# Attended Daniel Spreadbury's Dorico Demo last night...



## Luke W (Nov 18, 2016)

Daniel stopped in Nashville and presented a 2-hour demo of Dorico for a group of about 20 engravers, arrangers, composers. I'm an engraver with 25 years in Finale, more interested in professional engraving application than composition or playback. I haven't purchased Dorico but here are a few thoughts from last night...

1) Daniel said repeat endings, chords, and other important features will probably not be included until the end of next summer (2017). IMO, it sounds like it would be at least a year before Dorico is even a consideration for professional engraving work (at least the kind I do.)

2) Importing XML from Finale or Sibelius works pretty well - exporting XML from Dorico to other notation programs is not great - but they're working on it. This is a crucial obstacle for me, as I would probably use Dorico to start projects, then export to Finale to add chords, repeats. This exporting process would be the only way I could start learning Dorico while still producing publisher-ready scores.

3) No metatools in Dorico yet. Daniel said they've heard the concern from Finale users and are looking at the possibility. Again, this would be a necessary addition before I could switch.

4) Midi playback looks promising, especially with the incorporation of expression maps. You can tweak midi data (overlap notes for legato, etc.) and it doesn't mess up the notated score. Daniel admitted they hadn't fully integrated the power of Cubase, but it's a start. Playback with Halcyon instruments was...underwhelming. I'm interested to try playback with VSL libraries.

All in all, I left more interested in Dorico than before. I'm impressed by the engraving engine they've built - could be game-changing if they add the necessary features. I'll download the free trial in December, play around and make a decision before the crossgrade offer ends in the spring. But if they lose steam on fleshing it out to a full-featured program, it will be a painful missed opportunity.


----------



## shnootre (Nov 18, 2016)

Grateful for this report. This Dorico rollout is incredibly strange. Spreadbury seems like a decent guy, and seems committed. But it is baffling to me that they released the program and charged full price for it when it was more than a year away from being ready for professional use. I too will try the free trial, but I have a very bad taste in my mouth from everything I've read about Dorico. I was so excited when it was released, and now I feel like they're asking for a tremendous leap of faith. What use is a program to me if I have to jump out into ANOTHER program to add chord symbols? (just an example, I generally don't use chord symbols).


----------



## jamwerks (Nov 19, 2016)

Thanks for the info. What do you mean by metatools?


----------



## fratveno (Nov 19, 2016)

Metatools in Finale means that you can program all the alpha-numeric keys on the keyboard to hold any articulation or expression etc. In the default file many are preprogrammed, e.g. hold down the s key and click on or drag around several notes to apply staccato dots, but you can program this any way you like very easily.

Basically all observations above regarding Dorico are correct. I bought it on day one and have been exploring it for an hour or two daily ever since. Having also used Finale since day one (back in 1988) I must say that the quality of Dorico's engraving defaults quickly become addictive. Seeing how notes and their accidentals (incl courtesy accidentals) stack up correctly in different voices, how dynamics and hairpins align and move out of the way automatically is really impressive. And the printed output is gorgeous. In the release version the ability to adjust things manually is limited, but the postrelease version promised for late November will already remedy some of that. Also, there are a few bugs that I feel confident will be ironed out very soon.

So far so good, but why release a program that lacks quite a lot of basic functionality? E.g. cue notes are not supported yet either. I guess we will never get a good answer to that. It seems likely that Steinberg wanted to test the market, and then perhaps adjust their commitment accordingly. I don't think they will abandon it, but the road to a true Finale competitor (in terms of overall flexibility) is probably long... The mention above of chords being delayed until the end of next summer seems to indicate that as well...


----------



## Luke W (Nov 19, 2016)

After seeing the demo, the great hope of Dorico IMO is they've begun building an application that treats engraving as a musical process, not a graphic design process. For example: Dorico connects dynamic markings to hairpins, always locking them together, moving them together (often automatically!), because they are musically connected. I'm not sure how many months of my life will be spent on lining up dynamics and hairpins in Finale, switching between two tools to do so.

It is puzzling that they would release the application prematurely. I talked to Daniel after the demo, and he admitted that Dorico was not yet ready to replace Finale for pro engraving work. But he gave me his email, asked me to try the free trial and send him my list of must-have features I would need before I could switch from Finale. Maybe Steinberg forced an early launch, I don't know. But Daniel seems committed to building a program that will make Finale and Sibelius obsolete. The core engine they've built could very well do that, if they follow through.


----------



## just2high (Nov 19, 2016)

@Luke W Thanks for sharing!

@fratveno How have you found the responsiveness of the program? I bought Dorico on the first day too because I'd been following it since they first announced. Viewed as a sort of investment in the product and probably the cheapest it is ever going to be. There are some things very promising about it but I agree it's not really useful as a workhorse at this time. Missing symbols not withstanding, the biggest issue for me right now is it is so slow. I really wonder how their demos don't lag. As soon as I get more than a few lines it will take a second or two for the carat to move which is just a workflow killer. This is one of the things they said they were going to try and fix in the first update which I really am hoping they do because there is so much potential for Dorico as a writing tool.

