# Dorico by subscription on iPad?



## DCPImages

Basic functionality can be extended by subscription? Is this new?


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## DCPImages

I use Dorico on desktop, and downloaded the iPad version to try. 

Turns out that if you want anything beyond barebones functionality you need a paid subscription. So I deleted the app immediately.


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## DR BOOWHO

Subscription ..Not cool. Although I only have Android tablets I would have got an ipad just for this but not if its subscription only. Never been into renting anything and never will.


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## ptram

Ouch! Subscription! A preview of what will happen with Dorico 4?

Paolo


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## Markrs

I know subscriptions are not for everyone, but £35 a year doesn't seem that outrageous if the app is feature rich (not tried it yet). As I have staffpad it is very unlikely I would look to use it.


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## rudi

‎Dorico - Compose Music


‎Compose your own music for free with Dorico. Create beautiful music notation for one or two instruments quickly and easily with the on-screen keyboard, drum pads and fretboard. Play back instantly with the included sounds and shape the performance with powerful MIDI editing tools. When your...



apps.apple.com


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## DR BOOWHO

Markrs said:


> I know subscriptions are not for everyone, but £35 a year doesn't seem that outrageous if the app is feature rich (not tried it yet). As I have staffpad it is very unlikely I would look to use it.


THE GREAT RESET....You will own nothing and be happy!, : )


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## Daniel S.

There will be lots more information available about Dorico for iPad later today, including on the Dorico blog, which will include more information about why we have decided to use subscription pricing for this new app.

A short summary: Apple don't provide sufficiently flexible business models for selling software on the App Store to make it possible to follow the same model that we use for Dorico on the desktop, and any attempt to work around that (using things like bundles at discounted prices when you release the next major version etc.) have a poor user experience. So in order to strike a balance between making it possible to try the app for free, make it easy for users to stay up-to-date, and to hopefully deliver some revenue to allow us to continue to develop the app, we opted for an optional and inexpensive subscription option.

If you don't subscribe, Dorico is still a very functional app: the only features that are not included are the ability to write for ensembles up to 12 players, graphical editing in Engrave mode, the Notation Options dialog, and support for third-party Audio Units. Otherwise it is exactly the same app whether you subscribe or not. And we have priced the subscription fairly: the functionality of Dorico for iPad actually exceeds that of Dorico Elements, which has a $99 price tag. Subscribing to Dorico for iPad for a whole year costs $40 (or you can pay monthly, in which case a year's subscription will cost you $48), which is a very reasonable price for an app that delivers this much functionality.

Finally, we will not be introducing subscription pricing for Dorico 4. We will continue to sell and distribute the desktop versions of the app in the same way as before.


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## youngpokie

rudi said:


> ‎Dorico - Compose Music
> 
> 
> ‎Compose your own music for free with Dorico. Create beautiful music notation for one or two instruments quickly and easily with the on-screen keyboard, drum pads and fretboard. Play back instantly with the included sounds and shape the performance with powerful MIDI editing tools. When your...
> 
> 
> 
> apps.apple.com


Am I reading this right - note entry only possible via on-screen keyboard??


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## Nickie Fønshauge

youngpokie said:


> Am I reading this right - note entry only possible via on-screen keyboard??


No, you can use a MIDI keyboard.


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## Daniel S.

ptram said:


> The subscription features are simply Dorico SE with four instead of two tracks. StaffPad is really on another level.
> 
> Paolo


That's really not correct. Subscription in Dorico for iPad gives you 12 players, Engrave mode, Notation Options, and support for third-party Audio Units.


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## zolhof




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## Nimrod7

I can sympathize with the frustration developers facing with Apple's inflexible pricing models. Surprised that after 13 years the users don't have an option to upgrade, and developers have to invent solutions to go around it. Being a dev myself still struggling with this.

@Daniel S. thanks for providing more context around the decision. $40 is really good price and the flexibility to try it out as much as you want is great!


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## ptram

Daniel S. said:


> That's really not correct. Subscription in Dorico for iPad gives you 12 players, Engrave mode, Notation Options, and support for third-party Audio Units.


Apologies, Daniel. I have confused the paid subscription with the free subscription with a Steinberg ID.

It's true that those who wanted a Dorico reader now have one for free.

Paolo


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## zolhof

Daniel S. said:


> That's really not correct. Subscription in Dorico for iPad gives you 12 players, Engrave mode, Notation Options, and support for third-party Audio Units.


How does it handle orchestral scores with 40 or 50 players? Read only?


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## Daniel S.

zolhof said:


> How does it handle orchestral scores with 40 or 50 players? Read only?


Yes, for the time being, but there is no fundamental technical reason why this should be the case. Depending on the feedback we receive from our users and how the app gains traction, it's certainly possible for us to unlock further functionality.


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## Daniel S.

In case anybody wants to read more about the app and its features, I've written a detailed blog post which you can find here (and the behind the scenes story, which you can read here).


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## zolhof

Daniel S. said:


> Yes, for the time being, but there is no fundamental technical reason why this should be the case. Depending on the feedback we receive from our users and how the app gains traction, it's certainly possible for us to unlock further functionality.


Thank you, Daniel. Appreciate you taking the time to answer questions here, best of luck on the new app launch!


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## youngpokie

Daniel S. said:


> In case anybody wants to read more about the app and its features, I've written a detailed blog post which you can find here (and the behind the scenes story, which you can read here).


@Daniel S. Is there more information on sound libraries used for playback?

Thanks!


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## Daniel S.

youngpokie said:


> @Daniel S. Is there more information on sound libraries used for playback?
> 
> Thanks!


The sounds included with Dorico for iPad are based on the Microsonic sounds included with Cubasis. Microsonic is a pretty basic ROMpler-style instrument so the sounds aren't fantastic. We are very much hoping that we will be able to persuade the HALion team to work on an iOS version of HALion that both Cubasis and Dorico can use in the future. We'll see!


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## ptram

The overview of the new Play mode is very promising for the desktop version as well! It seems there are some serious advancements towards DAW-like functionalities, there!

Paolo


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## Daniel S.

Yes, Paolo, almost like it's worth waiting to find out what the app can do before you decide whether it's any good or not...?


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## ptram

As far as I can see from the free version, it can be used exactly as Dorico on desktop. No training needed at all for most of it!

It is also surprisingly smooth on my old iPad mini 4.

Paolo


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## dylanmixer

I was so hoping that the announcement would have something to do with cross play between Cubase and Dorico. The app looks great, and I'm happy for you guys, but can @Daniel S. comment on whether or not this is something that is still in the cards? I love both Cubase and Dorico individually, but unfortunately this is one of the things that the Presonus folks are slamming Steinberg at.


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## Daniel S.

dylanmixer said:


> I was so hoping that the announcement would have something to do with cross play between Cubase and Dorico. The app looks great, and I'm happy for you guys, but can @Daniel S. comment on whether or not this is something that is still in the cards? I love both Cubase and Dorico individually, but unfortunately this is one of the things that the Presonus folks are slamming Steinberg at.


Absolutely it's on the cards, yes. One of the longer-term projects the team is working on is specifically related to bringing Cubase and Dorico closer together. There are lots of potential avenues for integration, and we won't be able to tackle them all at once. There are some practical and organisational considerations that have guided the aspect we have decided to prioritise at first, and unfortunately I can't say a lot more about it at the moment. I'm looking forward to being able to share more in future.

It's also important to remember that both the Dorico and Cubase teams have existing feature roadmaps for things that are necessary for users for whom integration of the two applications is not the most important aspect, so neither team is working exclusively towards this.

But we know it's very important to a significant segment of our joint customers, and we will get there, step by step. Dorico 4 won't include any specific Cubase integration features, but it will include dramatically improved MIDI import, which I hope will be of great interest to Cubase users. The long-term project we're currently working on won't come to fruition in the Dorico 4 timescale, but we'll share more about it as and when we can. In general I prefer to talk about things in detail only once they're real and we are sure we can deliver them.


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## el-bo

DR BOOWHO said:


> THE GREAT RESET....You will own nothing and be happy!, : )


The real delusion is thinking you truly own anything, currently 

We are but bags of bones and blood, with heads full of psychoses. Life is transitory. Fleeting. We barely own the breath in our lungs (See. it's already gone). And when we eventually shuffle off this 'ere mortal coil, we get eaten back into the air. 

Then what good will our perpetual licenses do?


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## dylanmixer

Daniel S. said:


> Absolutely it's on the cards, yes. One of the longer-term projects the team is working on is specifically related to bringing Cubase and Dorico closer together. There are lots of potential avenues for integration, and we won't be able to tackle them all at once. There are some practical and organisational considerations that have guided the aspect we have decided to prioritise at first, and unfortunately I can't say a lot more about it at the moment. I'm looking forward to being able to share more in future.
> 
> It's also important to remember that both the Dorico and Cubase teams have existing feature roadmaps for things that are necessary for users for whom integration of the two applications is not the most important aspect, so neither team is working exclusively towards this.
> 
> But we know it's very important to a significant segment of our joint customers, and we will get there, step by step. Dorico 4 won't include any specific Cubase integration features, but it will include dramatically improved MIDI import, which I hope will be of great interest to Cubase users. The long-term project we're currently working on won't come to fruition in the Dorico 4 timescale, but we'll share more about it as and when we can. In general I prefer to talk about things in detail only once they're real and we are sure we can deliver them.


Thanks so much for taking the time to respond in that detail! Can't wait.


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## Jett Hitt

When I saw this, I was left scratching my head. Five bucks per month for only twelve staves? Really? I don't know whether it was the five or the twelve that aggravated me more. I was a little surprised that, as a Dorico owner, there was a fee at all, much less a recurring one. Perhaps more annoying than the corporate cash grab was the limitation of 12 staves. As an orchestral composer, I don't think that I have ever written a score that I could realize with twelve staves. Do you only make software for composers of chamber music? (Yes, I saw the comment that this can be expanded in the future.)

I was so excited when Steinberg engaged the Sibelius team. I thought that someone was finally going to marry a notation program to a DAW. The reality was very different, however. Dorico was little more than a reinvention of Finale. It is antiquated thinking trapped in about the year 2002. Sure, if I were starting out today, I would choose Dorico over Finale. But I would take StaffPad over either one of them.

How is it that Dorico completely missed the playback thing? How is it that David William Hearn and Matthew Tesch figured it out and brought it to a mere tablet when Dorico can't even bring it to my desktop? And now the folks at Dorico think that a dumbed-down iPad app with a subscription is going to compete with StaffPad? I don't know what you boys are smoking.

@Daniel S. I am sorry to be so brutal, but I don't know what decade you are living in. If your iPad app were fully functional and free (or small one-time fee) to Dorico owners, it would be an attractive selling point for Dorico. But did you really not assess the waters before you waded into the pool? There are some big sharks in there. StaffPad is a beast, and Notion is $8.00. Musescore is completely free on my desktop. Do I really need to pay you $5.00 per month to be able to write some notes on only twelve staves on my iPad?


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## stevebarden

A limitation of 12 players (assuming you have the paid subscription) is not going to replace the desktop version anytime soon. Maybe they're just trying to get people hooked and come out with a PRO subscription ($99/yr) that will have unlimited players?


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## CatOrchestra

Feels good to have a notation software where I can more or less seamlessly move between the stationary and the iPad.


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## youngpokie

I'm re-watching the live stream because it seems several features from this app will be included in Dorico 4:

- new mixer
- lower zone with (EDIT: Velocity lane) directly in the Write mode
- new velocity editing tools, 2 types of histograms

Those look pretty cool. Do we know when Dorico 4 launches?


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## ALittleNightMusic

This is great! Been waiting for a competent iPad notation app after wasting money on Staffpad (if they’re so tech savvy with playback, why do they have the worst handwriting recognition of any iPad software I’ve ever used). Glad Dorico focused on deterministic input so you don’t waste time. And no, I don’t care about playback “quality” on a tablet device. That’s what my DAW system is for. $40 a year is couch money for what you get here.


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## Pappaus

It is easy to see what the “dumbed down iPad app” isn’t. But after looking at it for a little bit, I can see some of the things that it is. Easy note entry that won’t have me scratching on my iPad screen for minutes per bar just to get the handwriting right (my fault not Staffpad as they have many users who fly through the writing). The ability to write in bed late at night and not wake my wife up with said tapping and scratching. The ability to not be reliant on an Apple Pencil that I may or may not remember where I left it. The ability to record parts in live with the ipad or a midi keyboard. It has sounds that are good enough for sketching as I would just import the MIDI into a daw or regular Dorico For final versions. 

And so it works for me. I have tried Notion but the menus in Dorico seem a little more straightforward and easily accessible. The price seems high at first, but when you count on the price paid for updates on other software I own, it is in the ballpark. I don’t like subscriptions either but no one is forcing me to subscribe.


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## Dewdman42

FWIW, I don't subscribe; and won't be subscribing to this either. Glad to hear you are not entering that sink hole for Dorico 4.


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## Michael Antrum

Well, I was hoping for something rather different from this big announcement. 

My hope was for tight integration between Cubase and Dorico. If they had done that Dorico would have been in a space of their own with little in the way of competition. But I very much get the impression from what has been posted, is that there is too much separation between the teams, and too much corporate politics and lack of will to make it happen. Which is a great shame.

As regards Dorico for iPad - well currently it's sadly, rather underwhelming. First of all I, like many people here, cannot abide subscription. In addition, it doesn't sound good, and if I'm working I want my work to sound good when played back. 

Finally, the 12 player/stave limit makes it unusable for me.

I get that this is not a Staffpad competitor, but an iPad version of Dorico. That is a clear and important difference, but if I need Dorico to be portable, then I will use my laptop. 

I have a 13" MacBook Pro and I simply fail to see what advantage the iPad/Tablet has over a compact laptop. If I decide to carry about a keyboard and/or mouse and an iPad or other tablet, then I've got a similar size and weight.

