# Dorico: Thoughts?



## Christof

I just purchased and installed Dorico.
Either this is a bad joke or I am extremely dumb.

-The documentation is only online and not helpful at all, why not a PDF as well?
-The languages are mixed, I set it to german, but some dialogues are still in english.
-Due to a missing manual I am not able to create a single triplet, and I don't want to go through a Steinberg forum to find out how to create cue notes.These are just examples.
-The playback is a joke, articulations won't change at all (e.g.legato to pizz.).Maybe they do, but without manual it may be hard to find out.
-The App crashes constantly without giving the option to do automatic backup saving.

If this is what we have been waiting for a long time I just can say that i am extremely disappointed and even angry.
It feels like an early beta.Sorry.


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## SillyMidOn

Christof said:


> I just purchased and installed Dorico.
> Either this is a bad joke or I am extremely dumb.
> 
> -The documentation is only online and not helpful at all, why not a PDF as well?
> -The languages are mixed, I set it to german, but some dialogues are still in english.
> -Due to a missing manual I am not able to create a single triplet, and I don't want to go through a Steinberg forum to find out how to create cue notes.These are just examples.
> -The playback is a joke, articulations won't change at all (e.g.legato to pizz.).Maybe they do, but without manual it may be hard to find out.
> -The App crashes constantly without giving the option to do automatic backup saving.
> 
> If this is what we have been waiting for a long time I just can say that i am extremely disappointed and even angry.
> It feels like an early beta.Sorry.


Wow that does not sound good at all.


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## Christof

Maybe I am very dumb, I don't want to be unfair of course.
If I am wrong I apologize.
I would love to hear what others say.


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## Tatu

Christof said:


> It feels like an early beta.Sorry.


Sounds like a very bad first impression.

I tested their online manual and it actually gave the answer to triplet pretty fast (assuming it's valid information).
Give it a try.

http://steinberg.help/dorico/v1/en/dorico/topics/write_mode/write_mode_tuplets_adding_t.html?hl=triplet


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## Hannes_F

This is very precise: "Activate the tuplets function _by pressing the respective key command_ on your computer keyboard".

Better than entering a key code or a retina scan, so kudos to the manual.


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## Christof

Tatu said:


> Sounds like a very bad first impression.
> 
> I tested their online manual and it actually gave the answer to triplet pretty fast (assuming it's valid information).
> Give it a try.
> 
> http://steinberg.help/dorico/v1/en/dorico/topics/write_mode/write_mode_tuplets_adding_t.html?hl=triplet


Yes,I read it but it won't work at all.


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## Tatu

Christof said:


> Yes,I read it but it won't work at all.


Well that's just bad. Good thing to point these flaws out though. Seems like they might have some busy nights ahead patching an update. Lets hope they get them sorted quickly.


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## Christof

By accident I created a triplet right now, but I can't remember the routine.I am not a programmer.


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## Rob

Looks like they released it in a hurry, before it was really done and tested... the omission of several options, like chord symbols, repeats etc seems to confirm the impression


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## Saxer

The still missing articulation switching was announced in the presentation (yes, I watched it all through). I didn't try Dorico up to now but I will. I think they are on the right way but maybe they are a bit overhasty in publishing it at this point. Like any new DAW or OS I wouldn't depend on the reliability. Seems to be a work in progress...


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## Christof

Saxer said:


> The still missing articulation switching was announced in the presentation (yes, I watched it all through). I didn't try Dorico up to now but I will. I think they are on the right way but maybe they are a bit overhasty in publishing it at this point. Like any new DAW or OS I wouldn't depend on the reliability. Seems to be a work in progress...


This might be true, but if I give them my money I expect something rock solid that has been tested and approved.
Imagine you buy a car and your first trip is a nightmare because you can't find the brake pedal.
I can wait, but I just purchased an official beta.


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## Saxer

Christof said:


> ... Imagine you buy a car and your first trip is a nightmare because you can't find the brake pedal.
> I can wait, but I just purchased an official beta.



Ok, a car without a break is dangerous to life. But you are right, the money you pay is no beta version where you might pay something on good days but loses it's value when you open your wallet too fast. 

Oh wait... I think I have beta money!


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## Vik

Don't get this wrong, because I agree that even a 1.0 version of a complex app should work... but over the years, I have learned that 1.0 of anything usually has a number of issues; some of them quite serious. Logic had many issues in 1.0, Pro Tools was a disaster in 1.0 etc. 
Maybe just wait a little?


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## FriFlo

I find Dorico quite interesting, as soon as I heard from it. But only the missing features regarding film music alone (you cannot add a movie at this point) were enough information for me to at least wait for a 2.0 version. I would consider beta testing it just to get familiar with this software I am going to switch to, as soon as the features allow it if it will evolve in the way I expect it to. But for the cross grade price offered I can't really see any point to jump on board now! I want to see first, when all necessary features will be implemented and what kind of update cycles Steinberg will do. If there will be a yearly upgrade as in Cubase, I want it to be rock solid with the fiversion I will buy


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## Musicam

I would like that Dorico has a video sequencer like Cubase for OST.


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## AR

The Price shocked me. 500 bucks for something Finale is much better at. - Longtime experience. Just saying. 
That's the same bull Steinberg pulled with Sequel. And I, stupid as I was, bought it. Something Ableton was back-at-time better at, and still is. Now, Sequel is totally on hold. So, Christoph, in some weird way, I can understand you.


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## dcoscina

I just checked the competitive upgrade price- $279. Nope. I will stick with Notion 6/Sibelius 7.5/Overture 5 thanks.


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## Daryl

AR said:


> The Price shocked me. 500 bucks for something Finale is much better at.


In some ways. In others Dorico is already far superior. It all depends on what you want out of it.


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## Paul T McGraw

Christof said:


> I just purchased and installed Dorico.
> Either this is a bad joke or I am extremely dumb.
> 
> -The documentation is only online and not helpful at all, why not a PDF as well?
> -The languages are mixed, I set it to german, but some dialogues are still in english.
> -Due to a missing manual I am not able to create a single triplet, and I don't want to go through a Steinberg forum to find out how to create cue notes.These are just examples.
> -The playback is a joke, articulations won't change at all (e.g.legato to pizz.).Maybe they do, but without manual it may be hard to find out.
> -The App crashes constantly without giving the option to do automatic backup saving.
> 
> If this is what we have been waiting for a long time I just can say that i am extremely disappointed and even angry.
> It feels like an early beta.Sorry.



Thank you for reporting your experience. I was eagerly waiting to see if Dorico was a viable option, but nothing I have seen or read would convince me at this point to invest countless hours into learning the Dorico software. It is really sad. I am still trying to decide if I want to give Overture 5 a try. It isn't the price of the software that stops me, it is the price in hours of effort to learn a new software package. I want to be sure it will be something better than Sibelius for notation and Cubase for performance.


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## bryla

Christof said:


> I just purchased and installed Dorico.
> Either this is a bad joke or I am extremely dumb.
> 
> -The documentation is only online and not helpful at all, why not a PDF as well?
> -The languages are mixed, I set it to german, but some dialogues are still in english.
> -Due to a missing manual I am not able to create a single triplet, and I don't want to go through a Steinberg forum to find out how to create cue notes.These are just examples.
> -The playback is a joke, articulations won't change at all (e.g.legato to pizz.).Maybe they do, but without manual it may be hard to find out.
> -The App crashes constantly without giving the option to do automatic backup saving.
> 
> If this is what we have been waiting for a long time I just can say that i am extremely disappointed and even angry.
> It feels like an early beta.Sorry.


The documentation in the help link is indeed not very helpful.
I set it to german as well, but haven't encountered english since then. Where do you find it?
The triplet works here!
Articulations should change from arco to pizz but doesn't either on my system.
Haven't crashed yet.


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## Daryl

bryla said:


> Articulations should change from arco to pizz but doesn't either on my system.


