Notion Protege review

Protege is one of the most affordable music-notation programs around but it still has high aspirations as a serious creative and educational tool.

It's a cut-down version of Notion 1.5, which isn't currently available in the UK but sells in the US for $599 (around £307). The main difference is that scores in Protege are limited to eight instruments.

At first we were baffled by the interface, but after 10 minutes with the Getting Started PDF tutorial we were fine. Note entry is swift with good use of keyboard short cuts, though editing and deleting could be much better. Sadly, the software lets the user enter notes that are outside the range of the given instrument. Entering too many notes in a bar makes them appear red, but it isn't prohibited.

The layout of scores adjusts automatically to present the music in a clear manner. However, it's not a foolproof system: the notes themselves look neat but certain markings sit uncomfortably close to one another, which makes scores look less than professional. Titles and subtitles sometimes appeared on top of one another. We were even more alarmed to see that the bottom stave disappeared off the page when printing, but this was cured by changing from the default Legal paper size to A4. We saw a few other minor bugs and experienced quite a few crashes, but at least the auto-backup facility managed to recover our work each time.

The library of orchestral sounds for score playback is fantastic. Drawing on extensive recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, the result is lively and polished. Articulations such as sforzandi and trills are reproduced, but dynamics move in blocks, with no ability to simulate crescendos or diminuendos.

Protege feels crude and awkward compared with Sibelius 4, a phenomenally powerful notation program that offers attractive automatic formatting along with accessible controls to edit just about anything. Both programs have a steep initial learning curve, but after a few hours' use, Sibelius became a breeze to use, whereas Protege remained relatively clumsy and inflexible. However, this is an unfair comparison, as Sibelius costs around £450. Those with limited funds are more likely to consider Sibelius Student Edition, which costs £116 and includes the same core notation tools, though without various advanced features and some more important ones such as part extraction for creating individual parts for performers. Like Protege, it's limited to eight instruments per score, but unlike Protege, it also lacks a built-in synthesiser for score playback.

This makes choosing one over the other more difficult. The issue that sways it for us is the fact that the eight-instrument limitation in both packages is quite miserly, and so an upgrade is pretty much inevitable for anyone who is serious about score production. With this in mind, we'd recommend getting on the bottom rung of the better ladder and going for Sibelius Student Edition.