive copies of sheet music titles.

"Such an application could provide sheet music publishers with the key to making titles comprehensively available over the internet. This follows a number of experiments during the past six years whereby sheet music has been electronically available through stand-alone consoles or by fax."

"PhotoScore Lite... can scan in printed music and read it intelligently... This represents a massive advance in the technology, and only a respectful silence will do as musicians begin to realise what this will mean for them."

"PhotoScore Lite does a remarkable job... it transcribes notes, accidentals and rhythms with a high degree of accuracy."

"Optical Manuscript [PhotoScore's original name on RISC OS] is the world's most advanced musical OCR package"

"In short, it's an amazing piece of software which does a very difficult job remarkably well."

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth Excerpt from the book by the best-selling author of A Suitable Boy

"Have all of you looked at my notes?"

"They're terrific," I say... "It must have taken you weeks to key all our parts in," I say.

"Oh no," says Billy. "I just scanned it in from a score - just scanned it in, cleaned it up, adjusted the odd clef, and printed it out. It's amazing what you can do these days." His eyes light up with the possibilities. "My programme now has a playback setting for piano called espressivo [a PhotoScore feature] - a few controlled irregularities, and you can hardly tell it's a computer that's playing, not a human being. Soon they'll perfect it, and you won't be able to tell. Performers will be redundant for all practical purposes..."

"I suppose composers won't," snaps Piers.

"Oh, yes," says Billy in joyful contemplation of his own obsolescence.

[Buy this book at amazon.com.]