Online Petition for information about the 64-bit update of Encore on Mac

[ericlecardinal]

Hi,
Since the release of MacOS 10.15 Catalina on October 9, 2019, which endorsed the permanent abandonment of 32-bit, a message has been sent warning us not to upgrade to Catalina, adding: "We are continuing to develop our products to meet Apple's new operating system. »
Since this day no information is given to us concerning this update.
Moreover, the advent of Macs with M1 chips makes it impossible to downgrade to MacOs Mojave.
We are therefore deprived in a very short term of our working application.
The silence of the developers suggests an impossibility of this update.
However, as long-time loyal users, we feel we have the right to be informed about the future of Encore.
I am therefore launching a petition on the forum to question Richard Hotchkiss and his associates in order to obtain an answer: should we abandon Encore and try to adapt to other applications or is there assurance that a 64-bit update is really in the works?

I invite you to sign this online petition mentioning your seniority of use of Encore.

Eric Le Cardinal
French jazz musician
Encore user since 1995

[ericlecardinal]

I forgot to specify that to vote you only have to add a comment to this message

[Michael Canavan]

OK I'm a bit confused. Encore refers to the Bob Moog library right? That runs in the UVI workstation, which is definitely 64 bit and should run on Catalina.
Is there compatibility issues with the latest version of UVI?

As far as M1 compatibility I'm sure UVI are working on it.

[cuttime]

I think we're talking:
http://www.passportmusic.com/products/encore/

[mikehalloran]

I think we're talking:
http://www.passportmusic.com/products/encore/

Yep.

I've posted the following in that board:

Have fun with the petition. I’m not interested because it can't do any good. Passport Designs is a business. It’s a marketing decision as to whether a new Encore can exist or not. There has to be a reasonable expectation of profit upon release—if not, Encore is dead, dead, dead and nothing will save it.

Encore excels at generating charts for my ensembles quickly and that’s why I still use it. It’s no good for engraving and never has been—one look at Encore’s amateurish slurs and phrase markings tells you that.

I have found that Notion 6 and Overture open MusicXML generated by Encore better than other apps. MuseScore and Finale and are equally bad. Dorico is the worst but it’s pretty bad at opening .xml from other apps in general. Overture is the most ‘Encore like’ of any current app but it has issues—layout can be quite frustrating but it’s getting better. Of course, since Encore's MusicXML implementation cannot handle Lyrics or Expressions, MusicXML is of limited use — still better than MIDI which cannot handle Text.

For now, I still have licenses to upgrade and use a Mojave external SSD for running this one app. When Apple releases the M based iMac, I will be considering it seriously. If I do, I’ll have moved on from Encore completely if an upgrade hasn’t been released by then.

Before I became handicapped, large works were done in Finale which I’ve owned as long as I’ve had Encore. Finale requires much more use of two hands, something I can no longer do.

Overture is getting better as is MuseScore which has potential of being good someday… maybe… it certainly isn’t there yet.

The high end is Sibelius and Finale. Yamaha/Steinberg’s Dorico poised on the brink of being ready for Prime Time … likewise, ain't there yet but getting closer.

I believe that there’s still room in the market for a reasonably priced, easy to use, fast notation app like Encore. Nothing like it exists in the current marketplace and, if a 64 bit version that works over Apple Silicon and looks good happens (the ability to use 3rd party fonts would be nice and decent looking slurs and ties are a must), I’m there. If not, then I won’t wait.

BTW, except for Sibelius, I have current licenses for every app that I’ve named. Crossgrade licenses aren’t very expensive but I don’t know who accepts Encore anymore except for Overture.

Life’s too short.

[ericlecardinal]

I've posted the following in that board:

Have fun with the petition. I’m not interested because it can't do any good. Passport Designs is a business. It’s a marketing decision as to whether a new Encore can exist or not. There has to be a reasonable expectation of profit upon release—if not, Encore is dead, dead, dead and nothing will save it.

Hi Mike Halloran,

I tried to answer you on Encore's forum, but my message is strangely "pending approval".

I agree with your observation: I don't think Encore has a future yet, the deafening silence of Passport is edifying enough. But this is not the subject of my petition.
What I expect from it is confirmation that Encore has been abandoned, which will free many users from this uncertainty.
If by any chance it would lead to a future perspective for Encore it would be fabulous news, but hell if I don't know anything about it !!!
You know the "stages of mourning", if there is no corpse, no mourning is possible !!!

Kind regards

[mikehalloran]

I tried to answer you on Encore's forum, but my message is strangely "pending approval".

So were my first two attempts to answer you so I was glad you posted here.