One of the key advantages of having a tablet, is that you can use a pencil with layout and design software - and that advantage has been ignored.

Unless I'm missing something, it feels very much like a solution looking for a problem. Which makes me sad, because I am sure that an absolute ton of hard work has gone into this. 

If the 12 player/stave limit is removed, then it would be much more interesting - but I still fail to see why I would use this over my laptop. Even then I would probably throw some money at it - but I'll never do subscription. 

I hope I'm wrong about this, and that I've totally missed their vision about what this product is all about. But I don't think I have. 

So, many congratulations on the new release, but as it stands, it isn't for me.


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## zolhof

youngpokie said:


> I'm re-watching the live stream because it seems several features from this app will be included in Dorico 4:
> 
> - new mixer
> - lower zone with MIDI CC directly in the Write mode
> - new velocity editing tools, 2 types of histograms
> 
> Those look pretty cool. Do we know when Dorico 4 launches?



After fully converting to Dorico and using it in a number of scores, these are features that will drastically improve workflow and take us several steps further to production-quality results without heavily relying on a DAW. I could write a love letter to NotePerformer, though, and how it accurately interprets notation.

In my opinion, Play mode is an awesome concept, but currently too convoluted and laggy to work with anything above a few dozen players—and my projects often have 40~50 unique players. I understand it has to do with refreshing and lots of calculations when you switch modes (perfectly valid reasons), but I do experience quite a lot of lag in Write mode as well, as the cues get longer (200 bars or so).

Condensing is brilliant and the main reason I switched, but it does introduce even more lag—again, lots of calculations. It's a trade-off, what other software does that for you:




The one thing I miss is an option to concatenate player numbers into a single range, like in bar 40 where Dorico writes Hn 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and Hn 9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16 (gotta love EG) when I'd just write Hn 1-8 and Hn 9-16. A feature I requested to @Daniel S. last year and I have my hopes up to see implemented in Dorico 4.

Anyway, I hope the new Play mode features that were rebuilt from the ground up for the tablet help improve things in the desktop version of Dorico.


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## Bollen

I can't even begin to put into words my disappointment with this "announcement". Although it makes perfect business sense to make such an application, now was not the time! 
The 1st thing should've been to fix the awful bugs their "Pro" software still has: 
(just at the top of my head)
- You still can't select individual notes when 3 out 4 times it selects everything around it (slurs, dynamics, other notes, etc)
- The Play window is utterly awful and nothing works as standard i.e. scrolling works the opposite of every other window, you can't scroll the piano roll, you can't have more than one controller lane, you can't edit velocity without selecting the note first, etc, etc, etc.
- Overrides are still buggy and leaves all sorts of spikes behind.
- There are still all sorts of collisions between objects.

I could go on and on... But more importantly what is the point of this App? Anybody that really needs an iPad music program will already have either Notion or Staffpad. In my case this app doesn't work on any of my iPads (all too old), but the Staffpad reader works just fine on all of them.

A reader I could have understood, this is just wasted Dev time.


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## rudi

youngpokie said:


> I'm re-watching the live stream because it seems several features from this app will be included in Dorico 4:
> 
> - new mixer
> - lower zone with MIDI CC directly in the Write mode
> - new velocity editing tools, 2 types of histograms
> 
> Those look pretty cool. Do we know when Dorico 4 launches?


I couldn't find a MIDI CC lane facility in the app. It only seems to allow velocity editing.


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## dcoscina

Daniel S. said:


> There will be lots more information available about Dorico for iPad later today, including on the Dorico blog, which will include more information about why we have decided to use subscription pricing for this new app.
> 
> A short summary: Apple don't provide sufficiently flexible business models for selling software on the App Store to make it possible to follow the same model that we use for Dorico on the desktop, and any attempt to work around that (using things like bundles at discounted prices when you release the next major version etc.) have a poor user experience. So in order to strike a balance between making it possible to try the app for free, make it easy for users to stay up-to-date, and to hopefully deliver some revenue to allow us to continue to develop the app, we opted for an optional and inexpensive subscription option.
> 
> If you don't subscribe, Dorico is still a very functional app: the only features that are not included are the ability to write for ensembles up to 12 players, graphical editing in Engrave mode, the Notation Options dialog, and support for third-party Audio Units. Otherwise it is exactly the same app whether you subscribe or not. And we have priced the subscription fairly: the functionality of Dorico for iPad actually exceeds that of Dorico Elements, which has a $99 price tag. Subscribing to Dorico for iPad for a whole year costs $40 (or you can pay monthly, in which case a year's subscription will cost you $48), which is a very reasonable price for an app that delivers this much functionality.
> 
> Finally, we will not be introducing subscription pricing for Dorico 4. We will continue to sell and distribute the desktop versions of the app in the same way as before.


Hi Daniel!! Welcome! I tried the app. Seems nice . I adore the desktop version. I guess I’m wondering about where this fits in. Staffpad kind of reigns supreme on iOS because of its integrated playback of top notch third party libraries. Plus, aside from a few challenges with note input, it’s fairly immediate. Yes, it’s much more expensive. But I generally start with it and then export to Dorico when I need more deep engraving (for live player performance). Notion also has an integrated playback library and while it’s kind of fallen by the wayside over the years, it’s still a fairly elegant way of getting ideas down in a mobile app.

no disrespect at all intended but I question Steinberg’s intentions with this. Will there be add ons for better playback at some point? Sorry, again, I don’t mean to be rude or impolite, just genuinely interested as a notation enthusiast.


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## dcoscina

Daniel S. said:


> Absolutely it's on the cards, yes. One of the longer-term projects the team is working on is specifically related to bringing Cubase and Dorico closer together. There are lots of potential avenues for integration, and we won't be able to tackle them all at once. There are some practical and organisational considerations that have guided the aspect we have decided to prioritise at first, and unfortunately I can't say a lot more about it at the moment. I'm looking forward to being able to share more in future.
> 
> It's also important to remember that both the Dorico and Cubase teams have existing feature roadmaps for things that are necessary for users for whom integration of the two applications is not the most important aspect, so neither team is working exclusively towards this.
> 
> But we know it's very important to a significant segment of our joint customers, and we will get there, step by step. Dorico 4 won't include any specific Cubase integration features, but it will include dramatically improved MIDI import, which I hope will be of great interest to Cubase users. The long-term project we're currently working on won't come to fruition in the Dorico 4 timescale, but we'll share more about it as and when we can. In general I prefer to talk about things in detail only once they're real and we are sure we can deliver them.


Oh please include “play on second repeat only” for Dorico 4! Sibelius has it but I really prefer composing in Dorico these days.


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## Toecutter

Daniel S. said:


> Finally, we will not be introducing subscription pricing for Dorico 4. We will continue to sell and distribute the desktop versions of the app in the same way as before.


Thank you sir, this is relieving news! I bought Dorico 3.0 in 2019 and never activated it, I didn't have time to learn everything again (Finale here) but depending on what's coming in Dorico 4 I will give it a serious try. I don't remember if I need to pay again if I didn't activate it... can you confirm?


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## Gene Pool

zolhof said:


> After fully converting to Dorico and using it in a number of scores, these are features that will drastically improve workflow and take us several steps further to production-quality results without heavily relying on a DAW. I could write a love letter to NotePerformer, though, and how it accurately interprets notation.
> 
> In my opinion, Play mode is an awesome concept, but currently too convoluted and laggy to work with anything above a few dozen players—and my projects often have 40~50 unique players. I understand it has to do with refreshing and lots of calculations when you switch modes (perfectly valid reasons), but I do experience quite a lot of lag in Write mode as well, as the cues get longer (200 bars or so).
> 
> Condensing is brilliant and the main reason I switched, but it does introduce even more lag—again, lots of calculations. It's a trade-off, what other software does that for you:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The one thing I miss is an option to concatenate player numbers into a single range, like in bar 40 where Dorico writes Hn 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and Hn 9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16 (gotta love EG) when I'd just write Hn 1-8 and Hn 9-16. A feature I requested to @Daniel S. last year and I have my hopes up to see implemented in Dorico 4.
> 
> Anyway, I hope the new Play mode features that were rebuilt from the ground up for the tablet help improve things in the desktop version of Dorico.




I really like that Wagnerian sound you're getting there.

On a different subject, can you tell me if Dorico allows you to put those big time signatures in their proper place?

Thanks.


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## Toecutter

Daniel S. said:


> we will be able to persuade the HALion team to work on an iOS version of HALion that both Cubasis and Dorico can use in the future. We'll see!


Why not Iconica? Do it, time to murder the competition XD


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## dcoscina

Gene Pool said:


> I really like that Wagnerian sound you're getting there.
> 
> On a different subject, can you tell me if Dorico allows you to put those big time signatures in their proper place?
> 
> Thanks.


Elliot Goldenthal rules. Noticed this is from his Final Fantasy score


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## Toecutter

ALittleNightMusic said:


> This is great! Been waiting for a competent iPad notation app after wasting money on Staffpad (if they’re so tech savvy with playback, why do they have the worst handwriting recognition of any iPad software I’ve ever used). Glad Dorico focused on deterministic input so you don’t waste time. And no, I don’t care about playback “quality” on a tablet device. That’s what my DAW system is for. $40 a year is couch money for what you get here.


Right?? Lots of angry comments in this thread, it's just a stupid mobile app, reading the blog it looks powerful compared to the crap out there... and from what I could understand every new feature will be included in big brother Dorico, it's not like this is all a waste of resources. There were 80mi ipads shipped in Q1 2020 alone, 1.23bn tablet users worldwide... it was a matter of time until Steinberg demanded a mobile version of Dorico, they already have Cubasis.


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## Toecutter

zolhof said:


> Condensing is brilliant and the main reason I switched, but it does introduce even more lag—again, lots of calculations. It's a trade-off, what other software does that for you:



That's nuts I didn't know you could that, just google it and condensing was introduced in version 3, the one I bought and never activated... typical XD Is it all automatic or you can influence the outcome?

Is this NP playback btw? Sounds so good, did you have to change the notation or edit too much? Do you have the VSL stuff, wonder if that's it? My NP sounds good but not that good, maybe it's different in Finale... I'm searching for something to replace the awful Cubase score editor and all this time I had Dorico but I'm not willing to activate it and find out the performance is crap.


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## Toecutter

@Ben is it worth getting the Synchronized special edition libraries for Dorico? Will it sound better out of the box than the example above? What about Synchron Pro libraries, are they compatible with Dorico? Considering this is not the VSL stuff @zolhof is using?


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## ptram

Toecutter said:


> Is this NP playback btw?


Sounds like NP to me. As for using other sound generators: they will probably sound better, but you will have to work a lot more to make them sound good. NP is incredibly good with nearly no editing at all.

Paolo


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## youngpokie

rudi said:


> I couldn't find a MIDI CC lane facility in the app. It only seems to allow velocity editing.


My mistake - I should have said "velocity". Fixed - and thanks for catching it.


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## Toecutter

ptram said:


> Sounds like NP to me. As for using other sound generators: they will probably sound better, but you will have to work a lot more to make them sound good. NP is incredibly good with nearly no editing at all.
> 
> Paolo


Thanks Paolo! I'm worried about the janky stuff I'm reading about the piano roll aspect of Dorico, do you know if can I use Vepro to host my libraries and offload some of the burden of the CPU?


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## Bollen

Toecutter said:


> Thanks Paolo! I'm worried about the janky stuff I'm reading about the piano roll aspect of Dorico, do you know if can I use Vepro to host my libraries and offload some of the burden of the CPU?


Do you mean on the desktop version? Then absolutely! Also, no, you would not have to pay again. You can register whenever you want...


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## youngpokie

Gene Pool said:


> On a different subject, can you tell me if Dorico allows you to put those big time signatures in their proper place?


These are the available options I believe


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## ptram

Toecutter said:


> do you know if can I use Vepro to host my libraries and offload some of the burden of the CPU?


I confirm I host all my sounds in VEPRO. It works fine, and is definitely lighter on the CPU than hosting them directly in Dorico.

As an additional advantage, if needed you can open a Dorico file without VEPRO, and it will open instantly.

Paolo


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## Gene Pool

youngpokie said:


> These are the available options I believe


Thanks for doing that. Much appreciated.

I've had Dorico now for months, but no time to learn it yet.

In Sibelius for studio format scores I have to use Avenir Next Condensed for time sigs, narrow it and elongate it, and align the top edge of the top number with the top line of the first stave of woodwinds, brass, timp, and strings, which unfortunately is not like any of those examples.


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## zolhof

Gene Pool said:


> I really like that Wagnerian sound you're getting there.
> 
> On a different subject, can you tell me if Dorico allows you to put those big time signatures in their proper place?
> 
> Thanks.


That's all Elliot, my lord and ruler haha

Sure you can! You can tweak pretty much all you want in Engraving Options, so if there are any mistakes, it's all me  I had vertical alignment set to middle for whatever reason, nice catch!






I also really like how you can use graphic slices now, import svg images and do all sorts of crazy notation.


----------



## rudi

youngpokie said:


> My mistake - I should have said "velocity". Fixed - and thanks for catching it.


No prob!  I got quite excited for a while, as this has been one of my dreams: notation with CC below.
It'll probably be implemented in time!