That sort of playback hasn't been implemented yet, so it won't change. However, as long as you input it correctly, it will change, when the update has been delivered.


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## Daryl

Paul T McGraw said:


> Thank you for reporting your experience. I was eagerly waiting to see if Dorico was a viable option, but nothing I have seen or read would convince me at this point to invest countless hours into learning the Dorico software. It is really sad. I am still trying to decide if I want to give Overture 5 a try. It isn't the price of the software that stops me, it is the price in hours of effort to learn a new software package. I want to be sure it will be something better than Sibelius for notation and Cubase for performance.


Overture is more basic than Sibelius for notation and more basic than Cubase for sequencing, so it depends on what level you're working at for both of those needs.

Dorico will certainly be better than Sibelius for notation, in time (and already is in some regards), but I don't think the aim is ever to make it as fully featured as Cubase for sequencing.


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## Paul T McGraw

Daryl said:


> Overture is more basic than Sibelius for notation and more basic than Cubase for sequencing, so it depends on what level you're working at for both of those needs.
> 
> Dorico will certainly be better than Sibelius for notation, in time (and already is in some regards), but I don't think the aim is ever to make it as fully featured as Cubase for sequencing.



At my current age of 63 I can't wait 10 years for a new software to be fully developed, so what Dorico might eventually become is not very important to me at present. I am a hobbyist, not a professional music typesetter, so I find that Sibelius meets all of my needs for notation. Including creating parts for live performance. Perhaps there are some professionals who need better notation than Sibelius, but not me.

I like Cubase in some ways, but I find it to be far more complicated than I would wish. Still, I am starting to really love expression maps, and perhaps in time I will be as comfortable in Cubase as I am in Sibelius.

Have you worked in Overture 5? Despite being a one man effort, it might be the best combination of notation and sequencing if everything works.


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## Christof

Importing xml from Logic is a nightmare.
Is there a way to return purchased software?
I want to buy it when it is a stable application.


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## shnootre

This was my great fear. $279 crossgrade price (way higher than Finale's and Sibelius's crossgrade pricing) for a product that is not ready for prime time. They are starting on the wrong foot.


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## SymphonicSamples

Rather disappointing to hear. As a long time Finale user I was looking forward to a big release so it might prompt MakeMusic to improve Finale and fix some old bugs. I was thinking it might be the only Notation app I'd purchase away from Finale and maybe take it for a test drive. Not really interested in driving on an obstacle course at the moment, so thanks for the head's up Christof .


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## shnootre

I am eager to hear additional reports. I was actually struck that Daniel S didn't cover triplets in the live presentation. My favorite feature of Finale - the thing that always kept me from switching to Sibelius - was the way it handles tuplets. The way you can take any notes and instantly convert them into tuplets...take three quarter notes, quickly change them to a quarter-note triplet...doesn't work? Make them into a quintuplet with a tie on either end...etc. etc. 

The layout features of Dorico look impressive - but I'd have been far more interested to see a demo with an orchestral or large ensemble layout. Formatting piano music isn't the hardest thing (string quartet, okay, a little better). 

Also - how does Dorico deal w/ percussion? Is that still beta? Finale's method is cumbersome, difficult to learn, and then ultimately quite powerful. How many features do I have to give up to become a $279 beta tester?


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## stonzthro

Daryl said:


> In some ways. In others Dorico is already far superior. It all depends on what you want out of it.


Examples? I've used Finale since 1990, so I'm interested to hear how it is more advanced - I'm being honest, not snide.


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## Paul T McGraw

And this is after 4 years of development. The Steinberg folks must be crying in their beer today. And the Dorico team didn't get around to doing anything at all about playback. This summer that was dumped onto the Cubase team to quickly put something, anything, together so that a crippled version of Dorico could be put on the market. My guess is that the Steinberg executives told the Dorico team that if they didn't start bringing in some revenue they would have to pull the plug on the entire project. As much as music is an art to us, it is still a business for the Steinberg folks, and they have dumped millions into Dorico.


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## shnootre

stonzthro said:


> Examples? I've used Finale since 1990, so I'm interested to hear how it is more advanced - I'm being honest, not snide.



Well - based on the live presentation, it seems a LOT more powerful in terms of formatting. I think Finale (I've used since '93) is a nightmare when it comes to making things look beautiful. Lots of manual formatting involved. I'm finishing a 4000-bar opera right now, and I'd kill for a lot of stuff I do to be automated. If you haven't seen it, see if there's vid for the live event Daniel Spreadbury presented yesterday. The formatting options, and the number of things Dorico seems/claims to do right from the start is staggering. Of course, we saw mostly a piano score, and not one for full orch, or full orch plus singers. 

Also - the multi-movement support looks brilliant, if its implementation is up to snuff. I have to make a new file for each scene in my opera, w/ different instruments, numbers of voices, etc. 

So I think if you're not that interested in playback, and write lots of piano music, Dorico may already be better.


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## Ian Dorsch

I was looking forward to Dorico, but it's too expensive for me to take a chance on when users are having experiences like this.


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## Daryl

Paul T McGraw said:


> Have you worked in Overture 5? Despite being a one man effort, it might be the best combination of notation and sequencing if everything works.


Yes I did try it, and it was far too basic in all respects for it to be of any use to me, but that's not to say that with your needs and workflow it won't be useful for you.


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## Christof

Steinberg told me (after my rant) that they are working on most features for the next updates.


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## Vik

Christof said:


> -The documentation is only online and not helpful at all, why not a PDF as well?
> -The languages are mixed, I set it to german, but some dialogues are still in english.
> -Due to a missing manual I am not able to create a single triplet, and I don't want to go through a Steinberg forum to find out how to create cue notes.These are just examples.
> -The playback is a joke, articulations won't change at all (e.g.legato to pizz.).Maybe they do, but without manual it may be hard to find out.
> -The App crashes constantly without giving the option to do automatic backup saving.


If it's unusable, I hope you'll get back your money, Christof. 
Looking at your list again, the crashes seem like the most important problem to me. The manual is available, but only online right now, the language thing is probably easy to fix, and maybe there's a known bug with the articulations, but I vaguely remember they they said or wrote something about only calling the 8 main articulations for articulations - while the articulations that weren't globally relevant (for all instruments) were called playing styles (or something similar). I did also read something about a new internal version which already had solved some of the quirks in 1.0, so maybe the next version will be out very soon. Again, 1.0 versions are always buggy, and since you use Logic, you have probably also noticed that the list of bugs that have been fixed in the various Logic 10 versions is extremely long; something around 2000 (!) bugs probably. I wouldn't expect a 1.0 version to be more reliable or finished than a 10.0 version. 
Good luck with trying to get a refund.


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## Maximvs

Paul T McGraw said:


> Thank you for reporting your experience. I was eagerly waiting to see if Dorico was a viable option, but nothing I have seen or read would convince me at this point to invest countless hours into learning the Dorico software. It is really sad. I am still trying to decide if I want to give Overture 5 a try. It isn't the price of the software that stops me, it is the price in hours of effort to learn a new software package. I want to be sure it will be something better than Sibelius for notation and Cubase for performance.



Hi Paul,

I am in a similar situation... considering Overture 5.1 but liked what I have seen in Dorico. Personally I feel that buying Dorico now is not going to work for me due to some of the notation features missing that I really need in my work and until they implement VST2 fully with some kind of articulation mapping, I am not going to pull the trigger...

I personally also feel that they could have waited another month or month and half before releasing it to the market and put into place all the important missing features... 

My two cents,
Max


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## Maximvs

Paul T McGraw said:


> And this is after 4 years of development. The Steinberg folks must be crying in their beer today. And the Dorico team didn't get around to doing anything at all about playback. This summer that was dumped onto the Cubase team to quickly put something, anything, together so that a crippled version of Dorico could be put on the market. My guess is that the Steinberg executives told the Dorico team that if they didn't start bringing in some revenue they would have to pull the plug on the entire project. As much as music is an art to us, it is still a business for the Steinberg folks, and they have dumped millions into Dorico.