Passport's implementation of ZenDesk is pretty bad. There are many things that will put you into Pending Approval. Links in your post or italics will trigger it, I've learned.

Encore is perfect for quick choir or praise band charts or, nowadays, the church bulletin. I used to carry it on a thumb drive for knocking out quick parts when I was behind the desk during a studio session—less than 30MB and you don't have to reboot during an install… Of course, that won't stay the same.

[DanRock101]

ANOTHER VOTE HERE! Any updates from Passport Music? I've been using Music Time since the FLOPPY DISK pre-Pentium days (I was a teenager with my first 286 comp with 256MB of RAM and I thought I was the SH*T!) ... I still have MANY CD Rom Disks of MusicTime as I needed to purchase them because I LOST my receipts with the Serial Number because I was dumb and didn't write them down (remember those daze?!?!?) ... in 2005 I FINALLY upgraded to ... FINALE ... and yup, I've had it and updated it on every comp since then, and yup, still learning how to use it so I FINALLY got a Mac and FINALLY purchased ... Logic 8, then Logic 9 and tried to use the Score Editor and FINALLY upgraded to Encore and never looked back.

Such a bulletproof program ... er ,I mean APP! Any time I had a bug, I'd email Encore and they'd reply within 24hours with an update (even though they've NEVER fixed the "Text bugs").

Logic X's Score Editor has apparently up'd it's game and there are users that swear that they can get publishable score using it. I've since upgraded my Finale to use on my M1 Mac and it works good, even though I have yet to learn how to use it. I work for publishers who make amazing scores with Finale and there ways to offset measures like you want, and to make your text and systems darker etc., but it is so difficult to do these things in Finale that Encore can do just as well. Encore is comfort and ease with a very easy learning curve, BUT, it doesn't work with Catalina/Big Sur/M1 Macs ....

Hey Apple, why don't you BUY PASSPORT like PT did with Sibelius and how Presonus bought Notion (before VSL was working with it) and how Dorico was bought by ... um, ... that other DAW ... (((stumped as I'm writing this))) ... ummmmmmmmmmm ... what's it called?!?!??! Anyway, yes, the other big dogs have ruined, I mean bought score software and did ... um, ... how HAVE they done?? I actually don't know.

[mikehalloran]

As previously mentioned, Dorico was bought by Steinberg, owned by Yamaha. The Dorico development team worked for AVID/Sibelius until someone made the decision to outsource development to Russia—which didn't work out at all and AVID had to build a new Sibelius development team from scratch.

There is a slim chance that another app may incorporate the ability to open Encore files directly. I have given them help and was not asked for an NDA but unfortunately, that development team has been off off the grid since last December so I do not want to give anyone hope by providing details.

In any case, do not hold your breath. An Encore upgrade to 64 bit is highly unlikely.

In the mean time, it's still faster for me to knock out my church charts by booting in Mojave and knocking them out in Encore.

[DanRock101]

In the mean time, it's still faster for me to knock out my church charts by booting in Mojave and knocking them out in Encore.

Thanks for the reply! That is EXACTLY what I've been doing; using my Mojave Macs to do my scores... Encore has always been the easiest, Logic is best for MIDI, and Finale, is most used for publishing (notice, I DIDN'T say Finale is BEST for publishing).

I have 4 Macs at Mojave, 1 at Yosemite, 1 at El Cap & 4 Snow Leopard ... you guess all the reasons for the many OS's ... With "planned obsolescence" built into everything, it's the name of the game, but I feel like my professional life is constantly on some kind of dyalisis or in an oxygen bubble ... or more like I'm embalming a favorite pet . Sorry for the morbid statements, but that's what it's like being a musician in today's world.

[ericlecardinal]

BAD NEWS (even if it was expected for a long time):
Passport Music Software LLC has closed and is no longer in business.

The problem is that the user forum is now disabled.
There is still the possibility of taking over Encore :

The company and intellectual property are for sale. Serious inquires may contact buypmsip@gmail.com

I think I'm going to buy a lot of macs that can run on Mojave! I already have 6 at home!
If anyone has contacts of users of the zendesk forum, it would be nice to pass on the info and try to gather in a forum that could be called "Orphans of Encore".

[DanRock101]

I just saw the news today. So sad. I'm looking at my 1990 floppy disk version and my 4 CD Rom versions of MusicTime and my 2014 DVD version of Encore. So much support, so much, money, so much love. Gone!