----------



## Daniel S.

Jett Hitt said:


> When I saw this, I was left scratching my head. Five bucks per month for only twelve staves? Really? I don't know whether it was the five or the twelve that aggravated me more. I was a little surprised that, as a Dorico owner, there was a fee at all, much less a recurring one. Perhaps more annoying than the corporate cash grab was the limitation of 12 staves. As an orchestral composer, I don't think that I have ever written a score that I could realize with twelve staves. Do you only make software for composers of chamber music? (Yes, I saw the comment that this can be expanded in the future.)
> 
> I was so excited when Steinberg engaged the Sibelius team. I thought that someone was finally going to marry a notation program to a DAW. The reality was very different, however. Dorico was little more than a reinvention of Finale. It is antiquated thinking trapped in about the year 2002. Sure, if I were starting out today, I would choose Dorico over Finale. But I would take StaffPad over either one of them.
> 
> How is it that Dorico completely missed the playback thing? How is it that David William Hearn and Matthew Tesch figured it out and brought it to a mere tablet when Dorico can't even bring it to my desktop? And now the folks at Dorico think that a dumbed-down iPad app with a subscription is going to compete with StaffPad? I don't know what you boys are smoking.
> 
> @Daniel S. I am sorry to be so brutal, but I don't know what decade you are living in. If your iPad app were fully functional and free (or small one-time fee) to Dorico owners, it would be an attractive selling point for Dorico. But did you really not assess the waters before you waded into the pool? There are some big sharks in there. StaffPad is a beast, and Notion is $8.00. Musescore is completely free on my desktop. Do I really need to pay you $5.00 per month to be able to write some notes on only twelve staves on my iPad?


Of course we assessed the waters before we waded into the pool. We have been thinking about bringing Dorico to the iPad for years, since we conceived the app back in 2012/2013. StaffPad is a beautifully designed app with really great playback, and I very much admire the work that David, Matt and team have done on it. But StaffPad isn't for everybody, in the same way that Dorico isn't for everybody. StaffPad doesn't currently provide MIDI input, page layout tools, Audio Unit support, on-screen instruments, etc. etc., all things that Dorico for iPad can provide today.

Notion and Symphony Pro are both $14.99 US on the App Store, and both have in-app purchases (Notion for sounds and for MyScript-based handwriting input; Symphony Pro for MyScript-based handwriting input). Both are very capable apps. Neither one of them offers the kind of flexible and beautiful notation that Dorico produces by default, even if you were to put in the time to try to produce output of that quality in those apps. Neither one supports Audio Units. Neither one includes MIDI editing tools. And so on, and so on.

So there is certainly an opportunity for another music notation app on the iPad. Each of the currently available ones has its strengths and weaknesses. But just because StaffPad exists, it doesn't mean that Dorico shouldn't. We very much hope Dorico will find its audience on the iPad, and on the whole the early feedback has been pretty good.

Obviously the community here at VI-CONTROL is a very specific kind of user with very specific needs. We hope that Dorico can address your needs, across the platforms it supports, and if it doesn't, let us know, and we'll continue to work on it. There are many other communities of musicians with very different needs, and I'm confident that Dorico can meet their requirements too.

In terms of the longer-term vision of marrying notation software and a DAW, clearly we're not moving quickly enough in that direction for your tastes, but that is the direction we're going. We're adding richer MIDI editing and mixing tools to our notation application, with the hope that for some jobs it won't be necessary to switch to Cubase to complete it. We're looking at enriching the scoring tools in Cubase, with the hope that for some jobs it won't be necessary to switch to Dorico to complete it. For the things in the middle we're hoping to provide some kind of synchronization tools to make it possible to use both things at once.

But this is only one dimension of what we have to do to make Dorico a successful application. It's probably the most significant aspect of what you and others in this community are looking for, but that isn't true for every user out there, and we have to try to take care of all of them. And, as I've said elsewhere in this thread, it's the same story for Cubase: having tight integration with Dorico or having aspects of Dorico built into Cubase is very desirable for some Cubase users, and absolutely immaterial to others. So we're working steadily away in all of these areas, and each new iteration will bring further steps along the journey.

Adding Dorico for iPad is about extending Dorico's audience, meeting musicians on the platforms where they're working, and trying to give them useful tools that they will enjoy using.

You can take your swings at Dorico being some kind of reinvention of Finale. It's a swing and a miss, in my view. If you look at Dorico and see Finale, I suggest you book an appointment with your optician quick smart


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## Daniel S.

youngpokie said:


> I'm re-watching the live stream because it seems several features from this app will be included in Dorico 4:
> 
> - new mixer
> - lower zone with (EDIT: Velocity lane) directly in the Write mode
> - new velocity editing tools, 2 types of histograms
> 
> Those look pretty cool. Do we know when Dorico 4 launches?


The plan is that it will be later this year. And of course it has many new features that we have not included or even hinted at in Dorico for iPad, but these new elements – the on-screen instruments, the integrated Key Editor and Mixer – will of course be part of Dorico 4 when it arrives.


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## Daniel S.

Michael Antrum said:


> Well, I was hoping for something rather different from this big announcement.
> 
> My hope was for tight integration between Cubase and Dorico. If they had done that Dorico would have been in a space of their own with little in the way of competition. But I very much get the impression from what has been posted, is that there is too much separation between the teams, and too much corporate politics and lack of will to make it happen. Which is a great shame.
> 
> As regards Dorico for iPad - well currently it's sadly, rather underwhelming. First of all I, like many people here, cannot abide subscription. In addition, it doesn't sound good, and if I'm working I want my work to sound good when played back.
> 
> Finally, the 12 player/stave limit makes it unusable for me.
> 
> I get that this is not a Staffpad competitor, but an iPad version of Dorico. That is a clear and important difference, but if I need Dorico to be portable, then I will use my laptop.
> 
> I have a 13" MacBook Pro and I simply fail to see what advantage the iPad/Tablet has over a compact laptop. If I decide to carry about a keyboard and/or mouse and an iPad or other tablet, then I've got a similar size and weight.
> 
> One of the key advantages of having a tablet, is that you can use a pencil with layout and design software - and that advantage has been ignored.
> 
> Unless I'm missing something, it feels very much like a solution looking for a problem. Which makes me sad, because I am sure that an absolute ton of hard work has gone into this.
> 
> If the 12 player/stave limit is removed, then it would be much more interesting - but I still fail to see why I would use this over my laptop. Even then I would probably throw some money at it - but I'll never do subscription.
> 
> I hope I'm wrong about this, and that I've totally missed their vision about what this product is all about. But I don't think I have.
> 
> So, many congratulations on the new release, but as it stands, it isn't for me.


I think if you have Dorico on your laptop already, and you're happy with it and find it sufficiently portable, then no, Dorico for iPad probably isn't for you. (I myself use Dorico primarily on a 13" M1 MacBook Pro and that probably won't change with the release of the iPad version, though I really do love using the multi-touch on-screen keyboard.)

But there are thousands (tens, or hundreds of thousands) of musicians out there who either don't have a laptop, or don't have Dorico Pro already, or don't have the same requirements for writing large-scale orchestral works, and for whom a free or inexpensive app fits the bill pretty well. We're betting on it, in fact!

Dorico for iPad is a version 1.0 product, and in my view a pretty darned good one. Our hope is that it will find its audience and we will be sufficiently compensated for the work we have put into it so far to be able to put more work into it and expand its capabilities further. Apple Pencil support, for annotation and perhaps simple editing (though definitely not handwritten note input)? Sure. iCloud Drive and Open In Place support to make file management easier? Sure. Better sounding virtual instruments? Sure. Some kind of integration with Cubasis, somehow? Sure.

All of these things are possible, if the app finds an audience and enough of those people derive enough value from what the app can do for them that is useful to them to consider spending some money on it.


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## Daniel S.

Bollen said:


> I can't even begin to put into words my disappointment with this "announcement". Although it makes perfect business sense to make such an application, now was not the time!
> The 1st thing should've been to fix the awful bugs their "Pro" software still has:
> (just at the top of my head)
> - You still can't select individual notes when 3 out 4 times it selects everything around it (slurs, dynamics, other notes, etc)
> - The Play window is utterly awful and nothing works as standard i.e. scrolling works the opposite of every other window, you can't scroll the piano roll, you can't have more than one controller lane, you can't edit velocity without selecting the note first, etc, etc, etc.
> - Overrides are still buggy and leaves all sorts of spikes behind.
> - There are still all sorts of collisions between objects.
> 
> I could go on and on... But more importantly what is the point of this App? Anybody that really needs an iPad music program will already have either Notion or Staffpad. In my case this app doesn't work on any of my iPads (all too old), but the Staffpad reader works just fine on all of them.
> 
> A reader I could have understood, this is just wasted Dev time.


I don't think the scare quotes around the word "announcement" make much sense – it is certainly an announcement, like it or not!

Claude, your feelings about Play mode in Dorico on the desktop are legendary. But if you have the opportunity to take a look at Dorico for iPad, I hope you will take it. We have rebuilt Play mode and the key editor for Dorico for iPad, and these rebuilt components will form the basis of what you will see in Dorico 4 later in the year. The version included with Dorico for iPad doesn't yet include MIDI CC editors, or the other special editors (dynamics, tempo, etc.) that are included in the desktop version, but these will all be added. And I really do find that being able to see this data synced with the notation in Write mode is really useful.

As for what the point of the app is: Notion and StaffPad are great, capable apps. But Sibelius and Finale are capable apps, so what is the point of Dorico on the desktop, then? Is Dorico itself just "wasted dev time"? Tens of thousands of Sibelius and Finale users have switched to Dorico. Why wouldn't Notion or StaffPad users take a look at Dorico for iPad? Both David MacDonald in his review for Scoring Notes, and Robby Burns in his first impressions on his blog, say that they find inputting and editing music faster in Dorico for iPad than in StaffPad. OK, the music in Dorico isn't going to sound as good as it does in StaffPad, but that's not the only reason to write music notation.

So let's try not to rush to judgement. We are working as hard as ever on Dorico 4. There are lots of useful features in development that are not part of Dorico for iPad. Add the revamped Play mode and Key Editor, together with the on-screen instruments, the UI/UX improvements, the new Hub, etc. from Dorico for iPad to the new features we've been working on, and I don't think you will look at Dorico 4 and say that it is "wasted dev time".


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## zolhof

Toecutter said:


> That's nuts I didn't know you could that, just google it and condensing was introduced in version 3, the one I bought and never activated... typical XD Is it all automatic or you can influence the outcome?


Dorico does a lot of the heavy lifting automatically but allows you to manually adjust the condensing rules in Engraving mode. You can add condensing changes almost per note basis, it's one of Dorico's most powerful features. I had the signposts hidden in the video, here how it looks:








Toecutter said:


> Is this NP playback btw? Sounds so good, did you have to change the notation or edit too much? Do you have the VSL stuff, wonder if that's it? My NP sounds good but not that good, maybe it's different in Finale... I'm searching for something to replace the awful Cubase score editor and all this time I had Dorico but I'm not willing to activate it and find out the performance is crap.


Yes, it's NP3 with some automation tweaks in Play mode, nothing too drastic. I don't own any of the Synchron libraries but I have no doubts that they would sound fantastic here with proper love and care. The thing about NotePerformer is that it rewards good writing and orchestration, Arne is a genius—and a really kind person. Regarding VSL, unfortunately I can't tell you how well it will perform out-of-the-box, however, I'm sure it will offer you a plethora of control over every nuance of the instruments. It's their strongest suit!


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## Bollen

Daniel S. said:


> I don't think the scare quotes around the word "announcement" make much sense – it is certainly an announcement, like it or not!
> 
> Claude, your feelings about Play mode in Dorico on the desktop are legendary. But if you have the opportunity to take a look at Dorico for iPad, I hope you will take it. We have rebuilt Play mode and the key editor for Dorico for iPad, and these rebuilt components will form the basis of what you will see in Dorico 4 later in the year. The version included with Dorico for iPad doesn't yet include MIDI CC editors, or the other special editors (dynamics, tempo, etc.) that are included in the desktop version, but these will all be added. And I really do find that being able to see this data synced with the notation in Write mode is really useful.
> 
> As for what the point of the app is: Notion and StaffPad are great, capable apps. But Sibelius and Finale are capable apps, so what is the point of Dorico on the desktop, then? Is Dorico itself just "wasted dev time"? Tens of thousands of Sibelius and Finale users have switched to Dorico. Why wouldn't Notion or StaffPad users take a look at Dorico for iPad? Both David MacDonald in his review for Scoring Notes, and Robby Burns in his first impressions on his blog, say that they find inputting and editing music faster in Dorico for iPad than in StaffPad. OK, the music in Dorico isn't going to sound as good as it does in StaffPad, but that's not the only reason to write music notation.
> 
> So let's try not to rush to judgement. We are working as hard as ever on Dorico 4. There are lots of useful features in development that are not part of Dorico for iPad. Add the revamped Play mode and Key Editor, together with the on-screen instruments, the UI/UX improvements, the new Hub, etc. from Dorico for iPad to the new features we've been working on, and I don't think you will look at Dorico 4 and say that it is "wasted dev time".


I absolutely love you @Daniel S. You are the sole reason I jumped on Dorico so early. I think you would have a hard time finding anyone who's upset at the release of an iPad app. What a lot of us are rather annoyed at is the timing. We've waited years for you guys to fix the Play window, just fix it, not fancy tools and many complex feature requests, just a fix! Have you ever actually worked with the Play window on a Windows machine? It's a nightmare!

I'm always glad that you guys are trying to expand your market, better for all of us, but priority to those of us who have paid and supported you from the beginning is expected if not demanded. The problem appears that the iPad crowd is a lot louder than us Pros, but again we're busy, we can't be shouting on the forum everyday...

And I love you! 😘


----------



## Daniel S.

Try out the Key Editor on the iPad version, if you can. I think you will see that the experience of using both the piano roll and velocity editors is significantly better than it is in the desktop version right now. The velocity editor has Cubase-style range selection editing tools for tilting, scaling, randomising. It even has a histogram tool, which you can use to shift, expand, compress or randomise the whole track. Imagine that for MIDI CCs in your future. The piano roll editor visually shows you tuplets and you can easily drag notes in and out of tuplets to scale or unscale them. It's fast and fluid to use, all the tools work just the same way they do in Cubasis, etc. etc.

You might be mad that this has found its way into the iPad version of Dorico before it has appeared in the desktop version, but it will be there before too long and my sincere hope is that it will make working in Play mode – or indeed using the Key Editor in the lower zone in Write mode – a much more pleasurable and less frustrating experience. You just have to wait a while longer to get it on Windows and macOS.