Agree, too premature to release as a version 1... 

Sorry to hear about the people that purchased and are disappointed but this is the nature of the beast... Version 1 is bound to have bugs and lacking certain features... I really hope that updates will come out regularly and we don't have to wait for a few months before seeing some of the promised features implemented.


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## shnootre

Vik said:


> Again, 1.0 versions are always buggy....I wouldn't expect a 1.0 version to be more reliable or finished than a 10.0 version.
> Good luck with trying to get a refund.



This is absolutely to be expected. The problem is, their pricing does not reflect the situation. If their product is a long way from being as functional as its major competitors, why release it at around 150% of the price (I'm talking crossgrade here, which I think will be a big part of their user base). They should have a) waited, or b) offered a more substantial discount. Or maybe even sold 1.0 at half the price, and promised additional features for a paid 2.0 upgrade. I don't know. I am rooting for this program to be all it promises to be, but if they start out by angering a lot of users who plunked down considerable money for the application, I worry about the impact on their long-term progress. I do realize they were probably under pressure to release SOMETHING, but the mind boggles a little bit. 

People are always so critical and harsh about Finale and, to a lesser extent, Sibelius. But those are very powerful programs that, when mastered, enable a composer to do almost all he or she needs to do. There are bugs and shortcomings in both programs that should have been fixed years ago - but I think the lesson is, it's really HARD to make a program that does so many different things do them well and make everyone happy. Users who were expecting this to be instantly better than the two big dinosaurs in the room were bound to be disappointed, but it doesn't help that the pricing and the hype - all Steinberg's doing - set up very high expectations.


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## The Darris

Welcome to version 1.0. I knew, from the size of the team, that this launch of version 1 would be pretty rough. Like many software developers, they really rely on their customers for beta testing. Not agreeing with or defending the Dorico team and Steinberg, just stating the trending reality I've noticed in the industry over the last few years. 

On a personal note, I do feel like this program has potential. The concepts are there. The workflow and questions they've pursued to tackle are ones that I've wanted fixed compared to the current standards of Finale and Sibelius.


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## Lassi Tani

Waiting for an update to playback. Dynamics and articulations don't work at all, when playing the score. Couldn't find how to drag the playback line. Also when inputting notes, they are not played, and I have to press play button. So the playback has to be improved quite a lot. Otherwise I'm liking it so far.


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## DaddyO

Very rough around the edges, but I'm counting on promised free updates as well as the approach and ethos of the team to make substantial progress over the next few weeks and months. I don't believe I'll be disappointed, but there's always that chance. 

There must have been some pressure to get it out several months before it was really ready for prime time. I think The Darris is right, that this seems to be the state of affairs in software these days. Companies borrow from the present to pay for the future. Apparently they are willing to take the hit to their reputation. Going into this event their cache was quite high.

For someone coming from Notion, there's some terrific features already on display. There's also some that are a rude awakening. I wanted to test the included Halion Symphonic Orchestra, so I input a few bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and I was shocked at the toyish nature of the sounds. Maybe I was doing something wrong, I don't know. But I was expecting them to be at least as good as Notion's in order to use them until full functionality was achieved to use my VSL library and Expression Maps. What I heard was orders of magnitude worse. I hope it turns out that I just need to learn to use them better.

Another thing, using the default Halion Symponic Orchestra sounds playback does not align well at all between instruments. Some instruments come in noticeably behind others, even with just clarinet and strings playing.

Daniel gave ample notice over the last few weeks that playback was not yet fully ready.


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## ZeroZero

IMO: 
The good news for you non Cubase users is that over the years after first release a .1 update usually surfaces quite quickly addressing many user concerns - about a month away - usually. 

Inside the current Cubase there is a powerful but clonky score package - old in the tooth but effective. It has display quantise meaning you can get a live performance _and _a legible score. 

I expect a Dorico cut down will replace it soon.

But..........

It's integration with Cubase that is going to make this program stand out. I just don't see why a Sibelius user will buy Dorico and learn a load more stuff? 

Someone please enlighten me as I want Steinberg to win this

Performance in Sibelius is lame, importing into Cubase gives two scores to work on (chinese proverb: man with two watches never sure of the time). If you could house a powerful score package in your sequencer - one with note expression and expression maps - then _fully _integrate it within that DAW, you would blow off the roof of the house. I believe Steinberg will be doing that in version 2 . Danial Spreadbury has said as much on his blog http://blog.steinberg.net/


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## Maximvs

The Darris said:


> Welcome to version 1.0. I knew, from the size of the team, that this launch of version 1 would be pretty rough. Like many software developers, they really rely on their customers for beta testing. Not agreeing with or defending the Dorico team and Steinberg, just stating the trending reality I've noticed in the industry over the last few years.



A large team behind necessarily doesn't translate to a rough 1st version of a software... I would have thought the opposite is more true but I think it is a matter of perceptions. Regarding the beta testing situation, I am tired to pay premium price to beta test software that should have been properly tested before release and by this I am not referring specifically to Dorico but more in a general way...


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## jamwerks

They obviously wanted to launch in time for the holiday season spending madness. I imagine in 6-12 months it should be complete feature wise.


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## peter5992

Wow - lot of negative comments here. If you have been following the development of Dorico over the past three years, and you have been paying attention to Daniel Spreadbury's blogs, and watched the demonstration in London yesterday, you will realize that in terms of notation and engraving, and workflow especially, Dorico is a couple of light years ahead of Sibelius and Finale in several ways; notably the intuitiveness and easy of setting up projects. 

I won't go into too much detail; see the lengthy review by Philip Rothman / Alexander Ploetz / Andrew Noah Cap below. http://www.sibeliusblog.com/news/dorico-is-here-a-review/3/?singlepage=1 

There are several tutorial videos as well, on YouTube: 

[youtube]

Daniel has also made it quite clear that the first edition won't have all the bells and whistles that future versions have. For example, for film composition / orchestration, the following aren't in there yet:

a. large time signatures
b. video import
c. hit points
d. time code
e. the ability to use expression maps a la Cubase to smoothly integrate third party VSTs

All of this is planned in future editions. 

I am waiting for the boxed version, by the way, haven't been able to test it myself yet.


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## Sebastianmu

peter5992 said:


> you will realize that in terms of notation and engraving, and workflow especially, Dorico is a couple of light years ahead of Sibelius and Finale in several ways


This. Dorico should be measured first and foremost by it's notation and score-engraving abilities (and what I've seen so far in that regard looks great, esp. in terms of usability.)


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## dtcomposer

I agree with the posters directly above. I didn't come into this thinking that Dorico would be playback ready, and I understood that there would be other limitations, so I'm not really upset. Honestly, I hate the default playback for every scoring program I've ever used (and I've used all of them). Some people swear by Note Performer, for example, but I think it sounds awful, and is unusable for me. 

So I wasn't going to use this for that anyway until it has full Expression maps, and CC data editing functionality. I can wait for them to do it the right way, and I'll trust them until they show me I can't. Until then It will only get use as a way to make finished scores, which I think it does very well.


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## Saxer

I think the best is treating it like a box of good red wine bottles. Buy it, taste one of them and let the rest mature until it's great. Sooner or later Dorico will be great.


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## NoamL

How does Dorico talk to Sibelius and Finale? Does it use MusicXML? Are the notation advantages of Dorico preserved?


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## Chandler

This is disappointing to hear. I bought Overture 5 a while a ago and I'm a little disappointed it's not working yet, but at least they gave me a discount to beta test it. Of course everyone's needs are different, so perhaps those that care about engraving are excited about Dorico and don't much care about its current faults.


