Hi Dennis, I've seen Music Reader advertised but lost interest in it because it only supports their proprietary MRS format. I'm encouraged to learn now that Music Reader will be soon supporting native PDF. I hope they directly support (no conversion required), as GoodReader already does, other file types (ei: png, txt, jpg, etc) too.

How much does the iPad version cost? Also, will I also need to purchase the desktop version to benefit from the features you described above? If so, how much does the desktop version cost? thanks. - Scott


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Steve & Wally: Interestingly enough, Unrealbook was the 1st iPhone music app I purchased when I first got my iPad. Firstly, what I like about this app is its 'songs: list-search' function, allowing one to see & scroll (in alphabetical order) a list of all the songs in the database, and the ability to 'search' by title (the PDF file name). The other thing I like is UnrealBook's 'setlist' & 'hotspot'feature which lets you create a hot spot to any portion of a page (repeat signs, coda,etc), making it easy to jump down to a specified section within the song.

Here's what I don't like about UnRealBook:

1) Unless I'm missing something, it's not possible to create 'multiple' folders to sort your songs into different custom categories ei: country, pop, latin, gershwin, beatles, etc. Instead, all songs (1,500 +) must all reside in one single directory, and the only way to search for or call one up is by the PDF file name (usually the song's 'title'). This is far too limiting. On the other hand, with the GoodReader app, you're able to create as many different named folders & subfolders as you want to organize and store your PDF song library. In fact, GoodReader supports not only PDF format files, but many different file types (.txt, png, jpg, etc)

2) Unfortunately, in UnrealBook, it's not possible to save your custom cropped setting for an individual song. Most all song sheets have a white border around the music which, unless cropped, reduce the size of the actual music displayed. Though it's possible to use your 2 fingers to expand the size of a page sheet, and effectively crop out the white border, unfortunately this crop setting effects all other songs in the entire song database library as well. Because every song typically has different margin widths, when you call up another song, part of the music may be partially hidden, or opposite: it's margin area width extremely excessive.

On the other hand, GoodReader includes a feature which stores your custom cropped setting for 'each and every' song individually, eliminating the UnRealBook universal (all songs) cropped the same dilemma. In addition, GoodReader goes farther and allows you, when cropping a single page, to select from the following:

a) Crop only that page
b) Crop 'every other' page in that same PDF document
c) Crop 'all pages' in that PDF document

The 'every other page' option is great for large song/fakebooks PDFS where there are many pages (100-800+) pages to crop, and for when the margins differ on 'even' and 'odd' pages.

That said, though UnrealBook has some nice features, unless they address the 2 issues I've outlined above, I'm happier with GoodReader. When I initially purchased UnRealBook, I contacted Aaron Nelson about my concerns and he appeared to acknowledge them, promising to address them in an update. So far though, unless I'm missing something, this hasn't happened yet. Your added comments addressing my concerns are much appreciated - Scott