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## Bollen

Daniel S. said:


> Try out the Key Editor on the iPad version, if you can. I think you will see that the experience of using both the piano roll and velocity editors is significantly better than it is in the desktop version right now. The velocity editor has Cubase-style range selection editing tools for tilting, scaling, randomising. It even has a histogram tool, which you can use to shift, expand, compress or randomise the whole track. Imagine that for MIDI CCs in your future. The piano roll editor visually shows you tuplets and you can easily drag notes in and out of tuplets to scale or unscale them. It's fast and fluid to use, all the tools work just the same way they do in Cubasis, etc. etc.
> 
> You might be mad that this has found its way into the iPad version of Dorico before it has appeared in the desktop version, but it will be there before too long and my sincere hope is that it will make working in Play mode – or indeed using the Key Editor in the lower zone in Write mode – a much more pleasurable and less frustrating experience. You just have to wait a while longer to get it on Windows and macOS.


I cannot try it because my iPads are all too old, albeit not for Staffpad Reader...


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## Daniel S.

Well, at least take a close look at the bits that John demonstrated in the introductory live stream today, then. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.


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## Jett Hitt

Daniel S. said:


> You can take your swings at Dorico being some kind of reinvention of Finale. It's a swing and a miss, in my view. If you look at Dorico and see Finale, I suggest you book an appointment with your optician quick smart


Mostly, I think your reply was well-argued, and I wish you much success. After all, I own your product. Your success is my success. I stand by my statement that you just reinvented Finale, however. They are both just engraving programs. I doubt seriously that there is anything in traditional notation that you can notate with Dorico that I cannot with Finale. In this day and age, I would never recommend that someone buy Finale, and I frequently recommend Dorico. It is a much better design, and it should be because you had both Finale and Sibelius to draw from. But at the end of the day, Dorico is just an engraving program. I have had Finale for 30 years. I can do it in my sleep. Dorico doesn't really offer me anything more because you didn't really bring anything new to the table. Playback was the obvious Achilles heel of both Finale and Sibelius, and you didn't even address it. Musescore 4.0 will have the StaffPad playback engine, and then you'll have to compete with a free notation program with fantastic playback.

I, too, hope that Dorico finds its audience on the iPad and you improve it greatly. You have already heard from many people that 12 staves is not nearly enough. Get on it. Give us 50. And consider just charging a flat price. Many of us hate subscription models. I might pay $100 for your app, but I won't pay you $5 per month. Every time I have a subscription to something that I don't use for a month or two, I get pissed off. It happens to me every time, and consequently, I just refuse to have subscriptions. I hate them. I don't want to feel guilty about not using something. And if I pay money, I want to own it, not rent it.

The final thing I would say is that I am still just kind of stunned that you are not working on a playback engine. I would have thought that you would have been working on an engine to work with something like BBCSO Pro like David and Matthew did for StaffPad. If you could harness those sounds with notation, you would be the only game in town.


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## ALittleNightMusic

I'm honestly curious why so many people here are so focused on a playback engine for a tablet device? What's the use case? Do you print MP3s out of that and send it to directors / collaborators? When the bar these days is extremely well *produced* mockups made in full-fledged DAWs with fully featured sample libraries, I don't see how that will ever be the best option. I suppose this is where there are different types of customers - for example, I would never, ever want to use the output from a notation program as my final print - especially not a program that uses half-baked versions of sample libraries that I own on my computer. I'd be stunned if that is where Steinberg's focus went.


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## Toecutter

Jett Hitt said:


> I would have thought that you would have been working on an engine to work with something like BBCSO Pro like David and Matthew did for StaffPad.


Wait for Musescore


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## Toecutter

ALittleNightMusic said:


> I'm honestly curious why so many people here are so focused on a playback engine for a tablet device? What's the use case? Do you print MP3s out of that and send it to directors / collaborators?


I don't care about the playback engine for a tablet device but it would be a dream come true if a desktop-class notation software or DAW with real notation integration let me do just that. I'm so sick of messing with expression maps, sound variations, setting up sample libraries, hoarding this shit... I miss the time when composers were good enough to be trusted their job and a piano demo would do. First world problems I know...


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## ALittleNightMusic

Toecutter said:


> I don't care about the playback engine for a tablet device but it would be a dream come true if a desktop-class notation software or DAW with real notation integration let me do just that. I'm so sick of messing with expression maps, sound variations, setting up sample libraries, hoarding this shit... I miss the time when composers were good enough to be trusted their job and a piano demo would do. First world problems I know...


Sure - that’d be amazing, but you’d also potentially lose control to massage anything (outside of standard notation markings). How will a program interpret your desire for playing emotion or how you’d conduct it? Maybe there’s some AI version in the future but working on mock-ups, there’s just so many subjective decisions I make that contribute to the end sound - which is MY sound - that I don’t think a software playback algorithm could ever replicate that.


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## Bollen

ALittleNightMusic said:


> Sure - that’d be amazing, but you’d also potentially lose control to massage anything (outside of standard notation markings). How will a program interpret your desire for playing emotion or how you’d conduct it? Maybe there’s some AI version in the future but working on mock-ups, there’s just so many subjective decisions I make that contribute to the end sound - which is MY sound - that I don’t think a software playback algorithm could ever replicate that.


I think that's the point i.e. the ability to manually input these things with less hassle...


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## Toecutter

Bollen said:


> I think that's the point i.e. the ability to manually input these things with less hassle...


Bingo! Like Noteperformer but sounding like Spitfire Abbey Road XD I tried Staffpad but I must be a complete idiot or illiterate because I can't write a single bar under 5 minutes, so much struggle to make it recognize stuff... and when I manage to successfully write something, the playback is all over the place, samples are inconsistent and do not do what I expected. The short notes have terrible timing and jump in volume. Articulations are not consistent across the same library. You need to write for staffpad and not the other way around (like NP does) painstakingly editing the score. I had to change dynamics, fix the shorts and by the time I had something decent sounding, I wasted SO MUCH TIME that I might as well had used Cubase. Not ranting, it's a cool tech and I respect the devs but it didn't work for me, at least not for professional use.


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## ALittleNightMusic

@Daniel S. Great job with v1.0 with the app - I love all the workflow from Dorico has been ported over. And love the input options you already have in there like the keyboard and the MIDI editor. Multiple input mechanisms are super smart so you can use whatever works best for what you're trying to do (I hate getting stuck with Staffpad's recognition not working and then have no alternative to input my idea except trying to write, scribble it out, write, scribble, etc. until I usually just give up). My biggest piece of feedback is the app needs better Apple Pencil support (and palm rejection if you're using it). For example, I want to be able to transpose, lengthen, shorten, and input notes using the pencil. Same with multi-note / symbol selection (I can do it with the slur line for example). I think if you add that (and maybe think about integrating some GOOD handwriting recognition in the future), I think this app will be hard to beat in the way I would use it, that is to quickly sketch at the piano and then transfer the ideas to my DAW / Dorico on desktop.


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## ptram

Jett Hitt said:


> work with something like BBCSO Pro like David and Matthew did for StaffPad.


They have Iconica, developed with Orchestral Tools. It could be an excellent basis for an add-on library.

Paolo


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## ZenBYD

congrats to the Dorico guys for this! I’ve given it a go and it’s fine if you understand Dorico. Kinda what you’d expect. 

It doesn’t compete with StaffPad, nowhere near… but as it was said earlier there are people who can’t write with the pencil and need that more pedestrian input. I’m not sure what this really gives me over notion though, which is cheaper dollars. 

Maybe I’m lucky but StaffPad works insanely well for me… super fast and is sexy as hell… so fiddling with Dorico feels like going back in time to the 90s lol. But I hope this finds a market. We’ll see what AVID announce today. Cool time to have an iPad Pro!


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## Daniel S.

Jett Hitt said:


> Mostly, I think your reply was well-argued, and I wish you much success. After all, I own your product. Your success is my success. I stand by my statement that you just reinvented Finale, however. They are both just engraving programs. I doubt seriously that there is anything in traditional notation that you can notate with Dorico that I cannot with Finale. In this day and age, I would never recommend that someone buy Finale, and I frequently recommend Dorico. It is a much better design, and it should be because you had both Finale and Sibelius to draw from. But at the end of the day, Dorico is just an engraving program. I have had Finale for 30 years. I can do it in my sleep. Dorico doesn't really offer me anything more because you didn't really bring anything new to the table. Playback was the obvious Achilles heel of both Finale and Sibelius, and you didn't even address it. Musescore 4.0 will have the StaffPad playback engine, and then you'll have to compete with a free notation program with fantastic playback.


Again, I think if you're looking at Dorico and seeing only an engraving program, you're not seeing very clearly. Of course it has to be great at engraving – and indeed I think (in my own biased opinion, naturally) that it is the best engraving app that currently exists, in terms of the amount of effort required by the end user to go from inputting notes to publication-quality output. No other app comes close.

But Dorico is also a composition app. It's the only notation-first software with a completely flexible model for music representation that allows you to freely chop and change notes, change durations, insert them, convert to and from tuplets, change meter, etc. etc. without any penalty, keeping the music clearly and legibly notated at every turn. Its internal representation of music is closer to that of a sequencer or DAW than it is to Sibelius/Finale/MuseScore. It provides really quick, fast tools for inputting (e.g. inputting onto multiple instruments simultaneously, Insert mode – which will be getting a big and powerful upgrade in the next Dorico release), arranging (explode, reduce, voice manipulation, swapping staves, etc.), and the next major update will introduce a very powerful set of tools for transforming the pitch and rhythm of music.

And Dorico is also designed to produce great playback. Although I would agree that this is the area where it's furthest away from its intended final state, the effort that has gone in to adding the most powerful MIDI editing tools in any music notation software should be clear, even if the user experience of those tools is not yet as slick as it needs to be (and the iPad version demonstrates that we have been working on this area). We want Dorico to be able to drive any sample library that you want to use, and to do it flexibly and hopefully efficiently. The goal is that for end products that don't require recorded audio (and perhaps eventually even for them), you should be able to produce that end product in Dorico. We're not there yet, but Dorico is still a relatively young application that also has to serve a diverse range of users from school students to the top publishers, from studio arrangers to concert music composers, and everyone in between.

Obviously the community on this site is very focused on the last of these three areas, and that's absolutely fine. But don't ignore the progress that has been made in the last area! Try configuring BBC SO to work with Finale or Sibelius and let me know how you get on.



Jett Hitt said:


> I, too, hope that Dorico finds its audience on the iPad and you improve it greatly. You have already heard from many people that 12 staves is not nearly enough. Get on it. Give us 50. And consider just charging a flat price. Many of us hate subscription models. I might pay $100 for your app, but I won't pay you $5 per month.


You only need to look at the relative position of, say, Notion and StaffPad in the 'Top Paid Apps' chart in the Music category on the App Store to see that you are very much in the minority in this view. Users on iOS are in general not willing to pay anywhere close to $100 for an app. But it still costs just as much money for developers to build professional-level apps for iOS as it does for any other platform.

I wish that Apple provided more flexible options that would allow us to provide multiple business models without jumping through too many hoops for it to be practical (we're not going to maintain multiple versions of the app so that we can have free, freemium and paid options, for example, and it would be a terrible user experience in any case). But they don't, and after 13 years it's clear that they won't. So here we are, and we're doing our best to provide an app that is both frictionless to download and try, useful in its free state, and provides good value if you choose to subscribe. Is it perfect? No.



Jett Hitt said:


> The final thing I would say is that I am still just kind of stunned that you are not working on a playback engine. I would have thought that you would have been working on an engine to work with something like BBCSO Pro like David and Matthew did for StaffPad. If you could harness those sounds with notation, you would be the only game in town.


We're very lucky at Steinberg to have expert virtual instrument developers in-house. The HALion team are among the very top professionals in the development of samplers and synthesisers in the world. But they, too, have finite time and resources, and we have to compete for their attention along with all of the other product teams in Steinberg who want or need things. Yes, it would be fantastic if they could turn their attention to producing a notation-focused playback engine for us, but where would that really leave us? It would have to use a much more limited set of content than what people in the real world want. Even if we could use, say, Iconica, some people wouldn't like the way that sounded, and want VSL or BBC SO or EastWest or whatever instead – i.e. precisely where we are now.

And in any case that kind of "just hit play" playback experience is already provided inexpensively and less resource-intensively by NotePerformer, which is used by thousands of our users already.

I believe it is possible to get great-sounding playback out of any virtual instrument, with sufficient knowledge about what steps humans take to make the playback sound great. If we can find ways to enrich the generation of continuous controller data, add options for shifting music to account for differences in onsets, etc., based on knowledge of specific libraries, we can produce better playback in the software as it stands, and allow you to continue to use whatever libraries you want, in any combination – just like you do in Cubase or Logic already. That's where we're headed, but it will take some time to get there.


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## gyprock

I posted this in another thread but I think the discussion is more active here:

“I use Dorico on my main iMac but when I'm sketching I like to sit at my heavy Kawai MP7 and write on paper on a drawing table angled just above the keyboard. Recently I discovered a bluetooth midi adapter (Xvive) that allows me to input into my ipad. I can place the ipad directly in front of me on the drawing table. This means that rather than using paper and pencil I can now start using apps.

I tried everything from Garageband to Cubasis to Notion to Staffpad. All allow me to get midi and/or notes into the ipad but none of them come close to the new Dorico app for being able to seamlessly write on the ipad and then open it with Dorico on the iMac. No more crappy XML implementation failures or midi notes in the wrong octave or wrong track names or poor hand writing interpretation etc etc. Thank you Dorico for this app.

Note that because I'm sketching, the free version of the Dorico app is fine. Four instruments (if you have a Steinberg ID) is adequate. I always finish my orchestrations in Dorico on the iMac for one main reason - posture and health. Yes, it is feasible to sit hunched over an ipad drinking lattes in a coffee shop but for how long. That's why being able to sketch and transfer via software written by the same company is great. Yes, StaffPad is clever and sounds great but personally I can input and edit in Dorico far quicker than using a pen. Just my 2 cents.”