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## DaddyO

Chandler said:


> This is disappointing to hear. I bought Overture 5 a while a ago and I'm a little disappointed it's not working yet, but at least they gave me a discount to beta test it. Of course everyone's needs are different, so perhaps those that care about engraving are excited about Dorico and don't much care about its current faults.



If the "current faults" are not remedied, partly with free updates over the next few months and more significantly in a subsequent version within the next year or so, I will be very disappointed. But I expect that instead of this worst case scenario such remedies will in fact come in a timely manner. If they don't, I definitely will care a great deal. 

I want to use Dorico as a composition tool, and I want it to be able to do playback better than Notion. I want it to implement setting up VE Pro more easily than Notion. The engraving aspect is a distant second for me.

I am already impressed with the overall Dorico framework of Flows.


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## Vik

DaddyO said:


> I want to use Dorico as a composition tool [...]The engraving aspect is a distant second for me.
> 
> I am already impressed with the overall Dorico framework of Flows.


I second all that. And Steinberg can't afford not to make Dorico work properly.


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## Christof

Reading the Dorico user forum is a sad thing.
Mostly you read the reply by the moderator:"You can't do this at the moment, this function will be available soon."

I believe that Steinberg has a good support and they are willing to help, but it feels like a car dealer telling the client:"at the moment you can't drive this brand new car, we will work on this, buy the air condition works pretty well!"


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## Hannes

Christof said:


> Reading the Dorico user forum is a sad thing.
> Mostly you read the reply by the moderator:"You can't do this at the moment, this function will be available soon."


Well, I haven't tried Dorico yet, but I followed their blog and forum and long before the release Daniel did say , that Dorico won't be able to do everything at version 1.0 (especially concerning playback) and Dorico users will have to continue using Sibelius/Finale in the beginning to be able to do certain things. So it doesn't really surprise me that much...

But what concerns me more is the crashes you wrote about in your first post - just out of interest -do you still have that or could you solve that problem? (and do you have Mac or Windows 10?)
And isn't there anything positive about Dorico you like, or is it not usable at all for you? 

I actually wanted to buy it this week and use it at least for my piano scores, but after reading through the forums I think I'll wait for the 30 days trial just to make sure...


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## Christof

Not sure about the crashes because I refused to launch Dorico for now.
I am on a mac.


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## Daryl

Christof said:


> ...but it feels like a car dealer telling the client:"at the moment you can't drive this brand new car, we will work on this, buy the air condition works pretty well!"


No, it's more like "this works as a car, but the flying feature hasn't yet been implemented".


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## doubleattack

Christof said:


> Not sure about the crashes because I refused to launch Dorico for now.
> I am on a mac.



which os?


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## ZeroZero

I've done quite a bit of reading of forums, watched the videos from Steinberg and I found this:

http://www.steinberg.net/index.php?...ownloads/Dorico_Feature_Overview_20161010.pdf

It begins with as list of basic and essential things that Dorico cannot do. Chord Symbols and Repeats being a couple. Honestly, Dorico is therefore not yet ready for primetime. It cannot even service a four piece jazz band for example with RealBook style chord sheets.

BUT.....

From everything I gather that there are definite improvements on the way in the next few weeks for version 1. This does NOT include integration with Cubase or other fancy stuff. They still are covering basics. I smell cashflow considerations and paid beta testing - I dont mean to be mean, but that is the case IMO. We have to be real.

All Cubase/Neundo users can get a four hour trial NOW, before the release of the 30 day trial.

I have been with Steinberg for a couple of decades, their habit is to realise a bug fix update within weeks, sometimes within a week if there is a showstopper, then they follow up with the more thoughtful stuff later, they HAVE promised some new feature improvements in this development cycle. See the link.
Keep the faith, I do think this is going to be VERY powerful, it's hard being an early adopet though that's for sure.
Personally I am waiting for the 30 day trial

Z


----------



## fritzmartinbass

I went down this road with Notion. Not again. Sibelius is fine with me.


----------



## peter5992

NoamL said:


> How does Dorico talk to Sibelius and Finale? Does it use MusicXML? Are the notation advantages of Dorico preserved?



Yes, it uses MusicXML. I'm still waiting for my own copy, but I have seen some pretty impressive results (really complex scores with multiple voices / complex time signatures) which after import, with near zero effort, looked great.


----------



## rpaillot

Christof said:


> Not sure about the crashes because I refused to launch Dorico for now.
> I am on a mac.



Steinberg doesnt seem to be that great at developing Mac software..
I still use Cubase on Mac because that's my primary DAW and I love mac interface.

But Cubase isnt the most stable software on Mac. it crashs at least 2 times each day for me.
In my logic pro days or protools, I rarely if not never, had a single crash.


----------



## peter5992

fritzmartinbass said:


> I went down this road with Notion. Not again. Sibelius is fine with me.



I have Notion as well as Sibelius -- Notion looks nice but imo is not very user intuitive, particularly in regard of note entry and setup of scores, and the integration with PreSonus' own DAW (advertised in Notion 6 launch) is a bit disappointing. 

I love Sibelius, and have a lot of confidence in the team that is now at work at Steinberg. I think this is the future of music engraving and DAW integration, can't wait to get my own copy of Dorico. Looking at the amount of posts at the Dorico forum, my take is that they are now completely swamped by feedback / user requests - which is not necessarily a bad thing.


----------



## Daryl

rpaillot said:


> Steinberg doesnt seem to be that great at developing Mac software..
> I still use Cubase on Mac because that's my primary DAW and I love mac interface.


Don't include the Dorico team in that statement. They are totally new to Steinberg, so I think it's a little unfair to tar them with the same brush as previous Steinberg products. As Daniel has pretty much been exclusively demonstrating the software on Mac, I don't see that it is any kind of afterthought.


----------



## shnootre

Reading this thread with interest. I have faith Dorico will be improved. But nothing I've read dissuades me of the obvious fact that the price tag is simply way too high for a product that is not at all capable of replacing/becoming a primary engraving/composition tool. If I slap down three or five bills, I need a product that works now. The thing about Finale is, I know there is essentially nothing I can't do in it. (I also know that most everything will be a pain in the ass).


----------



## Christof

I am done with my rant now, I will wait patiently for he next updates.
I just suggested to Steinberg to include a tablet support for editing and entering notes instead of navigating on the physical keyboard.


----------



## dcoscina

shnootre said:


> Reading this thread with interest. I have faith Dorico will be improved. But nothing I've read dissuades me of the obvious fact that the price tag is simply way too high for a product that is not at all capable of replacing/becoming a primary engraving/composition tool. If I slap down three or five bills, I need a product that works now. The thing about Finale is, I know there is essentially nothing I can't do in it. (I also know that most everything will be a pain in the ass).


I feel the same about Sibelius. Truthfully I'm not producing a lot of print scores and when I do, I've found it does almost everything I need it to. Clearly it's being used in Hollywood and all around the world so it's a perfectly usable program (and I credit that to Spreadbury and his talented team NOT Avid). 

I will keep checking Dorico and see if it's updates move it closer to something I can replace Sibelius with down the line. For pure composing, I'm still a big Notion fan mostly because I've been using it since 2005 and its integrated sound library which has almost every articulation sample you can think of- including fingered tremolo. I wonder if Steinberg ever plans to do the same with Dorico or just created expression maps for third party libraries!


----------



## Maximvs

dcoscina said:


> I will keep checking Dorico and see if it's updates move it closer to something I can replace Sibelius with down the line. For pure composing, I'm still a big Notion fan mostly because I've been using it since 2005 and its integrated sound library which has almost every articulation sample you can think of- including fingered tremolo. I wonder if Steinberg ever plans to do the same with Dorico or just created expression maps for third party libraries!



Same here I doubt Steinberg will invest into creating a large sample library to work with Dorico... Expression maps implementation I feel is going to be the game for Dorico, and hope it will come sooner than later.


----------



## Daryl

dcoscina said:


> I wonder if Steinberg ever plans to do the same with Dorico or just created expression maps for third party libraries!


