what printer to buy for printing sheet music

[markwa]

A search for "printer" in this forum didn't find an answer to this question, which I suspect has been asked and discussed often. If I wanted to print the scanned sheet music at home, two-sided (without gluing), what would be a good printer for me to purchase for this purpose? I use a Windows (not Mac) PC.

Thanks!
-- Mark
Mark Walsen
markwa@notation.com
Developer/Founder of Notation Software (www.notation.com)

[daphnis]

Any decent duplexing printer would work. I rather like the Brother HL-4040CDN as it is extremely reliable, can print in color, is network-ready, duplexes, and the toner refills are relatively inexpensive (not replacement cartridges).

[markwa]

Hello Daphnis,

Thanks for your reply. Getting a printer with duplex is a great suggestion. Like most printers, the Brother HL-4040CDN max page size is legal size. How do sheet music aficionados print full sheet music paper size at home? Or for that matter, how do they get printer services to print full sheet music paper size?

Cheers
-- Mark

[daphnis]

There is no such thing as "full sheet music size" since they can be printed on a vast array of sizes. I guess I would consider myself a "sheet music aficianado" and I'm perfectly fine with letter sized prints, in fact I routinely play from that size myself both with piano scores and orchestral /chamber parts without problem.

[markwa]

I'm perfectly fine with letter sized prints, in fact I routinely play from that size myself both with piano scores and orchestral /chamber parts without problem.

Do you do post-editing on the IMSLP pages to reduce them to fit the letter size page, leaving enough room for the gutter to do the binding (staples, ring)?

Cheers
-- Mark

[daphnis]

no, there is really no need if you print from Acrobat and tell it to scale to fit the page. It considers a suitable margin when up/down scaling the image data, and the resize algorithms are good enough to even produce quite readable pages from miniature scores.