Playing with it a bit there's so much promise: Free form writing without barlines is pretty magical. Inserting and automatic updating of rhythms is also really awesome. In concept, the Flows could be used for so many things. Keeping melodic ideas in separate views, organizing all cues for a project in a single file, referencing a reduction for orchestration. The default look is also stunning. Import from an XML just looks right.

Right now I primarily use it for the XML import and midi export. Finale's midi file export has tons of junk and the xmls don't look great, but Dorico exports really nice and clean midi for daw import.


----------



## Luke W (Nov 19, 2016)

... the biggest issue for me right now is it is so slow. I really wonder how their demos don't lag. As soon as I get more than a few lines it will take a second or two for the carat to move which is just a workflow killer. This is one of the things they said they were going to try and fix in the first update which I really am hoping they do because there is so much potential for Dorico as a writing tool.[/QUOTE said:


> @just2high - what are your system specs?


----------



## jamwerks (Nov 19, 2016)

Great insider info here. I can understand Steinberg wanting to get this out and some money rolling in. Haven't switched over yet. Playback is indispensible for checking before putting in front of an orchestra. And afraid of discovering a lacking feature that might be a show-stopper in a tight situation. Looks cool and promising though!


----------



## just2high (Nov 19, 2016)

@Luke W Tried on 2 different computers. 

One an older Cleo laptop: i7-2860QM, 16 GB Ram, NVidia GEforce graphics card. Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

The other is a Surface Pro 3, i5-4300U, 8 GB Ram, Windows 10.

It's slow on both, but actually worse on the Surface, which I was surprised about since it's much newer. Playback doesn't work on Windows 7 but does in Windows 10. I didn't try to fix the playback on Windows 7 because the speed issue just makes actually working a pain, I wouldn't pin the problem completely on Windows 7 because on the Dorico forums I believe others have had success with playback and this computer is old with tons of stuff on it so anything could be affecting playback. I didn't have a mac to test on, which is what all their demos seem to be on.

According to the forum it has to do with Dorico attempting to redraw the output after every change in the notation, causing a bottleneck in getting the recalculation to the graphic output. I believe they also said they had a fix but have to wait for the update to get it...

I should add I also have the newest Finale 64 bit which runs completely smoothly on both machines, can even run VEPro in it.


----------



## fratveno (Nov 20, 2016)

just2high said:


> It's slow on both, but actually worse on the Surface, which I was surprised about since it's much newer. Playback doesn't work on Windows 7 but does in Windows 10. I didn't try to fix the playback on Windows 7 because the speed issue just makes actually working a pain, I wouldn't pin the problem completely on Windows 7 because on the Dorico forums I believe others have had success with playback and this computer is old with tons of stuff on it so anything could be affecting playback. I didn't have a mac to test on, which is what all their demos seem to be on.
> 
> According to the forum it has to do with Dorico attempting to redraw the output after every change in the notation, causing a bottleneck in getting the recalculation to the graphic output. I believe they also said they had a fix but have to wait for the update to get it...
> 
> I should add I also have the newest Finale 64 bit which runs completely smoothly on both machines, can even run VEPro in it.



I'm on W7 (desktop) and haven't had any problems with playback. Also works fine on a W8.1 i5 laptop with the internal audio. I've also whitelisted a few VST2s, such as the Aria player, which also works fine. I've even had success with Bidule using ("cheating") it to output MIDI  The forthcoming update will apparently have the Expression map system in place, and then it should be possible to test its audio capabilities to the full. One nice feature with the audio arcitecture is that each voice on every staff in the score gets its dedicated lane and output settings

Regarding speed it does indeed feel a bit sluggish even on a very fast computer. This apparently is mainly due to very conservative internal settings in the release build, and will improve as the program develops. Obviously, how it currently redraws each note individually in a transposition operation, is something that will change completely once dedicated transposition tools gets implemented.


----------



## jamwerks (Nov 20, 2016)

Also, as far as releasing a seemingly unfinished product, Steinberg probably wanted to see how users reacted to the direction the devs have taken on this, and maybe have the finalized product shaped by user input. Seems like maybe a wise position.


----------



## just2high (Dec 8, 2016)

Been using Dorico more now that the update is out. Works much smoother than before. Being a long time Finale user it still takes some getting used to, especially when the behavior is contrary to what might be expected. (ie. In open meter you have to be careful where you put your notes because you don't have beats to see where the previous note ends; To insert a barline you type Shift-B and then type "Single" instead of "Normal" as it says in the side bar). With a midi keyboard straight getting ideas onto the page is really fast, making corrections is a bit finicky.


----------