It has previously been stated that Diroco will be using an advanced sort of Expression map and also that getting this to work is a big priority.


----------



## Rob

Paul T McGraw said:


> ...
> Have you worked in Overture 5? Despite being a one man effort, it might be the best combination of notation and sequencing if everything works.



Even with all its current bugs, Overture is a unique software, and the only one I can think of that provides an acceptable notation with sequencing capabilities... true, it's more limited than Cubase and Finale, but it's both combined in a way... for those like me who were brought up reading and writing music the classical way it's actually the only program that allows for composing on staves and hearing a result that's not irritating for the ear. As an example, this short piece for strings:

www.robertosoggetti.com/Andantino.mp4


----------



## Paul T McGraw

Rob said:


> Even with all its current bugs, Overture is a unique software, and the only one I can think of that provides an acceptable notation with sequencing capabilities... true, it's more limited than Cubase and Finale, but it's both combined in a way... for those like me who were brought up reading and writing music it's actually the only program that allows for composing on staves and hearing a result that's not irritating for the ear. As an example, this short piece for strings:
> 
> www.robertosoggetti.com/Andantino.mp4



That was GREAT! So perhaps it is time to take a chance on Overture 5. I like the screen shots that indicate that one can do DAW like editing using notation instead of a piano roll. I assume one uses key switches to select articulations and techniques?

Beautiful short track by the way, with nice compositional elements.


----------



## Rob

Paul T McGraw said:


> That was GREAT! So perhaps it is time to take a chance on Overture 5. I like the screen shots that indicate that one can do DAW like editing using notation instead of a piano roll. I assume one uses key switches to select articulations and techniques?
> 
> Beautiful short track by the way, with nice compositional elements.



thank you, Paul, I suggest you download the demo and try it first... just to be sure. You can use keyswitches if you want, or draw controllers in the lane under the piano roll view... here the same piece in linear view:

www.robertosoggetti.com/Andantino-linearView.mp4


----------



## Paul T McGraw

Rob said:


> thank you, Paul, I suggest you download the demo and try it first... just to be sure. You can use keyswitches if you want, or draw controllers in the lane under the piano roll view... here the same piece in linear view:
> 
> www.robertosoggetti.com/Andantino-linearView.mp4



That is very impressive. The developer should do some demos like this for the software. This seems to be perfect for a notation oriented composer. So what is wrong with it? Why aren't more people talking about this software?


----------



## dcoscina

Daryl said:


> It has previously been stated that Diroco will be using an advanced sort of Expression map and also that getting this to work is a big priority.


That's kinda too bad. Notion is at a point where its playback library has a TON of articulations ranging from more modern techniques to fingered trem. While it ain't perfectly realistic it's good enough to get a timbral idea of your composition. And its footprint isn't ridiculous like Sibelius' built in library of 40gb (which doesn't sound much better and why I use NotePerformer with it when I am working in that program). 
So Dorico might end up playing nice with VSL or Spitfire or Orchestral Tools or whatever but look at the memory footprint you will need for authentic playback....sheesh. Or perhaps maybe I'm missing something here....


----------



## dcoscina

Rob said:


> thank you, Paul, I suggest you download the demo and try it first... just to be sure. You can use keyswitches if you want, or draw controllers in the lane under the piano roll view... here the same piece in linear view:
> 
> www.robertosoggetti.com/Andantino-linearView.mp4


What string library did you use? Sounds nice.


----------



## Rob

Paul T McGraw said:


> That is very impressive. The developer should do some demos like this for the software. This seems to be perfect for a notation oriented composer. So what is wrong with it? Why aren't more people talking about this software?



The program has great potential, but it's still buggy... the developer is fast (although a bit grumpy) at fixing problems that users are pointing out every day.


----------



## Rob

dcoscina said:


> What string library did you use? Sounds nice.



Hi David, it's mainly Cinematic Strings, with a touch of Kirk Hunter concert strings as a reinforcement...


----------



## peter5992

Aoiichi said:


> I don't think Dorico will be as good as Sibelius for a long, long time. That said, I'm still surprised at how lackluster this initial release has been, from the sound of things. However, we have to hope Dorico will improve and surpass Sibelius (which I think it will), seeing as it's clear the Avid has no idea whatsoever on what to do with Sibelius, and that the development of Sibelius is going nowhere... especially seeing as they fired the Sibelius team years ago, many of whom are now actually working on Dorico.



From what I have seen from the demo yesterday, Dorico at present already can do many things that neither Sibelius nor Finale can ... the engraving capabilities are really spectacular. If you import an XML file, even a highly complex one, the default engraved result in Dorico looks fantastic ... you might have to tweak a thing or there but it's certainly presentable to players. For me, that's plenty good enough, but I am not an engraver or publisher; if you are, then the Engraving options (which are nearly limitless) will make you very happy. 

Sibelius still have a decent development team, by the way, lead by Sam Butler and Joe Pearson (and programmers around the world). I had coffee with Joe Pearson a couple of weeks ago when he was in California (the Avid offices are in Berkeley where they also work on Pro Tools and the big expensive S series control boards), they have a couple of cool things in the pipeline. One of the problems of Sibelius is that it was first developed such a long time ago (way back in the nineties), it now consists of millions of lines of code, using an architecture where if you change one thing, it may adversely impact a lot of other things. That is the way software was developed back then. You can't change the basic architecture - it is what it is. So whenever they have a new feature they have to do a lot of beta testing. The new licensing model - while controversial with many users - actually works a bit better in this way, in that it allows Avid to release new versions more frequently. 

But oh yeah ... Avid bashing is popular. The Sibelius chat page has really changed dramatically, in terms of the tone. It used to be one of most civic forums on the internet, with just discussions about how to get things done, or musically related questions. Now every other post is one complaining about Avid or this or that ... really not very stimulating for either Sam or Joe or the developers. I've complained about that publicly and privately, but it is what it is. And fwiw, I was one of a small group of people who back in 2012 tried to organize a revolt against Avid's decision to sack the development team ... ultimately unsuccessful, though we sure made some waves (fond memories of calling into investor conference calls and calling out the then CEO, pissing him off ... lol). 

One of the advantages Daniel and his team had with Dorico was the ability to start with a completely clean slate, using a more modern modular approach - so it is relatively much easier to introduce new features and build a framework that can be built upon for years to come.


----------



## dcoscina

peter5992 said:


> From what I have seen from the demo yesterday, Dorico at present already can do many things that neither Sibelius nor Finale can ... the engraving capabilities are really spectacular. If you import an XML file, even a highly complex one, the default engraved result in Dorico looks fantastic ... you might have to tweak a thing or there but it's certainly presentable to players. For me, that's plenty good enough, but I am not an engraver or publisher; if you are, then the Engraving options (which are nearly limitless) will make you very happy.



I was intrigued but the upgrade price for me would be $349 from either Sibelius or Finale which is high. I also own Cubase Pro 8.5. If its engraving features are truly as good as you purport, I'm interested but I'm gonna have to hold off due to money being tight at the moment. the crossgrade looks to run for quite a few months so I might be able to port over and by that time, the program should have some bugs ironed out. I'm also hoping NotePerformer is developed for Dorico as well. If Dorico will eventually bridge the gap between aesthetically pleasing score and performance of said music, it will ultimately find a solid place in the market.


----------



## Prockamanisc

dcoscina said:


> I'm also hoping NotePerformer is developed for Dorico as well. If Dorico will eventually bridge the gap between aesthetically pleasing score and performance of said music, it will ultimately find a solid place in the market


I emailed the NotePerformer people, they said they would definitely look into it. They'd first have to see how the sound works in Dorico. I really hope they do it!


