The new Sibelius 5 makes writing scores a breeze - giving you more time to focus on the music. Stunning new features like Panorama mean you don’t need to think about pages while you’re composing or arranging. You can create audio files which can be converted to MP3s or burned to CD, produce instrumental parts effortlessly, compose for video, sell your music online and do hundreds of other things you might never have dreamed of.

Sibelius reads, understands and plays back all standard markings, and you can buy extra sound libraries for choral music, world music and more. A new feature called "Idea Hub" allows you to capture, tag, find, and bring together your musical ideas. It also comes preloaded with over 2000 ready-made ideas that cover all styles of music and help provide useful inspiration for your compositions.

Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, 512MB+ RAM, 350MB hard disk space, DVD-ROM drive

You must be running at least Windows XP Service Pack 2 to install and run Sibelius 5. If you have Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.x, you need to purchase an upgrade to a more recent version of the Windows operating system.

Additional recommendations for using Sibelius Sounds Essentials and Kontakt Player 2, especially for scores with many instruments: 1GB+ total RAM, 3.5GB total hard disk space, ASIO-compatible soundcard.

Minimum requirements for Sibelius 5 alone: Mac OS X 10.4 or later, 512MB+ RAM, 350MB hard disk space, DVD-ROM drive.Sibelius 5 is a Universal application, which means that it runs on both older Macs with PowerPC processors and new Macs with Intel processors.

If you are running a version of Mac OS X earlier than Mac OS X 10.4, you cannot install and run Sibelius. You may want to upgrade Mac OS X now, although this normally incurs an upgrade fee. See www.apple.com for details.

Additional recommendations for using Sibelius Sounds Essentials and Kontakt Player 2, especially for scores with many instruments: G5 or Intel processor, 1GB+ total RAM, 3.5GB total hard disk space