Sibelius 5 represents the latest advance in the world’s favorite
music software. We’ve listened to what Sibelius users have been asking
for, and have spent many months adding fantastic enhancements for
writing music, the latest technologies such as VST & Audio Units,
and completely new features, such as the Ideas Hub.
You can
download the full What's New brochure here (pdf - 2.7Mb).
Ideas Hub
Ideas are precious. That's why Sibelius 5 gives you the Ideas Hub - the easy way to capture, tag, find and bring together your musical ideas. With Ideas Hub, you’ll never let another flash of inspiration slip by again.

As well as your own ideas, Ideas Hub comes preloaded with over 2000 ready-made ideas. They cover all styles of music and help provide useful inspiration for your compositions.
Stunning New Built-in Sounds
Sibelius 5 comes with Sibelius Sounds Essentials as standard – a 2GB collection of sounds selected from top-name libraries such as Garritan Personal Orchestra, Garritan Jazz & Big Band, Garritan Concert & Marching Band, and Tapspace Virtual Drumline.
VST & Audio Units support
A huge variety of VST and Audio Unit instruments are available from numerous manufacturers – and now Sibelius 5 can play back using any of them! So you can hear your scores played back by the world’s most advanced sound libraries.
Panorama
Panorama is a new, clearer way of viewing music in Sibelius. Instead of being chopped up into systems and pages, the music is shown in a single, infinitely-wide strip – far easier to read and navigate around. So now you can just think about the notes, and forget about page layout until you’re ready to print.
Easy cues & instrument changes
Creating cues in parts is now the work of a moment. Just copy the music you want to appear in the cue, and choose Paste As Cue. Sibelius 5 does the rest for you. And changing instruments on a score is now equally simple.
Complete layout control
Sibelius 5 also offers users complete and easy layout control, covering bar and page numbering, blank pages, sheet music margins and more – making it easier than ever to produce beautiful scores.
Power Tools and Plug-ins
Incredible new hand written-style fonts, chord symbols, note names, functional analysis, early music and avant garde symbols, new plug-ins with undo… Sibelius 5 has it all.
Universal Binary
As usual, Sibelius 5 supports the very latest technologies. It’s now a Universal Binary application, so it runs at top speed on Intel-based Macs. You can use it on the new Leopard operating system (Mac OS X 10.5), and it also has improved tab, mouse and scroll wheel support.
Plus over forty other improvements including new Power Tools and Plug-ins, engraving and Text enhancements, and improvements in MIDI and playback.
Computer requirements for Sibelius 5
Windows
Minimum requirements for Sibelius 5 alone:
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.
You can use Sibelius Sounds Essentials if your computer doesn’t meet the recommended requirements, but you may find that you cannot use as many sounds simultaneously.
Mac
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
You can use Sibelius Sounds Essentials if your computer doesn’t meet the recommended requirements, but you may find that you cannot use as many sounds simultaneously.