----------



## 5Lives

I decided not to upgrade to Sibelius from Sibelius First and instead bought Notion for $50 (as a Studio One Pro owner). It seems to be the only one with handwriting recognition support, which is pretty nice. I don't do complex stuff for bands or orchestras, so the price is right for me (and their iPad app is pretty great too). The price points of Sibelius, Finale, and Dorico are much higher - and I would expect to get a ton more functionality (which you may or may not actually need - like I don't care about engraving). I prefer Dorico's pricing model in general to AVID's subscription - Pro Tools has been pretty lackluster in that regard.


----------



## Maximvs

Rob said:


> Even with all its current bugs, Overture is a unique software, and the only one I can think of that provides an acceptable notation with sequencing capabilities... true, it's more limited than Cubase and Finale, but it's both combined in a way... for those like me who were brought up reading and writing music the classical way it's actually the only program that allows for composing on staves and hearing a result that's not irritating for the ear. As an example, this short piece for strings:
> 
> www.robertosoggetti.com/Andantino.mp4



Thanks Rob for posting this testimonial on O5 and nice little string piece... I have been looking at Overture 5 for quite sometimes and I will test it very soon.

Cheers, Max


----------



## jamwerks

peter5992 said:


> ...The Sibelius chat page has really changed dramatically, in terms of the tone. It used to be one of most civic forums on the internet, with just discussions about how to get things done, or musically related questions. Now every other post is one complaining about Avid or this or that ...


I can understand peoples frustrations. Very few new features and workflow enhancements have come in the last 4 years!


----------



## mducharme

I bought Dorico and and my impressions are mixed:
- The program is incomplete and buggy
- The layout and controls are not immediately intuitive - the different 'modes' of operation remind me of Finale with its Simple Entry and Speedy Entry etc.
- If you import MusicXML from something, the default spacing and default notation is just about perfect and needs almost no manual adjustment (Finale is terrible here, Sibelius is good, and Notion is, at best, marginally acceptable)

The last point is a big plus, for me, but I can't really take advantage of it until the missing features are present. I moved from Finale to Sibelius four years ago due to the better default engraving, which saves me a lot of time. I looked at Notion as well, but frankly, I would be embarrassed to give a musician a score created by Notion, and the limited controls are problematic since the default appearance is not acceptable. The fact that Dorico's default layout for scores is actually very good speaks volumes for it, and bodes well for the future.


----------



## Desire Inspires

It is what it is. 

You have to invest time in the product to make it work for your particular needs. The program cannot read your mind or predict what you want. You have to modify and customize the program to get the best uses from it. Do not be so quick to condemn this product. Do the work and the benefits will come!


----------



## mducharme

Desire Inspires said:


> It is what it is.
> 
> You have to invest time in the product to make it work for your particular needs. The program cannot read your mind or predict what you want. You have to modify and customize the program to get the best uses from it. Do not be so quick to condemn this product. Do the work and the benefits will come!



I wasn't 'condemning' anything, if you read my post, especially the last line. However, any statement like "do the work and the benefits will come" doesn't help me, because Dorico is missing many important features at this point, so I cannot "do the work" besides purchasing the product, which I have already done.


----------



## Desire Inspires

mducharme said:


> I wasn't 'condemning' anything, if you read my post, especially the last line. However, any statement like "do the work and the benefits will come" doesn't help me, because Dorico is missing many important features at this point, so I cannot "do the work" besides purchasing the product, which I have already done.



Dorico isn't missing anything. 

Dorico was designed to do what it does. If you cannot achieve your final sound with the product, you use different products. We cannot keep blaming products or developers for not being able to cater to our every whim. We have to leave the entitlement mentality behind and learn to either put in the work to create what we want or learn to live with what we have. 

The limitations of Dorico are what makes it unique from other products. We have to use Dorico for what we can get out of it and also continue to grow our own strengths and skill sets to match what we have in our minds. 

Translating the music in our minds to something that exists in reality is a very difficult thing to do. We have to humble ourselves and learn to appreciate what we have and what we can accomplish with the tools that we already have. Dorico is an excellent product. It will improve over time. But we also must learn to improve as well.


----------



## chillbot

Desire Inspires said:


> Dorico isn't missing anything.
> 
> Dorico was designed to do what it does. If you cannot achieve your final sound with the product, you use different products. We cannot keep blaming products or developers for not being able to cater to our every whim. We have to leave the entitlement mentality behind and learn to either put in the work to create what we want or learn to live with what we have.
> 
> The limitations of Dorico are what makes it unique from other products. We have to use Dorico for what we can get out of it and also continue to grow our own strengths and skill sets to match what we have in our minds.
> 
> Translating the music in our minds to something that exists in reality is a very difficult thing to do. We have to humble ourselves and learn to appreciate what we have and what we can accomplish with the tools that we already have. Dorico is an excellent product. It will improve over time. But we also must learn to improve as well.


Just out of curiosity have you bought Dorico? Do you use Dorico? Do you know what Dorico is? It's not very convincing.


----------



## tack

This sure is a strange sort of defense that Desire Inspires is mounting for Dorico. Especially considering Steinberg has already acknowledged the product is missing a lot of functionality.


----------



## Desire Inspires

chillbot said:


> Just out of curiosity have you bought Dorico? Do you use Dorico? Do you know what Dorico is? It's not very convincing.



I just don't like it when people bash products without giving them a fair chance. People work hard on these things, and for others to come in and trash the product is unfair to the people that did all of the hard work.

A rush to judgement is not fair. Damaging the reputation of a company like Steinberg is not helpful to them or to others who find the value from using Dorico.

Get the facts at the Dorico forum: https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=246


----------



## chillbot

So that's a no.


----------



## tack

I understand more than the average bear how much effort goes into products like Dorico. However, Dorico isn't given away, or even priced at a discount. It is positioned as a premium product, priced accordingly, and it criticism around bugs or missing functionality is completely fair game IMO.


----------



## Desire Inspires

tack said:


> However, Dorico isn't given away, or even priced at a discount. It is positioned as a premium product



Yes, let's treat the product with the respect it deserves. That is all I am stating.


----------



## tack

One might therefore be reasonable in expecting quality and completeness commensurate to a premium product. That is all I am stating.


----------



## chillbot

Desire Inspires said:


> Get the facts


Would be nice if you considered this.


----------



## Vik

Desire Inspires said:


> Dorico isn't missing anything.
> 
> Dorico was designed to do what it does. If you cannot achieve your final sound with the product, you use different products. We cannot keep blaming products or developers for not being able to cater to our every whim. We have to leave the entitlement mentality behind and learn to either put in the work to create what we want or learn to live with what we have.
> 
> The limitations of Dorico are what makes it unique from other products. We have to use Dorico for what we can get out of it and also continue to grow our own strengths and skill sets to match what we have in our minds.
> 
> Translating the music in our minds to something that exists in reality is a very difficult thing to do. We have to humble ourselves and learn to appreciate what we have and what we can accomplish with the tools that we already have. Dorico is an excellent product. It will improve over time. But we also must learn to improve as well.


Steinberg doesn't agree with you here, and firmly insists that many important functions aren't implemented in Dorico yet.


----------



## bryla

Two things that shows me the program is not fully thought through is: the accidentals in write mode are not suited for non-English keyboards and the command for make into system is the same command for save as... 

I realize that you can change all of the commands but these two really shouldn't need. 

Also there are some commands (like L in write mode) that doesn't seem to work. 

I love Dorico and how it intellectually adapts the notation to the music and how it looks beautiful. I cannot wait for it to be up to speed with the competition on all other aspects.


----------



## Christof

Desire Inspires said:


> Yes, let's treat the product with the respect it deserves. That is all I am stating.


Did you buy it and have you tried to work with it?


----------



## Noam Guterman

I installed a trial version and after a couple minutes decided to uninstall and wait until it's much more mature.


----------



## Daryl

bryla said:


> Two things that shows me the program is not fully thought through...


That's a huge claim and I think it's way to early to know this.


----------



## Daryl

Noam Guterman said:


> I installed a trial version and after a couple minutes decided to uninstall and wait until it's much more mature.


