I've used SmartScore for years, and recently upgraded to X2. I've cursed at the product a few times, but with its recognition capabilities it's saved me a huge amount of time. There doesn't seem to be anything like it in the price range. The key is to accept that recognition of scores is much more complex than OCR for text, recognition is rarely perfect, and the errors that occur are usually fixed easily once the user gets past the learning curve (esp. Keyboard shortcuts). The scoring, playback and import/export features are also very good. I own Finale but often still do scoring in SS since its scoring compares favorably. SS doesn't do well with even good hand-done notation, maybe we'll see that in the future. But it does well with published notation, and using the image editor you can clean up bad scans to improve recognition.

I've owned SmartScore Pro for the last several versions. I don't know that all the upgrades really add any functionality that I need. That being said, this program does almost everything that I need it to do. Unlike some of the other reviewers, I don't find that the program crashes all the time. Yes, once in a while it will crash, and it will ALWAYS crash after you save a file in .WAV format. Just make sure you saved the native file before you create WAV files.

The scanning function isn't perfect. I read a review that this product didn't support their scanner, but all you have to do is scan to a PDF file, and recognize that. SmartScore will convert to a .TIF format and recognize the score, so I don't personally think that's such a big deal. What modern scanner doesn't scan to a PDF file? Or if you can only scan to TIF, SmartScore can natively recognize TIF files too.

SmartScore doesn't do a perfect scan of files, however, but I'd say it's at least 95% accurate when I scan my scores. You do have to carefully compare the original to the scanned score, but they are in matching windows top and bottom, so this isn't very difficult to do. Plus, SmartScore will highlight any bar in purple that it sees and not having the proper number of notes and rests, so that helps you locate errors. Believe me, scanning may not be perfect but it sure as heck beats doing it manually.

I don't use any other notation software, but SmartScore will open Music XML files. This feature isn't fully developed, since I saved a file in XML, opened it in a trial of Forte, made a couple of changes, but after that SmartScore wouldn't open it again. I wish that feature would work better.

My two biggest complaints about the software:
1. It doesn't recognize or support "˜ghost notes,' or those notes with an "˜X' for the head of the note which indicate that there is a beat but not a note there. How hard could it be to add this functionality? I've asked for this feature for the last three or four versions.
2. Also, when the software is playing your song, you can pause and resume from that point, and you can even select a sequence of notes from the page and play only those, but I don't have any way to start playing from a specific point in the song. This is a problem when you're working on a specific point in the song and you want to start from there.

So, yes, the software is expensive. However, once you invest in the software, the upgrades aren't that expensive, but still around 1/3 the cost of the original software. I'm not a composer, but a lyricist who works with other composers. There is a significant learning curve, but what major software package doesn't have a steep learning curve? Think about the time you've spent learning Photoshop, or even Word or Excel, and you'll see what I mean. Yes, you can jump right in and use the product, but you will be perusing the manual at first to figure out how to do the things you want to do.

Still, I really like the product and think it's worth the money. I wish that Musitek would be a little more responsive and add the features the users ask for, and it would be nice if the scanning function was a bit more accurate, but this tool is very useful. After using this software for many years, I tried evaluation versions of some other software like Forte and Sibelius strictly to find software that supports ghost notes, but I have to say the learning curve of moving from SmartScore to either of those products was simply too high for me to even consider switching to new software.

After recognition, sometimes the results weren't good. Then I learned it was because I scanned at too low a resolution.
I reached out to their support and got the answers I needed. Grey (not black and white) 300 dpi and save to PDF.
Don't know about others who had issues, but I got mine sorted out. Now I'm lovin' it.

This is a great program! But, if you expect it to automatically do everything for you, there is no program that will, nor any other that even comes close. This one comes closest to any I have seen. I use it for personal performance music as well as for reading interpreting and arranging scores for church and community choir. It is best used by pre-editing your score tif files on a good photo editor. Pay very careful attention to removing dynamics marks, then re-inserting them after conversion. You must be prepared to edit your scans both before and after conversion. There are some twists and quirks that I absolutely hate. There are far more features that I absolutely LOVE. I would recommend this program for any serious musician, choir director or performer. If you don't like it, it will be because you do not really understand music editing and electronic assistants. (Or assistance, either one.)