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## CatOrchestra

One thing I think would be useful, is the ability to write notes that extend over/under(too short rests) within a bar, so i can later decide what I really want to do in that section


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## Maximvs

Let's hope Steinberg is not alluding with this Dorico iPad subscription option that in the future all the products line will move to this detrimental business model... I was hoping for a much due Dorico 3.5 update as not owning an iPad this is not at all pertinent and interesting to me... Blessings, Max T.


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## jonnybutter

Daniel S. said:


> Yes, for the time being, but there is no fundamental technical reason why this should be the case. Depending on the feedback we receive from our users and how the app gains traction, it's certainly possible for us to unlock further functionality.


If I could edit my full Dorico scores on the iPad (sounds not super important), it would be attractive, at least to me, to use the app version, esp if well designed UX. Otherwise, not sure, but will keep an open mind. $40/year is not so much but it adds up if you use it for years (e.g. 10 years = $400). Cheers Daniel!


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## Daniel S.

Maximvs said:


> Let's hope Steinberg is not alluding with this Dorico iPad subscription option that in the future all the products line will move to this detrimental business model...


You don't need to worry about that. Dorico (and all other existing Steinberg desktop products) will continue to be offered with perpetual licensing.


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## Toecutter

Just finished watching Anne Dern's new video on orchestrators and the software they use in LA. Not a single Dorico mention... she even commented that Dorico "still has a long way to go before it has all the features needed for a professional film production" but what does that mean? What is actually missing? Isn't Alan mothereffing Silvestri using Dorico? If it's good enough for Alan... maybe not for prep work? I really like her videos and think she's an insightful person but not so sure about that Dorico remark. Is this Sibelius thing like Pro Tools being "industry standard" but also being an old piece of crap? XD



Now seeing the big picture I understand why Dorico was released on the iPad... imagine how many kids will learn music on this app. Future film composers, orchestrators, prep ppl. When all the current "Hollywood dinosaurs" become extinct, Sibelius and Finale will be a thing of the past, and Dorico will reign supreme.


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## Markrs

Toecutter said:


> Now seeing the big picture I understand why Dorico was released on the iPad... imagine how many kids will learn music on this app. Future film composers, orchestrators, prep ppl. When all the current "Hollywood dinosaurs" become extinct, Sibelius and Finale will be a thing of the past, and Dorico will reign supreme.


Indeed, you have to grow the user Base and it is often easier to get them when they are either young or new to the industry rather than try to get people who have been using an alternative for 20 years to switch. You only need to look at how popular MuseScore is to see how many people use notation that are not currently orchestral composers or orchestrators. There is a good market for Dorico to tap into by having an app on the iPad.


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## Nimrod7

Toecutter said:


> she even commented that Dorico "still has a long way to go before it has all the features needed for a professional film production" but what does that mean? What is actually missing? Isn't Alan mothereffing Silvestri using Dorico? If it's good enough for Alan... maybe not for prep work? I really like her videos and think she's an insightful person but not so sure about that Dorico remark.


I had the same question. I would love to know more on what features are missing.
Is that a fact or an opinion that has long way to go? \
I personally own it, don't find anything missing, but I am not a power user neither working in the same caliber as an orchestrator.

Old codebases are hard to maintain which is the case for Sibelius / Finale, Dorico is fresh, and I trust more Steinberg Dorico team (not entire Steinberg) than the Avid corpoheads progressing the software to the next level.

Daw integration will be more aligned with composer needs within the Steinberg ecosystem (Cubase + Dorico) than having Sibelius <> Pro Tools.


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## tokatila

This thing is so beautiful on my New IPad pro 12.9. Brilliant for sketching ideas for a solo piano on a go. I also love the layout with the virtual keyboard on the bottom, so I can hammer my countermelodies on top of the playback. And for that purpose, it's free. Bonkers.


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## Daniel S.

Toecutter said:


> Just finished watching Anne Dern's new video on orchestrators and the software they use in LA. Not a single Dorico mention... she even commented that Dorico "still has a long way to go before it has all the features needed for a professional film production" but what does that mean? What is actually missing? Isn't Alan mothereffing Silvestri using Dorico? If it's good enough for Alan... maybe not for prep work? I really like her videos and think she's an insightful person but not so sure about that Dorico remark. Is this Sibelius thing like Pro Tools being "industry standard" but also being an old piece of crap? XD


Anne Dern is of course a Sibelius endorser who has appeared in marketing materials etc. so she's perhaps not entirely impartial – in much the same way that Alan Silvestri is not impartial. No doubt she really does use and love Sibelius, just as Al uses and loves Dorico and Cubase.

Dorico is being used in Hollywood, certainly less than either Sibelius or Finale, but it's newer and of course workflows can be very entrenched, particularly when they involve multiple people. However, shows like Netflix's "Green Eggs and Ham", movies like "The Prom", etc. have all had music prep done in Dorico and recorded with the top orchestras in LA and London.


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## ptram

Toecutter said:


> Not a single Dorico mention... she even commented that Dorico "still has a long way to go before it has all the features needed for a professional film production" but what does that mean?


I don't understand, either. On the contrary, it seems to me that Dorico is the notation program offering more useful DAW-like features, and a great way to put markers and tempi in tight correlation. And it for sure shares the same advantages of Sibelius in using NotePerformer.

Yes, it lacks Solo and Mute commands in the main editing pages, and this can be a real drawback. Something that I guess will be superseded with the new Mixer.

As Dern says, readapting the way of working can be a serious issue in a busy working context. I've seen something similar with Media Composer, still surviving despite the rise of the smarter Final Cut and Premiere.

Paolo


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## dylanmixer

Sibelius and Finale are ingrained in the industry just like Pro Tools is in the audio world. Dorico is the future, and as long as it's road map includes tight integration with one of the most popular DAWs for professional media composers, I have no doubt that it'll have it's day. I've been using it for over a year, and while I'm still more comfortable with Sibelius (because I've been using it forever) I can recognize that Dorico is vastly superior.


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## Toecutter

Markrs said:


> Indeed, you have to grow the user Base and it is often easier to get them when they are either young or new to the industry rather than try to get people who have been using an alternative for 20 years to switch. You only need to look at how popular MuseScore is to see how many people use notation that are not currently orchestral composers or orchestrators. There is a good market for Dorico to tap into by having an app on the iPad.


Yep I agree. I'm older now but I can't ignore the impact of the ipads and iphones on kids today. Everything is done on their mobile stuff, so it's natural to see Steinberg trailblazing new pathways. I installed Dorico on my ipad and compared it to some video walkthroughs, it seems to be pretty much the same program minus the unlimited staves (please change that) and NP  Two players for free? Imagine being able to do piano reductions on Dorico as a young student... every tool at your fingertips. Impressive.

Sibelius is announcing something today too, maybe their own Sibelius for iPad without compromises? Avid isn't that smart, they can't even keep the same team for more than 10 minutes XD


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## Markrs

Toecutter said:


> Sibelius is announcing something today too, maybe their own Sibelius for iPad without compromises? Avid isn't that smart, they can't even keep the same team for more than 10 minutes XD


It is an iPad app!









Sibelius arrives on iPad - Scoring Notes


Sibelius has come to the iPad. We take a comprehensive first look at what you can expect from the experience.




www.scoringnotes.com





https://apps.apple.com/app/sibelius/id1503221259


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## Toecutter

@Daniel S. Is there something preventing Steinberg to include a one-time payment option? Other apps do that... like an *in-app purchase for a perpetual license*. You are just offering another option to another type of customer  I'd be totally in if that was the case.


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## Toecutter

Markrs said:


> It is an iPad app!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sibelius arrives on iPad - Scoring Notes
> 
> 
> Sibelius has come to the iPad. We take a comprehensive first look at what you can expect from the experience.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.scoringnotes.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://apps.apple.com/app/sibelius/id1503221259


alright time to buy a powerball ticket, brb


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## Daniel S.

Toecutter said:


> @Daniel S. Is there something preventing Steinberg to include a one-time payment option? Other apps do that... like an *in-app purchase for a perpetual license*. You are just offering another option to another type of customer  I'd be totally in if that was the case.


No, there's no technical reason why we couldn't do this, but it's not clear to me what the price for such an option should be. The same as subscribing for two years, maybe? Three? Five? Would you really want to plunk that down in one go in the hopes that we would continue to develop the app in the way that you would feel pays back your investment?


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## Toecutter

Daniel S. said:


> No, there's no technical reason why we couldn't do this, but it's not clear to me what the price for such an option should be. The same as subscribing for two years, maybe? Three? Five? Would you really want to plunk that down in one go in the hopes that we would continue to develop the app in the way that you would feel pays back your investment?


I wouldn't mind at all... that's how much I despise subscriptions. I prefer to own my software fully aware of what I'm buying today, not what it might become tomorrow. So no worries if you discountinue it tomorrow (please don't). The price, that's really not up to me to come up with a number. Something reasonable, it's a mobile app after all.


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## Jett Hitt

Toecutter said:


> Bingo! Like Noteperformer but sounding like Spitfire Abbey Road XD I tried Staffpad but I must be a complete idiot or illiterate because I can't write a single bar under 5 minutes, so much struggle to make it recognize stuff... and when I manage to successfully write something, the playback is all over the place, samples are inconsistent and do not do what I expected. The short notes have terrible timing and jump in volume. Articulations are not consistent across the same library. You need to write for staffpad and not the other way around (like NP does) painstakingly editing the score. I had to change dynamics, fix the shorts and by the time I had something decent sounding, I wasted SO MUCH TIME that I might as well had used Cubase. Not ranting, it's a cool tech and I respect the devs but it didn't work for me, at least not for professional use.


No, you're not a complete idiot. StaffPad has plenty of problems, and there is a much bigger learning curve than you would think. It is far from as simple as just writing on paper. This is StaffPad's Achillies heel, and it is not going to get any better any time soon because DWH refuses to consider any other form of note entry, i.e. midi or some other form like a palette with note values. The trick is to figure out how to best approach an entry, and there are many different ways to accomplish this. When I have a particularly difficult passage with lots of notes and complex rhythmic values, I switch to Finale, notate what I want, and export the XML. (I don't use Dorico for this because it still can't adequately render XML.) It is utterly ridiculous that I have to do this, but all of these programs suffer from the same problem: they are only as good as the creator's vision.


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## Jett Hitt

Daniel S. said:


> No, there's no technical reason why we couldn't do this, but it's not clear to me what the price for such an option should be. The same as subscribing for two years, maybe? Three? Five? Would you really want to plunk that down in one go in the hopes that we would continue to develop the app in the way that you would feel pays back your investment?


Personally I think that is a really good solution. $80-90 would be a good mark since that’s about what StaffPad costs. $100 I think would be the ceiling. You could make it really attractive to current owners of Dorico for $50. I would spring for it if you promised to increase the number of staves and do something about the playback sounds.


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## ALittleNightMusic

I think Daniel's point is say they charged $80 for it - what would users expect in terms of support? Unlimited improvements forever? Two years of upgrades and then a paid upgrade to the next version? The challenge is Apple's App Store doesn't easily allow for that model. You could hack it by offering in-app purchases that add new features over time, but that can be hard to manage for developers (and users) - especially if a user "skips" an upgrade but then future features are dependent on previous ones. So then should Steinberg charge $200 to cover 5 years worth of future development? What if you decide you don't like it after a year?


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## Rudianos

END ALL Subscriptions. Charge me a lot once and move on.


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## Toecutter

Jett Hitt said:


> No, you're not a complete idiot. StaffPad has plenty of problems, and there is a much bigger learning curve than you would think. It is far from as simple as just writing on paper. This is StaffPad's Achillies heel, and it is not going to get any better any time soon because DWH refuses to consider any other form of note entry, i.e. midi or some other form like a palette with note values.


That's the reason I gave up on SP, David is too stubborn and won't listen to the many requests to add an alternative way of note entry. Yea the focus is writing with your pen but what harm would do to have a keypad like Sibelius? See how Avid did it, I'm testing the app and it's incredibly fast to work, much faster than Dorico btw:



So efficient, hats off to Avid, I ate my words! I don't like sibelius for desktop but on the iPad it feels like home. If they figure out a way of adding good playback (it's atrocious now, makes me want to die every time I hit play XD) it will pretty much put a nail in SP's coffin. David is so blind, sucks to be a SP user right now.


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## emasters

Toecutter said:


> David is so blind, sucks to be a SP user right now.


I like StaffPad and use it regularly. I'm not in the music publishing business, so engraving isn't important. I'm not paid for my compositions, so efficiency of entry isn't important (which is a good thing, since handwriting recognition can be a bit frustrating at times). I like the fact I can write a composition like I would with pencil and paper. I can play it back immediately at it sounds great with 3rd party libraries. Could one arrange more thoroughly with a DAW... of course. I have viewed SP as a composition tool, not engraving or professional notation. I do look forward to being able to use a midi keyboard with SP to enter notes, as David demo'd in the Apple iPad Pro M1 video. Perhaps next year some time? Fortunately for professional engravers/composers/arrangers/orchestrators making a living with notation software, there are good alternatives on PC/Mac platforms, and there is now Dorico and Sibelius on iPad, where if desired one can have a bit more portability. Multiple products and competition are a good thing on all platforms. Competition pushes the products forward faster. Hopefully StaffPad benefits from more competition in the iPad space. And congrats to both Avid and Steinberg for their time and effort to introduce new products on iPad.


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## dcoscina

Daniel S. said:


> The sounds included with Dorico for iPad are based on the Microsonic sounds included with Cubasis. Microsonic is a pretty basic ROMpler-style instrument so the sounds aren't fantastic. We are very much hoping that we will be able to persuade the HALion team to work on an iOS version of HALion that both Cubasis and Dorico can use in the future. We'll see!