There are certainly things missing at the moment. However, for me the hardest thing to do is change the way that I think about a notation program, and whilst you are probably way more clever and adaptable than some old fart like me, I don't think a couple of minutes is enough time to understand and fully appreciate the principles behind the program.


----------



## michal

Noam Guterman said:


> I installed a trial version and after a couple minutes decided to uninstall and wait until it's much more mature.


Is the trial version available yet? According to the info I got from Steinberg, the demo version will be available next month.


----------



## Daryl

michal said:


> Is the trial version available yet? According to the info I got from Steinberg, the demo version will be available next month.


No, AFAIK it won't be available for a few weeks, but I think that there's a short trial licence available to Cubase and Nuendo users.


----------



## bryla

Daryl said:


> That's a huge claim and I think it's way to early to know this.


I understand and you don't have to defend the program or the team for me – I'm already a fan!

But is it a surprise to developers that cmd-shift-s is 'save as...' ?


----------



## Daryl

bryla said:


> I understand and you don't have to defend the program or the team for me – I'm already a fan!


You misunderstand. I'm not defending the program or the team. Just that thinking that you can spot a design flaw in a couple of days when the team has had 4 years to think about it seems a little, er, "forward" to me.


----------



## Noam Guterman

Daryl said:


> and whilst you are probably way more clever and adaptable than some old fart like me, I don't think a couple of minutes is enough time to understand and fully appreciate the principles behind the program.



I didn't purport to be any of that, so I have no idea how you got that from my post. All I said was that I downloaded it, trialed it for a couple minutes, and when seeing that it's not for me (yet) - yes I got that decision after a few minutes, because I knew exactly what to look for after coming from lots of other software, (p.s. utmost professional engraving rules and looks don't really matter to me), I decided to uninstall it and wait until it matures. I already have Sibelius, Notion and Staffpad, and I'll be happy to replace them with Dorico, but it's just not there yet (for me personally!)





michal said:


> Is the trial version available yet? According to the info I got from Steinberg, the demo version will be available next month.



If you own any Steinberg product, you can trial whatever program of theirs you wish, for a very limited time. I think the trial time available depends on how many products you own/ed. For me since I have bought many Steinberg products over the years, I have 19+ hours available.


----------



## Vik

Daryl said:


> No, AFAIK it won't be available for a few weeks, but I think that there's a short trial licence available to Cubase and Nuendo users.


I'm sure they won't make a demo version until they have improved the performance/snappiness issues and implemented at least some of the most important missing features. 

Remember, Dorico can't record MIDI, percussion notation is unfinished, you can't hear notes when you enter them from your computer keyboard, some say that you can't even hear the notes when you click on them in score, the manual is unfinished, you have to scroll from page to page manually during playback, there's no timecode, no bar ruler, there's no Select All, transposition is unfinished, no diatonic transposition and so on. So even the first demo will probably be rather incomplete - but hopefully stable and good enough to figure out if it's something one wants to invest in.


----------



## michal

Noam Guterman said:


> If you own any Steinberg product, you can trial whatever program of theirs you wish, for a very limited time.


I only own Cubase Pro (and a Steinberg audio interface, does that count?), so it would be a very short trial time anyway, but I didn't know about that, thank you!


----------



## Noam Guterman

michal said:


> I only own Cubase Pro (and a Steinberg audio interface, does that count?), so it would be a very short trial time anyway, but I didn't know about that, thank you!


Yeah, you could just go to Steinberg download section and download Dorico, and it will just work as if you have a license for that trial period. You can see how much time you have via the e-licenser control center program (see attached image - upper row)


----------



## dcoscina

Noam Guterman said:


> Yeah, you could just go to Steinberg download section and download Dorico, and it will just work as if you have a license for that trial period. You can see how much time you have via the e-licenser control center program (see attached image - upper row)


My license shows 23 hrs. That's a long time.


----------



## michal

Noam Guterman said:


> Yeah, you could just go to Steinberg download section and download Dorico, and it will just work as if you have a license for that trial period. You can see how much time you have via the e-licenser control center program (see attached image - upper row)


Will do, thanks a lot!


----------



## InLight-Tone

Vik said:


> I'm sure they won't make a demo version until they have improved the performance/snappiness issues and implemented at least some of the most important missing features.
> 
> Remember, Dorico can't record MIDI, percussion notation is unfinished, you can't hear notes when you enter them from your computer keyboard, some say that you can't even hear the notes when you click on them in score, the manual is unfinished, you have to scroll from page to page manually during playback, there's no timecode, no bar ruler, there's no Select All, transposition is unfinished, no diatonic transposition and so on. So even the first demo will probably be rather incomplete - but hopefully stable and good enough to figure out if it's something one wants to invest in.



God that's depressing, unfinished as a base release is really what that is...


----------



## Vik

They're very open about missing functionality, and many users are happy already. So maybe not "depressing" - at least if you haven't bought it, assuming it wasn't missing these things.


----------



## Musicam

Many years of development and I dont see much certainly. I will wait.


----------



## ywshuo

I started using overture in middle school, now have 15 years experience with it I don't think it's a limited tool. The things you can do with Overture are quite amazing. Except for those bizarre modern notation, I haven't find anything that Overture cannot do. Although all version 2, 3 and 4 are quite buggy. Don't know about 5.

Some of the shortcut are quite cleverly designed. Like number 1 for whole note, 2 for half note, 4 for quarter, 8 for 1/8, 6 for 1/16, 5 for 1/32(make sense because 2^5=32), 3 for trippers, dot for dotted. S for sharp, n for natural, f for flat, g for grace note. and 95% of the time that's all you need.

With all being said, I was on Dorico for 1 day yesterday, I've already gain a better speed than typing in Overture. Super easy to learn. (I spent days on both Sibelius and Finale without a clue of what to do.) And you do score and parts at the same time, which is a huge time saver for working in film. All other score writers need to work on almost everything all over again if you want to achieve professional quality result. (Overture 5 also have that concept implemented. Will find out how it works in the demo version.)

Although, for Dorico, a lot of functions are yet to be added, like magnified time signature and bar number. Putting bar numbers between groups other than on the top or bottom. But I'm hopeful that it'll be the dominant


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## Luke W

ywshuo said:


> With all being said, I was on Dorico for 1 day yesterday, I've already gain a better speed than typing in Overture...



Good to hear that the learning curve wasn't bad for you! I'm waiting until January-February to download the free 30-day trial, after the holiday rush when I have some time to mess with it. With 25 years into Finale, my second biggest concern is the learning curve into a new workflow (first biggest concern: still missing crucial features like repeats and chords).

Appreciate you chiming in about your experience!


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## tokatila

I downloaded the trial version, is this supposed to be intuitive use? Maybe I have used too much Notion, but process of inputting the notes is very convoluted. However this is my initial impression, will test more.

Also how do you make program follow the score (with some indicator) when playing back the score, it follows in play mode but I can't see the notes there? Isn't it implemented? Do I really have to scroll this manually? Is this a joke?

Edit - After restarting the program I have the green bar now. I wonder where it went the first time.


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## Hannes

I tried Dorico for a few days now and quite like so far - it's much more intuitive than Sibelius IMO.
I did a quick piano arrangement w/ lots of slurs and articulations and it looked really nice without having to do very much.
It crashed once though - it seemed like Halion froze I think...


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## Drago

tokatila said:


> Edit - After restarting the program I have the green bar now. I wonder where it went the first time.



It's a bug. It happened to me too.


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## peter5992

For those who missed it: the user manual is available here:

https://steinberg.help/dorico/v1/en/Operation_Manual_en.pdf 

Today another update was released. I'm still learning all the features but after using it for several weeks I'm really starting to like it.


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## toomanynotes

mducharme said:


> Notion never claimed to be a good 'default' engraver.
> but is a good 'default' performer...says so on the box.


