The short version
- On clean printed scores ScanSing now makes the fewest mistakes, after we fixed what this test found. Over the eight engraved scores ScanSing averages 99.0% of notes right, PlayScore 2 96.7% and Music Scanner 94.7%. Against PlayScore 2, ScanSing has fewer wrong notes on seven scores and one is a tie.
- That lead is not a blind result. In the first run, on 1 October, ScanSing averaged 96.1% on these eight and PlayScore 2 was slightly ahead. We then fixed mistakes the test had shown on three of the scores and measured again; the other apps were not given that chance. The first-run numbers are kept below.
- On the one old scan we tried, ScanSing held up best. On a Bach chorale page from the 1784 Breitkopf print, ScanSing read 67% of notes right, PlayScore 2 7% and Music Scanner 11%. One page is not a verdict on old scans.
- PlayScore 2 is faster. About 2 seconds a score against ScanSing's 6 to 7, both on a Mac.
- ScanSing's MusicXML carried the lyrics on every score with words, though not every syllable was read exactly. The MusicXML from PlayScore 2 and from Music Scanner had no lyrics in our runs.
At a glance
| Measure | ScanSingengine of 3 Oct 2026 | PlayScore 2Mac 3.66, Professional | Music ScanneriPhone app | Audiveris5.11.0 | homr0.7.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Notes read correctly8 clean printed scores, average | 99.0% | 96.7% | 94.7% | 71.8% | 61.0% |
| Notes read correctlythe 1784 Bach scan | 67.0% | 6.5% | 11.3% | 11.5% | 42.8% |
| Notes read correctlyall 9 scores, average | 95.4% | 86.7% | 85.5% | 65.1% | 59.0% |
| Wrong notesall 9 scores, 6,421 notes; lower is better | 247 | 669 | 758 | 2,184 | 2,540 |
| Lyrics in the MusicXML8 scores with words | 8 of 84 with ≥ 90% of syllables exact | 0 of 8 | 0 of 8 | 8 of 8none with ≥ 90% exact | 0 of 8 |
| Seconds per scoreon a Mac; lower is better | 6.8 | 2.1 | not timedrun on a phone | 20.5 | 14.8 |
The best result in each row is in bold; grey marks a row ScanSing does not win. The nine scores hold 6,421 notes. A large part of the gap in the nine-score average comes from the old Bach scan, where every other app lost most of the page.
Score by score
Wrong notes on each score, with the share of notes read correctly under it. Lower is better.
| Score | ScanSingengine of 3 Oct 2026 | PlayScore 2Mac 3.66, Professional | Music ScanneriPhone app | Audiveris5.11.0 | homr0.7.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tallis, If ye love meSATB · 417 notes | 0100.0% right | 0100.0% right | 0100.0% right | 399.3% right | 11672.2% right |
| Arcadelt, Il bianco e dolce cigno † ‡SATB · 521 notes | 199.8% right | 499.2% right | 7386.0% right | 40921.5% right | 29543.4% right |
| Hensel, Schöne FremdeSATB, Op. 3 No. 2 · 1,093 notes | 199.9% right | 499.6% right | 199.9% right | 32370.4% right | 32670.2% right |
| Hensel, Im HerbsteSATB, Op. 3 No. 3 · 575 notes | 0100.0% right | 499.3% right | 599.1% right | 17769.2% right | 14375.1% right |
| Schubert, An die Musikvoice and piano · 626 notes | 499.4% right | 3893.9% right | 2496.2% right | 11182.3% right | 10683.1% right |
| Schubert, Die Forelle †voice and piano · 975 notes | 699.4% right | 1498.6% right | 5794.2% right | 22277.2% right | 33865.3% right |
| Schumann, Widmung † ‡voice and piano · 1,248 notes | 8393.3% right | 14788.2% right | 17186.3% right | 50759.4% right | 57354.1% right |
| Tchaikovsky, Otche nash ‡SATB, Op. 41 · 506 notes | 0100.0% right | 2894.5% right | 1996.2% right | 2595.1% right | 38024.9% right |
| Bach, two choralesold scan of the 1784 Breitkopf print, no words · 460 notes | 15267.0% right | 4306.5% right | 40811.3% right | 40711.5% right | 26342.8% right |
Five more scores were run through every app but have no independent reference to count against: Bruckner's Locus iste, Rachmaninoff's Bogoroditse Devo in two editions, Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine and a Bortnyansky concerto. They are not in the numbers above.
How we counted
- Notes right is 100% minus wrong notes as a share of the notes in the reference. Every sounding note counts, each note of a chord separately; rests and grace notes do not. The whole score is counted, not just the first page.
- A wrong note is a missing note, an extra note, or a note with the wrong pitch or length, each costing 1. The order of parts and how notes are split between voices do not matter. Distance is counted note by note and chord by chord, and the smaller is taken.
- References are MusicXML files of the same edition: five Lieder and part-songs from the OpenScore project (CC0), the publisher's own files from CPDL for Tallis, Arcadelt and Tchaikovsky, and Craig Sapp's encoding of the Bach chorales. The Arcadelt reference was itself produced from the same PDF by a recognition program (PDFtoMusic Pro), and the Bach encoding may differ from the 1784 print in small details, so both may hold mistakes of their own.
- Settings. PlayScore 2 for Mac 3.66 (Professional), its MusicXML as shared from the app. Music Scanner on an iPhone, its MusicXML export; we did not write down its version. Audiveris 5.11.0 in batch mode with default settings. homr 0.7.0 on pages rendered at 300 dpi, one page at a time. ScanSing with the same recogniser as the app, run on the Mac.
- Time is wall-clock on one Apple Silicon MacBook that was busy with other work during the runs, so the seconds are approximate. PlayScore 2's time was taken by hand and is an upper bound. Music Scanner was run on a phone and not timed. On a phone every app will be slower.
What this does not show
- Phone photos. All nine are PDFs; photos taken at an angle or in poor light are next.
- ScanScore, SmartScore and Soundslice. They were not installed on the test machine, so we have no numbers for them.
- How long it takes to fix the result by hand, and whether each voice is pleasant to practise with. We counted notes, not convenience.
- Nine scores is a small sample. A different set of scores could change the order between the three apps at the top.
- A blind test of ScanSing. Three of the nine scores were fixed against this very test, so a fresh set of scores is what would show how much of the gain carries over.
PlayScore 2 and Music Scanner are mature apps that do more than ScanSing in many ways, and Audiveris and homr are free open-source projects. If you make one of these apps and think we ran it wrong, write to hello@scansing.app and we will re-run it and update this page.