That would be excellent Daniel. While it’s understandable not to expect sonic awesomeness out of a mobile app playback, it would be helpful to have a better integrated sound base with more articulations


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## Jett Hitt

Toecutter said:


> David is so blind, sucks to be a SP user right now.


I don't think that is quite fair. DWH has great vision in general. He is, however, very hung up on StaffPad being a handwriting app. If the handwriting recognition worked better, I probably wouldn't even care. But I do get really tired of having to visualize each measure in my head and formulate a plan of attack before I begin. Building each measure is really an incremental process. In general, it works quite well for me as long as things are simple, but when values get smaller than a 1/16th, it gets really tedious, especially if you want the beaming to be correct. A lot could be improved if StaffPad would just auto-correct the beaming.


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## Michael Antrum

Jett Hitt said:


> I don't think that is quite fair. DWH has great vision in general. He is, however, very hung up on StaffPad being a handwriting app. If the handwriting recognition worked better, I probably wouldn't even care. But I do get really tired of having to visualize each measure in my head and formulate a plan of attack before I begin. Building each measure is really an incremental process. In general, it works quite well for me as long as things are simple, but when values get smaller than a 1/16th, it gets really tedious, especially if you want the beaming to be correct. A lot could be improved if StaffPad would just auto-correct the beaming.


I thought the next thing for Staffpad was going to be input by playing an instrument. So you could put your iPad on a piano play it and Staffpad would notate the audio - so perhaps Staffpad being solely a handwriting app is going to change. I wonder if it will work with other instruments, and even singing your input ? Isn’t audio support coming too ?

But I see them as different products - I view Staffpad as a composition tool, and Dorico as an engraving app, but the lines between them are likely to become more blurred as time goes on and the features overlap.

I adore Dorico on my Mac - the first time I used it, the program just clicked with me.

What are the odds of Avid making an announcement the day after too !


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## Jett Hitt

Michael Antrum said:


> I thought the next thing for Staffpad was going to be input by playing an instrument. So you could put your iPad on a piano play it and Staffpad would notate the audio - so perhaps Staffpad being solely a handwriting app is going to change. I wonder if it will work with other instruments, and even singing your input ? Isn’t audio support coming too ?
> 
> But I see them as different products - I view Staffpad as a composition tool, and Dorico as an engraving app, but the lines between them are likely to become more blurred as time goes on and the features overlap.
> 
> I adore Dorico on my Mac - the first time I used it, the program just clicked with me.
> 
> What are the odds of Avid make an announcement the day after too !


For sure the new "capture" feature will be a new form of note entry, but now you are going to have to play it perfectly and in time. This is challenging with virtuosic music. I am totally speculating, of course, as I haven't seen it. I am curious to see how this works. I suspect that the complicated passages that I mentioned above will remain cumbersome.

I am happy to hear that yet another person is getting along with Dorico. I always point people toward it because I think that it is the future. Personally, I just can't be bothered. I am so adept at Finale, and I can quickly produce a score. I am just trying to quickly enter and print out a score. At the end of the day, engraving is engraving.


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## stigc56

Jett Hitt said:


> No, you're not a complete idiot. StaffPad has plenty of problems, and there is a much bigger learning curve than you would think. It is far from as simple as just writing on paper. This is StaffPad's Achillies heel, and it is not going to get any better any time soon because DWH refuses to consider any other form of note entry, i.e. midi or some other form like a palette with note values. The trick is to figure out how to best approach an entry, and there are many different ways to accomplish this. When I have a particularly difficult passage with lots of notes and complex rhythmic values, I switch to Finale, notate what I want, and export the XML. (I don't use Dorico for this because it still can't adequately render XML.) It is utterly ridiculous that I have to do this, but all of these programs suffer from the same problem: they are only as good as the creator's vision.


I have been using Dorico from version 1, along with Finale and Sibelius in my daily job, and one of my favourite things was, how well it handled XML import from all my old scores.


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## dcoscina

I tried Sibelius and Dorico iOS back to back. Dorico is much better IMO. What is puzzling is that Sibelius has a piano window for note entry in their full desktop app while Dorico doesn’t. It’s the opposite in their iOS versions. Bizarre. 

i feel like Dorico iOS is a much better translation of its desktop version compared to Sibelius iOS.


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## Daniel S.

I think Avid are clearly going for something very different with Sibelius on iPad than we are with Dorico. It's really intended to be an extension of an existing Sibelius subscription on the desktop – indeed, in its current state, you basically can't use it to start and finish a project, so you need Sibelius on the desktop to actually produce something that you can put in front of another musician. It's free if you have an active subscription to Sibelius on the desktop, but if you don't, it has a punishingly expensive subscription pricing considering the fact that as a stand-alone app it's pretty limited ($12.49 per month gets you unlimited staves, sure, but that price doesn't include access to Sibelius on the desktop, so you get no page formatting, no audio export, no MIDI/MusicXML support, no MIDI input, no ability to edit or even view parts, no scroll view/panorama, etc. etc.).

Our goal with Dorico is to make it possible for somebody who doesn't have Dorico on the desktop to start and finish a project completely on the iPad if they want. We know that's not possible if you want to write for an ensemble with more than 12 players as things stand, and we're going to do something about that.


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## youngpokie

Daniel S. said:


> Anne Dern is of course a Sibelius endorser who has appeared in marketing materials etc. so she's perhaps not entirely impartial – in much the same way that Alan Silvestri is not impartial. No doubt she really does use and love Sibelius, just as Al uses and loves Dorico and Cubase.


I don't know if she made those anti-Dorico comments before during or after her Sibelius endorsement thingy, but it's very uncool. I hope Alan Silverstri doesn't disparage competition while endorsing Dorico.


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## Daniel S.

youngpokie said:


> I hope Alan Silverstri doesn't disparage competition while endorsing Dorico.


I've had the great pleasure and privilege of getting to know Alan Silvestri personally, and I can tell you that he doesn't have a disparaging bone in his body. He is an absolute gentleman and while he's very happy to share his positive experiences with Cubase and Dorico, he would never say anything negative in public about any other product. In short, he's a (much!) better man than me.


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## youngpokie

Daniel S. said:


> I've had the great pleasure and privilege of getting to know Alan Silvestri personally, and I can tell you that he doesn't have a disparaging bone in his body. He is an absolute gentleman and while he's very happy to share his positive experiences with Cubase and Dorico, he would never say anything negative in public about any other product. In short, he's a (much!) better man than me.


That's very good to know, thank you!


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## sinkd

Daniel S. said:


> There will be lots more information available about Dorico for iPad later today, including on the Dorico blog, which will include more information about why we have decided to use subscription pricing for this new app.
> 
> A short summary: Apple don't provide sufficiently flexible business models for selling software on the App Store to make it possible to follow the same model that we use for Dorico on the desktop, and any attempt to work around that (using things like bundles at discounted prices when you release the next major version etc.) have a poor user experience. So in order to strike a balance between making it possible to try the app for free, make it easy for users to stay up-to-date, and to hopefully deliver some revenue to allow us to continue to develop the app, we opted for an optional and inexpensive subscription option.
> 
> If you don't subscribe, Dorico is still a very functional app: the only features that are not included are the ability to write for ensembles up to 12 players, graphical editing in Engrave mode, the Notation Options dialog, and support for third-party Audio Units. Otherwise it is exactly the same app whether you subscribe or not. And we have priced the subscription fairly: the functionality of Dorico for iPad actually exceeds that of Dorico Elements, which has a $99 price tag. Subscribing to Dorico for iPad for a whole year costs $40 (or you can pay monthly, in which case a year's subscription will cost you $48), which is a very reasonable price for an app that delivers this much functionality.
> 
> Finally, we will not be introducing subscription pricing for Dorico 4. We will continue to sell and distribute the desktop versions of the app in the same way as before.


Daniel,

Thanks for chiming in here on VI-Control. The ipad app looks like it will be a great tool for my students and a perfect introduction to Dorico desktop. Well done!


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## sinkd

Bollen said:


> I can't even begin to put into words my disappointment with this "announcement". Although it makes perfect business sense to make such an application, now was not the time!
> The 1st thing should've been to fix the awful bugs their "Pro" software still has:
> (just at the top of my head)
> - You still can't select individual notes when 3 out 4 times it selects everything around it (slurs, dynamics, other notes, etc)
> - The Play window is utterly awful and nothing works as standard i.e. scrolling works the opposite of every other window, you can't scroll the piano roll, you can't have more than one controller lane, you can't edit velocity without selecting the note first, etc, etc, etc.
> - Overrides are still buggy and leaves all sorts of spikes behind.
> - There are still all sorts of collisions between objects.
> 
> I could go on and on... But more importantly what is the point of this App? Anybody that really needs an iPad music program will already have either Notion or Staffpad. In my case this app doesn't work on any of my iPads (all too old), but the Staffpad reader works just fine on all of them.
> 
> A reader I could have understood, this is just wasted Dev time.


Just responding to let those that read about your difficulties with Dorico (which seem to be mostly because you want it to be a DAW) know that others are having a much better experience. After using Finale for nearly thirty years, I am really pleased I made the switch.


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## sinkd

Daniel S. said:


> I don't think the scare quotes around the word "announcement" make much sense – it is certainly an announcement, like it or not!
> 
> Claude, your feelings about Play mode in Dorico on the desktop are legendary. But if you have the opportunity to take a look at Dorico for iPad, I hope you will take it. We have rebuilt Play mode and the key editor for Dorico for iPad, and these rebuilt components will form the basis of what you will see in Dorico 4 later in the year. The version included with Dorico for iPad doesn't yet include MIDI CC editors, or the other special editors (dynamics, tempo, etc.) that are included in the desktop version, but these will all be added. And I really do find that being able to see this data synced with the notation in Write mode is really useful.
> 
> As for what the point of the app is: Notion and StaffPad are great, capable apps. But Sibelius and Finale are capable apps, so what is the point of Dorico on the desktop, then? Is Dorico itself just "wasted dev time"? Tens of thousands of Sibelius and Finale users have switched to Dorico. Why wouldn't Notion or StaffPad users take a look at Dorico for iPad? Both David MacDonald in his review for Scoring Notes, and Robby Burns in his first impressions on his blog, say that they find inputting and editing music faster in Dorico for iPad than in StaffPad. OK, the music in Dorico isn't going to sound as good as it does in StaffPad, but that's not the only reason to write music notation.
> 
> So let's try not to rush to judgement. We are working as hard as ever on Dorico 4. There are lots of useful features in development that are not part of Dorico for iPad. Add the revamped Play mode and Key Editor, together with the on-screen instruments, the UI/UX improvements, the new Hub, etc. from Dorico for iPad to the new features we've been working on, and I don't think you will look at Dorico 4 and say that it is "wasted dev time".


Daniel,

Your patience with Claude is actually what is "legendary."


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## sinkd

Jett Hitt said:


> Dorico doesn't really offer me anything more because you didn't really bring anything new to the table. Playback was the obvious Achilles heel of both Finale and Sibelius, and you didn't even address it.


Nothing new to the table? Are we using the same software? The tempo control in playback is alone worth the switch for me.


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## Toecutter

youngpokie said:


> I don't know if she made those anti-Dorico comments before during or after her Sibelius endorsement thingy, but it's very uncool.


Those were from her last video, it's in the comments section. I don't think they were ill-intended but it really got me curious if she actually has any clue of what she's talking about regarding Dorico. I've been watching a lot of John Barron videos while I test the app, you know, actually giving a chance to Dorico and getting to know how it works compared to Finale and nope, there's not one feature missing in Dorico preventing it to be used in a "professional film production". It's quite the opposite... Finale is showing its age and can't do a lot of things that Dorico can. Like A LOT.

Can't blame people for getting stuck in a workflow loop after decades of using a program, I understand, but as a professional and online persona, she needs to inform herself better before spreading misinformation. I'm a fan, follower and big supporter of her work but I can't agree with her in this one. I actually asked an orchestrator friend that worked on some pretty huge franchises (he's also a Finale zombie) and he said his team is using Dorico in a couple of HBO Max and Disney+ productions. So yea... not sure what's missing?


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## Daniel S.

sinkd said:


> Your patience with Claude is actually what is "legendary."


No, let's be fair. I think Claude is absolutely right that the current editing experience in Play mode in Dorico for macOS and Windows is sub-par. Certainly if you're used to the purring kitten of Cubase's editors, Dorico seems very clunky in its current form. But I think we have made great strides towards improving the workflow with Dorico for iPad, and those changes will also bring improvement to the desktop version in the next major version.


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## dcoscina

youngpokie said:


> I don't know if she made those anti-Dorico comments before during or after her Sibelius endorsement thingy, but it's very uncool. I hope Alan Silverstri doesn't disparage competition while endorsing Dorico.


he never said anything that I could see about the competition. but he's older-gen and less likely to put his foot in his mouth. Also, Alan is just a classy guy in general.


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## dcoscina

Toecutter said:


> Those were from her last video, it's in the comments section. I don't think they were ill-intended but it really got me curious if she actually has any clue of what she's talking about regarding Dorico. I've been watching a lot of John Barron videos while I test the app, you know, actually giving a chance to Dorico and getting to know how it works compared to Finale and nope, there's not one feature missing in Dorico preventing it to be used in a "professional film production". It's quite the opposite... Finale is showing its age and can't do a lot of things that Dorico can. Like A LOT.
> 
> Can't blame people for getting stuck in a workflow loop after decades of using a program, I understand, but as a professional and online persona, she needs to inform herself better before spreading misinformation. I'm a fan, follower and big supporter of her work but I can't agree with her in this one. I actually asked an orchestrator friend that worked on some pretty huge franchises (he's also a Finale zombie) and he said his team is using Dorico in a couple of HBO Max and Disney+ productions. So yea... not sure what's missing?


I think you definitely have a point. I've used Sibelius for over a decade but there were frustrating things about it. Dorico solves a lot of those issues (the way you can apply dynamics to an entire section using the popover is AMAZING and quick as hell). 