Surprising in the App Store world or the iLok/Steinberg online authorization of Finale & Dorico and the Avid Link authorization of Sibelius, and the downloadable Notion, Encore and Passport couldn't/didn't/wouldn't get in the game. I sorta daw this coming and in December upgraded my Finale & Notion licenses, bought Sibelius, & Dorico 3.5 (now at Dorico 4 which they offered as free update!) and spent alot of money doing so just to prepare myself as I saw this coming especially since I bought an M1 Mini in December 2020 & a M1 MacBookAir in Sep 2021. Finale, Dorico, Sibelius and Notion all work fine via Rosetta. Those along with finally delving into Logic X's score editor will keep me busy for the next few months of 2022.

I have NO CLUE how coding works but, heck, why couldn't Encore have done the same? Would it have been THAT hard? I wonder if anyone can/will buy the Passport and resurrect Encore?


FWIW ...

Finale, still hard and unintuitive ... I've had it since 2005 and never needed or could use it ...

Notion, I've had since 2010 when they were integrated nicely into VSL Vienna Instruments. Notion still SOUNDS the best, but LOOKS washed out when you print or export to PDF. I LOVE LOVE LOVE being able to start Notion scores on the iPad with easy Apple Pencil usage/integration, ... but Notion still seems like they've never fully developed.

Sibelius, ... can't get my head around but am trying,....

Dorico ... LOOKS the best and seems to have a great feature set. Really looking forward to trying to get this one going!

Musescore, ... seems like a toy, but hopefully it'll continue to develop.

Lilypad ... html program like the old "SCORE" software. Do i dare?

[James Steele]

Seems like in these situations, if you want to resurrect a product like that, the only hope is if the company is willing to sell the intellectual property to a small independent developer who doesn't have a lot of overhead, and thus it makes sense for him/her to update the code. I saw Passport's announcement and it seems like they made clear they are willing to sell IP assets, but for how much? If it's priced too high, it's out of the reach of the sort of people who could possibly give it a go.

I often wish MOTU would sell the codebase to UniSyn to some small independent developer. It would be nice to have a product like that live on. Maybe one of these days I'll dig out my old MacPro 1,1 and put Snow Leopard on it and see if I can't somehow tie it in to my system as a dedicated UniSyn platform as I'm already building what I like to call a "Nostalgia Rack" of cheap synth rack modules that I once coveted but could not afford when they were popular. It's really more of a novelty.

[mikehalloran]

Encore is dead, dead, dead.

The developer who did Encore 5 for GVOX left the scene shortly after and there hasn't been a paid update since 2008 according to my receipts. I don't think Grandpa Banana has had anything to do with Passport Designs since they left Foster City (2007?) but it's been a few years since our paths have crossed—I'll ask next time I see him.

Don Williams, who wrote it originally, reached out to me in 2020 about adding the ability to open Encore files in Overture which he also wrote for Opcode and is now at v.5 at sonicscores.com. I turned him onto some resources then never heard from him again. Unfortunately, no one over at SonicScores has heard from him since Nov. 2020 so that avenue may also be dead.

Too bad because Encore had some real strengths, fast install & immediate authorization, low footprint, easy workflow. I could be in a studio, hear a band leader argue with a player, install and write the part and have it printed while they were still arguing — and did more than once. When I became the one-armed guy in 2009, it was the only notation app that I could use with any speed—still.

Ok, it was ugly and clunky with horrible looking slurs that looked childish but, when knocking out parts for my bands or choirs, no one cared. Oh some (many) complained that VST handling part of the manual was fiction… picky, picky… but its MIDI import/export was pretty good. Its MusicXML export/import doesn't include lyrics or expressions either.

Encore 5.0.7 works better over Mojave than anything else (over Sierra/High Sierra was pretty bad). I'm ok with Finale and Dorico but if I have a lot of work to do, I'll boot into Mojave, knock out an Encore chart, print to pdf, export as MIDI and .xml that I copy to my Monterey drive. I save a lot of time. The pdfs scan pretty well into SmartScore 64 Pro and those import easily into Finale. If I spring for the Apple Silicon based large iMac (whenever that arrives), I have no intention of keeping a Mac that can run Mojave just for that one app.

MuseScore has new owners and hired one of their biggest critics to take over—still don't like the work flow but it looks a lot better than just last year. With the price being free, I can't see Encore rising from the ashes.

Notion 6 has excellent .xml import from Sibelius and I do a lot of collaborative work in it but, when starting from scratch, it has a worse workflow than MuseScore so I never do. Presonus has just been bought by Fender and there are promises that development will resume on bringing Notion into modern times. We'll see.

And then I have a couple buddies who remember when Mosaic was the best and wish that MOTU would bring it baaaaaaack.

[James Steele]

And then I have a couple buddies who remember when Mosaic was the best and wish that MOTU would bring it baaaaaaack.

I have a friend that kept his Mac Plus for YEARS just to use Mosaic.