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## mducharme

You need to put the end-quote-tag before your response, otherwise it looks like I said what you are responding to.

Anyway, the Notion website says "Deliver polished scores faster than ever before", which certainly suggests that they are marketing the default Notion engraving as being good, and it is not, from what I have seen.


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## tokatila

Can anyone help me how to insert a triplet, I have been trying for an hour now. I manage get to the point where I have three rests as a triplet, but can't replace the first rest with a note even when the carrot is dead-on the top of the rest, with second and third rest it works fine.

Edit - Nevermind It was a freaking bug, restarting Dorico fixed it.
Edit 2 - It wasn't a bug it was something to do with activating/deactivating insert mode while inserting tuplets. 

Still - DON'T BUY THIS PIECE OF OATMEAL AT ITS CURRENT STATE. I'm half-bald already pulling my hair out of frustration(s) I have had with this.


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## Luke W

tokatila said:


> Can anyone help me how to insert a triplet, I have been trying for an hour now. I manage get to the point where I have three rests as a triplet, but can't replace the first rest with a note even when the carrot is dead-on the top of the rest, with second and third rest it works fine.
> 
> Edit - Nevermind It was a freaking bug, restarting Dorico fixed it.
> Edit 2 - It wasn't a bug it was something to do with activating/deactivating insert mode while inserting tuplets.
> 
> Still - DON'T BUY THIS PIECE OF OATMEAL AT ITS CURRENT STATE. I'm half-bald already pulling my hair out of frustration(s) I have had with this.



I haven't downloaded the free trial yet, but appreciate this report from the front lines. Good to hear your experience - sorry to hear about your frustration!


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## Paul T McGraw

tokatila said:


> Can anyone help me how to insert a triplet, I have been trying for an hour now. I manage get to the point where I have three rests as a triplet, but can't replace the first rest with a note even when the carrot is dead-on the top of the rest, with second and third rest it works fine.
> 
> Edit - Nevermind It was a freaking bug, restarting Dorico fixed it.
> Edit 2 - It wasn't a bug it was something to do with activating/deactivating insert mode while inserting tuplets.
> 
> Still - DON'T BUY THIS PIECE OF OATMEAL AT ITS CURRENT STATE. I'm half-bald already pulling my hair out of frustration(s) I have had with this.



I feel really sorry for the executives at Steinberg. Has any other music software development team ever enjoyed as much financial support as the Dorico team? Yet after years of paying for office space, salaries, benefits, and relocation expenses there is still only vaporware. Even as a notation only product, it is not competitive. Sad.


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## Daryl

It all depends on what you're trying to do. I'm not using it for full orchestral scores, because there is one feature that I need missing. However, for other stuff it works fine, and although I'm slower than I am with Sibelius, I do have 23 years to unlearn...!


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## amordechai

I have just downloaded the trial.
I'f I'm super zoomed in (330% or more) everything looks perfect. Noteheads are centered, brackets do not have gaps, etc.
If I'm not so zoomed in (like in this example at 315%) there are some graphical glitches.
Does this happen to anybody else? am I missing something?


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## Paul T McGraw

Daryl said:


> It all depends on what you're trying to do. I'm not using it for full orchestral scores, because there is one feature that I need missing. However, for other stuff it works fine, and although I'm slower than I am with Sibelius, I do have 23 years to unlearn...!



Glad to hear you like Dorico. Are you using Dorico as your primary software for you work product? In addition to the numerous shortcomings regarding playback, I found this list of missing features. Hopelfully this list is not correct:


Chord symbols
Repeat ending (1st, 2nd time or volta) lines
Fingerings
Jazz articulations
Rhythm slashes
Flexible unpitched percussion notation
Transpose a group of notes to a new key
Select by filter (dynamics, 1st voice only, bass only)
Select bar/staff
Have user defined graphics and symbols
Have user defined techniques
Insert cues
Insert annotations
Create ossia staves
Allow explosion and reducing of sections
Create custom lines
Allow to change the size of the staff between pages of the same part/mid page
Allow to adjust the distance between staves on the page
Allow to create house styles
Allow to write custom meaningful scripts (beyond macros)
Play back the note when it's pressed
Create cut-away scores
Have arpeggio lines
Break a chord into different voices
Respell accidentals
Show/Hide elements


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## Hannes

Paul T McGraw said:


> Glad to hear you like Dorico. Are you using Dorico as your primary software for you work product? In addition to the numerous shortcomings regarding playback, I found this list of missing features. Hopelfully this list is not correct:




I think the list got much shorter with the last 2 updates - you could maybe take a look at the Update history, they improved a lot already:
http://download.steinberg.net/downloads_software/Dorico/1.0.20/Dorico_Version_History_1.0.20.pdf

I used the last days of my trial version to write something for a small ensemble - I didn't have any problems, the workflow was very good and the score looked nice in the end  I only had some minor issues with the playback (it was V1.0.10 though...)


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## Christof

I just changed the thread title because after 2 updates it seemed a bit unfair to me.
They are doing their homework!


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## C-Wave

Christof said:


> I just changed the thread title because after 2 updates it seemed a bit unfair to me.
> They are doing their homework!


Agreed.. any thoughts of the absolutely essential not implemented yet in terms of playback? Edit: can I use Kontakt already?
Thx!


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## synergy543

I just upgraded Sibelius for the next 3 years. I hope Avid stays in business that long. I'd jump ship to Dorico if it worked and supported NotePerfomer, but those are two essential requirements for me. 
I was really hoping they'd come through though, as it was so painfully difficult to send money to Avid .


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## ulrik

C-Wave said:


> Agreed.. any thoughts of the absolutely essential not implemented yet in terms of playback? Edit: can I use Kontakt already?
> Thx!


Yes, you can use Kontakt after a little bit of fiddling, since Dorico mainly support vst 3, there is a "whitelist" for vst2 plugins, you have to make Kontakt visible for Dorico yourself, here you can read how to do it:
https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/206899770-How-to-use-VST2-plug-ins-in-Dorico


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## Daryl

Paul T McGraw said:


> Are you using Dorico as your primary software for you work product?


Not yet, but I suspect that will change relatively soon.



Paul T McGraw said:


> Hopelfully this list is not correct:


That list is well out of date and some of it was never correct. Furthermore, it just shows what I mean by depending on what you want to sue it for. For example, I can't remember the last time I used Chord Symbols, so the lack of that feature is irrelevant to me.


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## synergy543

Daryl said:


> Furthermore, it just shows what I mean by depending on what you want to sue it for.


I'd like to sue AVID for killing Sibelius and then charging a ransom just to keep it barely alive.  I know that's not what you meant.


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## JJP

amordechai said:


> I have just downloaded the trial.
> I'f I'm super zoomed in (330% or more) everything looks perfect. Noteheads are centered, brackets do not have gaps, etc.
> If I'm not so zoomed in (like in this example at 315%) there are some graphical glitches.
> Does this happen to anybody else? am I missing something?


To my trained eye, I see a number of issues with that display, mainly in the misalignment of font elements. However, that may only be an issue with display. If printout is fine, you're golden. Nonetheless, these days that much glitchiness with a display isn't acceptable to most professionals. You don't want to be forced to print just to determine if what you're seeing is real.


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## amordechai

JJP said:


> To my trained eye, I see a number of issues with that display, mainly in the misalignment of font elements. However, that may only be an issue with display. If printout is fine, you're golden. Nonetheless, these days that much glitchiness with a display isn't acceptable to most professionals. You don't want to be forced to print just to determine if what you're seeing is real.



Thank you for your reply. Yes, it's only a display issue. But for me it's a big problem: when zoomed out in a score with a lot of instruments I find it difficult to see if the little notehead dot is on a space or on a line.

Am I the only one with this problem?

EDIT: here are other images.



here the first note looks like a G...



but wait. It's an A! Still some glitches



fully zoomed in everything looks alright.


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