Keep in mind Finale and Sibelius are used as engraving tools in LA, not composing tools per se. Both Omni Music Publishing and Chris Siddall both use Sibelius. In some regards, I still find it a bit more immediate, while in others, it's painfully stunted. For composing, Dorico is the clear winner. It handles third party VSTs in a way Sibelius never will catch up to. It's wonderful for finished scores when you need to provide a condensed copy to the conductor of a concert piece (it automatically indicates changes in instrumentation and players per staff which is a godsend- and if you make changes to a part, it's automatically updated unlike Sibelius where you have to remember to update the part as well). 

It's common knowledge that every educator is telling students to become proficient at Dorico as that will be the industry standard moving forward. For selfish reasons, I long for an integrated playback orchestra like StaffPad rather than faffing with third-party libraries and presets... but that's a very niche area and there are enough templates for a variety of libraries like BBC, VSL, etc so use with Dorico. I'd just love to compose directly to notation without ever having to export to a DAW if I can avoid it. It's been my dream since the mid-90s.... StaffPad was remarkable because it made huge strides towards that (tho, we should credit Jack Jarret RIP because that was his vision for Notion back in 2005).


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## dcoscina

I would also like to say "thank you" to Daniel for coming on this forum and taking our questions, some of which are a little more heated than others, with patience and professionalism.


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## Jett Hitt

dcoscina said:


> It's common knowledge that every educator is telling students to become proficient at Dorico as that will be the industry standard moving forward. For selfish reasons, I long for an integrated playback orchestra like StaffPad rather than faffing with third-party libraries and presets... but that's a very niche area and there are enough templates for a variety of libraries like BBC, VSL, etc so use with Dorico. I'd just love to compose directly to notation without ever having to export to a DAW if I can avoid it. It's been my dream since the mid-90s.... StaffPad was remarkable because it made huge strides towards that (tho, we should credit Jack Jarret RIP because that was his vision for Notion back in 2005).


^This^

David and I share exactly the same desires in a notation program. He's just a lot more tactful than I am. I am not sure that I agree that it is a niche market, though.


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## dylanmixer

I've communicated with @Daniel S. on the Steinberg Forums and he is always a stand up, hands on kind of guy. Responds to almost every issue and feedback post personally (unlike another Steinberg team). Welcome to VI-Control Daniel, and thanks for answering our questions!


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## Toecutter

dcoscina said:


> I think you definitely have a point. I've used Sibelius for over a decade but there were frustrating things about it. Dorico solves a lot of those issues (the way you can apply dynamics to an entire section using the popover is AMAZING and quick as hell).


I'm confused, didn't you say in the Sibelius thread that Dorico doesn't do some basic things, or else it's time-consuming and clumsy? I don't agree, you should try Finale to see what clumsy and time-consuming actually is... but I'm really curious to know why the two conflicting opinions, in this thread Dorico is amazing, there it lacks basic stuff, is time-consuming and clumsy 



dcoscina said:


> Keep in mind Finale and Sibelius are used as engraving tools in LA, not composing tools per se.


Dorico is 5 years old. Finale and Sibelius date back to the late 80s early 90s... it will take time until we see Dorico having the same presence as the others, but the foundation is set. It's a monster tool for engraving, publishing and copying. Not only composing. What is used where is not really a selling point anymore, people still think Pro Tools is industry standard when the Billie Eilishes of the world are producing hit records in their bedrooms with Logic. I'm only interested in things that can make my workflow less tedious and atm it seems to be Dorico. I just don't think it's fair to drop blank statements and spread misinformation.


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## dcoscina

Toecutter said:


> I'm confused, didn't you say in the Sibelius thread that Dorico doesn't do some basic things, or else it's time-consuming and clumsy? I don't agree, you should try Finale to see what clumsy and time-consuming actually is... but I'm really curious to know why the two conflicting opinions, in this thread Dorico is amazing, there it lacks basic stuff, is time-consuming and clumsy
> 
> 
> Dorico is 5 years old. Finale and Sibelius date back to the late 80s early 90s... it will take time until we see Dorico having the same presence as the others, but the foundation is set. It's a monster tool for engraving, publishing and copying. Not only composing. What is used where is not really a selling point anymore, people still think Pro Tools is industry standard when the Billie Eilishes of the world are producing hit records in their bedrooms with Logic. I'm only interested in things that can make my workflow less tedious and atm it seems to be Dorico. I just don't think it's fair to drop blank statements and spread misinformation.


I haven't been in both seriously since early this year where I was finishing a concert work that needed to be submitted to a Call for Scores. I recall there were things that Dorico didn't do or as well as Sibelius so, at that time, I had to use Sibelius to do the engraving for the sake of speed due to the looming deadline. 

Something like "play on second repeat" only is not currently a feature in Dorico. It's been in Sibelius for a while now. It might seem small to you, but it's kinda important when you are writing charts. Some of the score formatting features, while there, I found more time-consuming to use compared to Sibelius where you just drag staves to adjust. 

BTW- are you using Dorico for composing or engraving? for composing, I prefer it to Sibelius, though, I love Sibelius' ability to do things like Retrograde, Inversion, and save to a note pad with ideas/phrases/themes I might come up with. I hope the Dorico team adds these cool features in some way/shape/form.

additionally, hiding notes, or stems or bars or whatever is far easier on Sibelius. for aleatoric sections, where one needs more nontraditional notation, I just select the bar, and then I press the Hide function. Gone! With Dorico it is also possible but it takes more clicks and keystrokes to accomplish the same thing. And sometimes, in the bottom section/inspector, I have to click a couple of times before it will do what I need it to do. Modernist writing is not super easy (as of yet) on Dorico I find. 

But before you apply some odd form of staw man here, let me be clear: I LOVE DORICO. What it doesn't do or not as well in my experience compared to Sibelius is transient. I expect these things will be continually developed and refined by Daniel and his team. I have a lot of faith in their abilities. Whereas, I see Sibelius as a dead end.


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## Jett Hitt

dcoscina said:


> Whereas, I see Sibelius as a dead end.


I completely quit Sibelius the day they canned @Daniel S. and team. I only ever used it because I was forced to back in the day when the geniuses at Make Music failed to support OSX. I was a professor with a lab full of brand new Macs with OSX installed, and I had to switch the entire school of music to Sibelius because I couldn't run Finale. I think that the writing has been on the wall for Sibelius since Daniel left. And Finale? They should be king of the world, and instead, they are a dinosaur sitting on 30 years of antiquated code.


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## dcoscina

There is little debate over which program is better to compose on. Dorico all the way. Some of the engraving things I previously mentioned, I feel will be improved or added where applicable.


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## ALittleNightMusic

Even for composing, Sibelius had some cool features (from what I remember - I only had the First version, and then when I tried to install the latest, it would crash on startup, so I gave up and went with Dorico) - I remember liking the "check parallel octaves & fifths" option. Handy for somebody like me who doesn't use notation that often. I have no doubt Dorico will continue to add cool features though - I personally love the little rhythmic markings above bars to help me track what I'm doing.


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## mducharme

I compose in Dorico and am pretty happy with it. The main thing I would like to see improved, and this is where Sibelius is a bit better, is the collision avoidance functionality. I haven't tested yet to see if this is improved at all in the iPad version. If there is a rehearsal marker in a part that collides with a dynamic above, Dorico will add extra spacing between those two staves so that those do not collide. In Sibelius, moving the dynamic to get rid of this collision would cause the space between the two staves to return to normal, but in Dorico, addressing this leaves the extra space between the staves, which now looks quite strange as there is extra space between two staves for no apparent reason.

When this first happened to me, I thought, OK, I'll just do a manual staff spacing adjustment to move them closer together, which then left too much space between that staff and the one below on the page, so I would have to move all staves below up a tiny bit, so I did that one by one until it looked OK. The secondary issue occurred when I changed one note in write mode, I would lose the manual staff spacing adjustments for that entire staff in the part and had to redo it. It wouldn't be so bad if that piece were like most where I write it and then give it to the ensemble, but unfortunately this piece was part of a research project in collaboration with the ensemble and so it involved a lot of back and forth where experiments would be done and the piece would be revised based on that. I wound up having to reformat the parts 5-10 times over at the end of the day.

The good news is that I discovered a way to avoid most of that frustration, and that is to disable collision avoidance in parts. By allowing the collisions to happen, I can fix most of them by moving the colliding items without having to adjust the staff spacing. In places where I do have to adjust the staff spacing, I normally have to do this only for one staff, or in this case I can take advantage of the key modifiers that can shift the remaining staves down the page proportionally just by moving the one. The result is *much* less work than if collision avoidance was enabled.

It would, of course, be even better if I could leave the collision avoidance enabled and the extra spacing between staves would be removed when the collision was fixed (as was the case in Sibelius). I understand there are some technical issues with casting off decisions are not trivial to solve, but I would hope to see some improvement in this area. Dorico saves me so much time in other ways that at least I can live with the current behavior with collision avoidance turned off.


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## Nimrod7

ALittleNightMusic said:


> I tried to install the latest, it would crash on startup,


I had the same, and apparently is scanning for VST / AU's in the background (without any indication what it's doing on the splash screen. 
It took around 20 restarts / crashes (with amount of plugins installed), to go through, and now it's starting just fine. 

Might be the same thing.


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## A.Dern

Not really sure what the commotion is all about again but I just want to clarify that at no point did I make any disparaging comments about Dorico. I only hear good things about it - including from Andres who made a couple of great Dorico videos on his channel - but a lot of orchestrators I've talked to before making this video say it still needs a few updates before it does everything they need as everyday power users (which isn't to say that it can't be fully used already by a wide variety of productions). But they definitely appreciate that it's not stuck in old code as their current notation software. Plus it seems to focus a lot on being a good composition tool whereas in LA especially, Finale and Sibelius are mainly used as engraving tools, not composition tools. On top of that, as I've mentioned in the video and the comment section, a lot of experienced orchestrators have a plethora of templates and hardware tools going on that are specifically programmed for the notation software they are using - similar to our DAW templates. They are not as inclined to completely switch up their entire proven workflow for a new software. If anything, it'll be the new generation of orchestrators that may cause a switch entirely but that's not gonna happen tomorrow. For now, in my video I wanted to cover what is currently being used the most - as Andres rightfully says, in LA that is about 50% Finale and 50% Sibelius with very few Dorico outliers. And while I am working with Avid on occasion, they did not sponsor this video, and both Andres and I mention that we initially came from Finale and switched during college times long before we had any relationship with Avid (in fact long before Avid even owned Sibelius). Rest assured that my videos are well-researched, especially when they cover a job that isn't mine (for example the agents, managers, lawyers, publicists video). I'm not a full-time orchestrator so before saying anything in my videos about their job, you can be sure I ask around a lot to verify my information and bring on guests. And while I may sometimes favor a specific software, I'll always make sure to be as truthful as possible in my videos. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.


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## A.Dern

@Toecutter Since you've mentioned Alan Silvestri: While I'm sure he truly loves Dorico and sketches out his ideas in it, his music usually goes through JoAnn Kane Music Services here in LA. Where they then use Sibelius and/or Finale to notate the sheet music. So what ends up in front of the orchestra is still prepared in either Sibelius or Finale. Which isn't to say that this is the future but it takes time and resources for a big music prep house to switch all the employees and rigs to a new workflow.


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## Toecutter

A.Dern said:


> @Toecutter Since you've mentioned Alan Silvestri: While I'm sure he truly loves Dorico and sketches out his ideas in it, his music usually goes through JoAnn Kane Music Services here in LA. Where they then use Sibelius and/or Finale to notate the sheet music. So what ends up in front of the orchestra is still prepared in either Sibelius or Finale. Which isn't to say that this is the future but it takes time and resources for a big music prep house to switch all the employees and rigs to a new workflow.


Thanks Anne! Yea it definitely takes time to switch, what I still don't understand is *what* is actually missing when orchestrators say it "still needs a few updates before it does everything they need as everyday power users". It would be very educational if you could ask them and do a follow-up post or video on the missing features. As a new Dorico user that thought it could do it all, I would love to know what specific things pro orchestrators are missing for prep work. I'm sure the Dorico team could learn a lot from the feedback and improve Dorico, in case something is indeed missing. What I'm seeing, as I learn Dorico coming from Finale, is how they have different approaches for the same goals. Dorico, hands down, has the best workflow once I "let go" of old habits.


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## A.Dern

Toecutter said:


> Thanks Anne! Yea it definitely takes time to switch, what I still don't understand is *what* is actually missing when orchestrators say it "still needs a few updates before it does everything they need as everyday power users". It would be very educational if you could ask them and do a follow-up post or video on the missing features. As a new Dorico user that thought it could do it all, I would love to know what specific things pro orchestrators are missing for prep work. I'm sure the Dorico team could learn a lot from the feedback and improve Dorico, in case something is indeed missing. What I'm seeing, as I learn Dorico coming from Finale, is how they have different approaches for the same goals. Dorico, hands down, has the best workflow once I "let go" of old habits.


I'll be working with Andres again soon for "The Claus Family 2" so then I can ask him for more details. Meanwhile he made this amazing video about scoring in Dorico a year ago where he goes into all the things he loves and where he feels the software was still lacking compared to its competitors. I believe the verdict was that it's superior in its composition tools, especially when handling picture and playback, but not as great when it comes to engraving (which is the majority of the orchestrator's job). Keep in mind that this is already a year old so some of this stuff may already have been fixed. I'll check with him when I see him later this month.


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## yiph2

Agree with Anne/Andres, engraving with Dorico is a huge pain in the ass. What takes something 1 second on Sibelius might take many clicks on Dorico which is not ideal


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## Daniel S.

yiph2 said:


> What takes something 1 second on Sibelius might take many clicks on Dorico which is not ideal


By all means provide some examples. It's possible you might be missing a quicker way, or it's possible that you have identified some things that we could improve.


