Music Fonts: Which is your favourite?

[Hector Pascal]

When setting up a score in the Document Setup Wizard, I always find myself deliberating over Engraver or Maestro...

Do you think one is preferable to the other in certain types of scores, or does it come down to personal taste?

Yours curiously,
Hector.

[Hector Pascal]

A little background on the Finale fonts.

https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/a-brie ... ale-fonts/

Hector.

[BuonTempi]

Call me crazy, but I use a mixture of both!

I much prefer the larger noteheads on Engraver, particularly for smaller staff sizes. The flags and clefs are nicer too. However, I don't like the dynamics, so I use Maestro for those. Also, I use the Maestro for all the articulations, though I'm toying with some from Engraver. The fermata is nice and narrower.
One thing I don't like is the parenthesised accidentals, which are very wide, so I've made my own versions of those.

One of these days, I'll get round to making my own combination house font...

[Peter Thomsen]

Call me crazy, but I use a mixture of both! …

Me too.

And several other forum members have declared that they, too, use a music font mixture.

… I use the Maestro for all the articulations, though I'm toying with some from Engraver …

For the marcato articulation (V symbol) I prefer Engraver.

[MikeHalloran]

I used to like Sonata for some things and think I'd like to try it again. I still have my floppy somewhere but no longer have a way to install it. I've no idea if Adobe has updated it since 1989. One of those things I mean to get around to someday...

As to a current favorite, I don't have one. November isn't half bad. In Finale, i default to Maestro nowadays. Never cared for Petrucci.

[BuonTempi]

I used to like Sonata for some things and think I'd like to try it again. I've no idea if Adobe has updated it since 1989.

The only change is that Adobe no longer sells the original Type 1 format: you have to buy "Sonata Std" OpenType, in which all the symbols are in the Unicode slots for musical symbols (NB Not SMuFL). So it doesn't have any symbols in the 8-bit "ASCII" text range, and is therefore useless in Finale (without re-setting all the character choices in Doc Opts).

Still no tenor G clef, though.

Interestingly, the Aloisen font that comes with Overture 5 is essentially a SMUFL-compliant font that is very similar to Sonata, if not actually based on it.

[MikeHalloran]

I used to like Sonata for some things and think I'd like to try it again. I've no idea if Adobe has updated it since 1989.

The only change is that Adobe no longer sells the original Type 1 format: you have to buy "Sonata Std" OpenType, in which all the symbols are in the Unicode slots for musical symbols (NB Not SMuFL). So it doesn't have any symbols in the 8-bit "ASCII" text range, and is therefore useless in Finale (without re-setting all the character choices in Doc Opts).

Still no tenor G clef, though.

Thanks for that. I do too much vocal arranging ...

Interestingly, the Aloisen font that comes with Overture 5 is essentially a SMUFL-compliant font that is very similar to Sonata, if not actually based on it.

Hmmm... I have Overture 5. I never really noticed that before but there are similarities. I tried to use Bravura in Overture 5 but there's a bug—I've not tried it in Finale to see if the bug is in Overture or the font.

Going to the Way Back Machine... I believe that I may have bought Sonata to use it with Opcode MusicShop 1.x — either that or Finale 1 — both required Sonata and one of them required a separate purchase. Version 2 of MusicShop went to Aloisen around the time that Overture was released. I bought MusicShop to open the DMCS created on my Mac+. I still have all that nonsense on my G4.