Sibelius

File Format
Name	Sibelius
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Audio and Music Sibelius
Extension(s)	.sib, .si7
PRONOM	fmt/696
Type Code	SIBL
Magic Bytes	"\x0fSIBELIUS"

Overview

Sibelius is the name of a series of applications for music typesetting, initially developed for RISC OS (file type DE0, Sibelius) and later for Mac OS X and Windows.

The file format for the RISC OS versions (Sibelius 6 and 7) differs from that used on the other platforms. Traditionally, files from those versions have been given an .si7 file extension, imported into the later versions, and saved with an .sib extension.

Files produced on current versions of the product are encrypted using an unspecified algorithm.[1][2] It's most likely impossible to read Sibelius files without reverse engineering the Sibelius software, which may violate the EULA.

Some files appear to contain several headers throughout their contents. These are connected via tables of file addresses that can be used to construct a tree of data nodes for each file.

Resources

• [3] - information about the different versions of Sibelius for various platforms
• [4] - Sibelius Preservation Assessment from the British Library
• Identifying Sibelius file versions