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## Robin

A.Dern said:


> I'll be working with Andres again soon for "The Claus Family 2" so then I can ask him for more details. Meanwhile he made this amazing video about scoring in Dorico a year ago where he goes into all the things he loves and where he feels the software was still lacking compared to its competitors. I believe the verdict was that it's superior in its composition tools, especially when handling picture and playback, but not as great when it comes to engraving (which is the majority of the orchestrator's job). Keep in mind that this is already a year old so some of this stuff may already have been fixed. I'll check with him when I see him later this month.



I think most of the issues that he points out in the video have already been discussed in the comment section of that video pointing out a few usability shortcuts that he was missing (like Insert mode, creating Dynamics by invoking the caret at the desired point).


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## A.Dern

Andres also made this really cool video btw about using Expression maps with Dorico and CineWinds: 

Just to counterwork this strange sentiment that we somehow secretly despise Dorico because we didn't mention it at all in our Orchestrator video series... For what it's worth, I'm not a Dorico user so I personally have no opinions on the software. But it looks really neat from what I'm seeing Andres demonstrate.


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## Daniel S.

A.Dern said:


> Meanwhile he made this amazing video about scoring in Dorico a year ago where he goes into all the things he loves and where he feels the software was still lacking compared to its competitors.


A number of the things that Andrés identifies as problems in Dorico in his video are not problems with the software itself, but rather not finding the best workflow... which of course you could read as a problem with the software in its own way – however, I think it's important to recognise that Dorico's workflows are no more or less obvious or "intuitive" (a term I don't like to use in connection with sophisticated software) than the workflows in Sibelius or Finale. They are merely different, and hence unfamiliar to users of long-standing in other software. And they always at least have a musical reason behind them.

The first area Andrés struggles with is working with ties. Dorico treats tied notes as a single entity for good reasons: it allows them to be freely notated as you shift music, rebar or apply a new meter; it ensures you can never accidentally change the pitch of part of a tied note or change its accidental midway through; it ensures you have a consistent approach to showing articulations on that note; and it reflects how that note is heard in the music when it is played.

However, because you cannot select individual tied noteheads in Write mode, it does require you to think a bit differently about how you work with them. It's easy to get into the mindset that Dorico only creates things at the position of the selection, but in fact the caret takes precedence: if you have something selected and the caret is visible, when you create something via the popover or using the mouse, it will be created at the caret position. So if you want to add a dynamic in the middle of a tie, show the caret there (double-click on a blank part of the bar, rather than on the notehead itself, at the right rhythmic position, and the caret will appear there), then invoke the popover or click the item you want from the panel.

To be clear: you never need to break a tie, as Andrés asserts.

The second area Andrés struggles with is inserting time signatures. When you insert a time signature, Dorico will not move any subsequent time signatures, which means that if you have (say) a 2/4 bar followed by a 4/4 bar, and you replace the 2/4 time signature with a 3/4 time signature, you will see a 3/4 time signature but the bar will still have two beats. This is to avoid you having unpredictable knock-on effects later in the flow.

However, it's trivially simple to change this: simply engage Insert mode (hit *I*) before you add the new time signature, and that will instruct Dorico that in fact you do want it to shift all the subsequent time signatures along. It will ensure that the time signature you create finishes with a complete bar of the new time signature, shunting along the next time signature by whatever rhythmic value is required to create a complete bar.

It's also trivially possible to insert or remove time anywhere using the *Shift*+*B* popover: you can type e.g. *+2q* to add two quarter notes of time globally across all instruments at that position in the flow.

Andrés is, however, right that Dorico does not currently provide an option to automatically create a restorative time signature (or clef or whatever) at the end of the selection when adding a new one.

To be clear: it is easy to add time, and to add time signatures in such a way that you have a complete bar at the end of the new section. Andrés's assertion that Dorico doesn't handle time signatures well is completely at odds with the fact that Dorico in fact has the most sophisticated support for time signatures (with open meter, alternating time signatures, additive time signatures, etc. all having native support) of any notation software.

Incidentally, it looks like Andrés was using Dorico Pro 2 at the time he made his video in June 2020, by which time it was two whole versions out of date (Dorico was on version 3.5 by this time, which happens to still be the same major version at the time I am writing this).

Nevertheless, of course this kind of feedback is very valuable. It would be a good idea, though, when you run into something that seems awkward, difficult or time-consuming to reach out to other users or indeed to us. I'm a very easy man to find, and I'm always happy to engage with individual users and to help solve their problems. At the very least it is additional data about which concepts and features in Dorico need to be communicated more clearly.


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## Daniel S.

A.Dern said:


> Since you've mentioned Alan Silvestri: While I'm sure he truly loves Dorico and sketches out his ideas in it, his music usually goes through JoAnn Kane Music Services here in LA. Where they then use Sibelius and/or Finale to notate the sheet music. So what ends up in front of the orchestra is still prepared in either Sibelius or Finale. Which isn't to say that this is the future but it takes time and resources for a big music prep house to switch all the employees and rigs to a new workflow.


JKMS do of course do most of their work in Finale and Sibelius, and Al typically works with Mark Graham, who does indeed currently take Al's detailed 18-staff sketches from Dorico into Finale because that is the software that he is personally most familiar with, but JKMS have done (and so far as I know continue to do) a number of jobs in Dorico.


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## Toecutter

yiph2 said:


> Agree with Anne/Andres, engraving with Dorico is a huge pain in the ass. What takes something 1 second on Sibelius might take many clicks on Dorico which is not ideal









I got nothing... can you give some examples?


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## yiph2

Toecutter said:


> I got nothing... can you give some examples?


Um, I don't have Dorico anymore so unfortunately I can't comment on it anymore. I only remember certain things take way longer than it should


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## Robin

yiph2 said:


> Um, I don't have Dorico anymore so unfortunately I can't comment on it anymore. I only remember certain things take way longer than it should


Well done! Thank god you got your unsubstantial contempt off your chest in this forum. What would we have done without it?


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## yiph2

Robin said:


> Well done! Thank god you got your unsubstantial contempt off your chest in this forum. What would we have done without it?


He asked me for examples and I forgot (probably something about moving stuff around) and don't have the software... What's the big deal?? I know you use Dorico but I (as well as many people) find a lot of things that could have improved which is the reason why I am not using Dorico anymore. 

Now that I've thought about it, some annoying things would include (excluding the stuff from Andres' video) adding/deleting from the players/instruments thing which is quite annoying, moving different stuff around in the engraving tab etc.

Dorico however looks promising and I'll probably use it again after a few updates when it is more polished


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## dcoscina

yiph2 said:


> He asked me for examples and I forgot (probably something about moving stuff around) and don't have the software... What's the big deal?? I know you use Dorico but I (as well as many people) find a lot of things that could have improved which is the reason why I am not using Dorico anymore.
> 
> Now that I've thought about it, some annoying things would include (excluding the stuff from Andres' video) adding/deleting from the players/instruments thing which is quite annoying, moving different stuff around in the engraving tab etc.
> 
> Dorico however looks promising and I'll probably use it again after a few updates when it is more polished


I agree to an extent. I was finishing a work for orchestra a few months back and ultimately ended up doing it in Sibelius even though there were things I preferred from Dorico. Handling of players and instrument changes at the time seemed easier with Sibelius. But for new works (the previous one was an XML import from Staffpad) I prefer the player set up in Dorico, especially when having to do a condensed score for submission. Dorico automatically indicates instrument and even changes from solo to unison. And it’s dynamic so there’s not the need to double check parts.

changing note lengths in Sibelius is endlessly frustrating as well. Dorico is much more flexible in this regard. But these are more composition-based observations not engraving ones.


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## mducharme

Some thoughts about the new Play mode in in the iPad version of Dorico (some of this is a copy and paste from a similar post I made on the Dorico forum):

I must say I’m pretty thrilled with the improvements in Play Mode in the iPad version. As a user of both Cubase and Dorico I am really happy with how Dorico has started to more closely mimic parts of the Cubase UI to do with Play Mode and the Mixer.

The new Mixer design is *much* nicer, really close to the way the Cubase mixer is, with seemingly the same fader graphic and everything. The narrower mixer channels cut down on horizontal scrolling in large scores. Working in the mixer in the Dorico desktop version was always a bit frustrating, but this is so much better now.

The changes in Play mode are especially welcome. The icons for mute and solo beside each track header, in the same spot as the Cubase mute and solo buttons for tracks, is extremely convenient and I missed this feature in Dorico. I also very much like how the MIDI event rectangles now show a preview of the MIDI data that they contain, just like Cubase (a sort of piano roll preview where you see the contour of the line). This is another Cubase feature that can make it easier to tell where you are in the score when working in Play mode. Especially however, I love the new bottom pane where the piano roll can be displayed. This greatly eases working in the piano roll and reduces vertical scrolling significantly. In short, working in Play mode in Dorico iPad feels a lot more like Cubase and other DAW's than the desktop version, and working in Dorico entirely is looking like more of a reality.

I am really looking forward to seeing what is done in the desktop version and how this is enhanced. If they can add the same sort of velocity scaling controls and CC controls as I am accustomed to in Cubase, it will certainly be quite possible to do many projects entirely in Dorico, without being slowed down by an inefficient UI.


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## mducharme

dcoscina said:


> Handling of players and instrument changes at the time seemed easier with Sibelius.


It seems easier with Sibelius until you have a few percussionists and you have to move an instrument from one to another vs. your score because that person is the person who always plays that instrument. It is super easy to miss something, you have to be really careful. I had to do this in Sibelius when revising an orchestral piece and it was really tedious but painstaking work. In Dorico you can take something like a tam-tam and move it to another percussionist just by dragging and dropping it, and the parts update automatically. Sure, I have to update some formatting, but at least I don't have to worry about some music being missing. In Sibelius it would be too easy to accidentally lose some music in this case because I didn't assign it to anybody.

I would say that dealing with instrument changes in Sibelius is easier, but only if you aren't making revisions to the music. If you do make revisions to the music, it is easier to mess things up in Sibelius, whereas Dorico covers you in that regard.


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## dcoscina

mducharme said:


> It seems easier with Sibelius until you have a few percussionists and you have to move an instrument from one to another vs. your score because that person is the person who always plays that instrument. It is super easy to miss something, you have to be really careful. I had to do this in Sibelius when revising an orchestral piece and it was really tedious but painstaking work. In Dorico you can take something like a tam-tam and move it to another percussionist just by dragging and dropping it, and the parts update automatically. Sure, I have to update some formatting, but at least I don't have to worry about some music being missing. In Sibelius it would be too easy to accidentally lose some music in this case because I didn't assign it to anybody.
> 
> I would say that dealing with instrument changes in Sibelius is easier, but only if you aren't making revisions to the music. If you do make revisions to the music, it is easier to mess things up in Sibelius, whereas Dorico covers you in that regard.


Yes totally agreed and with any new works I compose it’s in Dorico.


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## sinkd

I have never mastered Sibelius, but I cannot imagine how instrument switching could be easier than how Dorico handles it. Just add the instrument to a player (like C.A. in the oboe 2 part) switch over to galley view and put in the notes.


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## dcoscina

sinkd said:


> I have never mastered Sibelius, but I cannot imagine how instrument switching could be easier than how Dorico handles it. Just add the instrument to a player (like C.A. in the oboe 2 part) switch over to galley view and put in the notes.


Yes it’s ridiculously easy and makes so much sense. I think at the time I was prepping a concert work a few months back that wasn’t the issue I had- I remember giving it a good go in Dorico first but eventually moved to Sibelius…I wouldn’t do that again however.


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## Daniel S.

I just wanted to let everybody know in this thread (and especially folks like @Jett Hitt, who were particularly vociferous about the limit of 12 players for users who choose to subscribe to Dorico for iPad) that we have today released a new update for Dorico for iPad, version 1.1, that among many other minor fixes and improvements, removes the 12-player limit, so you can work with projects with any number of players, subject to the RAM limitations of your iPad. More details here:









Dorico for iPad 1.1 now available: write for any number of players with subscription – Dorico


Following hot on the heels of the initial release of Dorico for iPad less than two weeks ago, we’re pleased to announce that an initial update to version 1.1 is now available in the App Store. You may have heard my most recent appearance on the Scoring Notes podcast this past weekend in which...




blog.dorico.com


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## emasters

Daniel S. said:


> removes the 12-player limit, so you can work with projects with any number of players, subject to the RAM limitations of your iPad


Thank you, Daniel - appreciate the quick change with this. Consider me a subscriber.


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## Markrs

Daniel S. said:


> I just wanted to let everybody know in this thread (and especially folks like @Jett Hitt, who were particularly vociferous about the limit of 12 players for users who choose to subscribe to Dorico for iPad) that we have today released a new update for Dorico for iPad, version 1.1, that among many other minor fixes and improvements, removes the 12-player limit, so you can work with projects with any number of players, subject to the RAM limitations of your iPad. More details here:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dorico for iPad 1.1 now available: write for any number of players with subscription – Dorico
> 
> 
> Following hot on the heels of the initial release of Dorico for iPad less than two weeks ago, we’re pleased to announce that an initial update to version 1.1 is now available in the App Store. You may have heard my most recent appearance on the Scoring Notes podcast this past weekend in which...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> blog.dorico.com


Wow! This is fantastic news. Thank you Daniel!


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## dcoscina

Daniel S. said:


> I just wanted to let everybody know in this thread (and especially folks like @Jett Hitt, who were particularly vociferous about the limit of 12 players for users who choose to subscribe to Dorico for iPad) that we have today released a new update for Dorico for iPad, version 1.1, that among many other minor fixes and improvements, removes the 12-player limit, so you can work with projects with any number of players, subject to the RAM limitations of your iPad. More details here:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dorico for iPad 1.1 now available: write for any number of players with subscription – Dorico
> 
> 
> Following hot on the heels of the initial release of Dorico for iPad less than two weeks ago, we’re pleased to announce that an initial update to version 1.1 is now available in the App Store. You may have heard my most recent appearance on the Scoring Notes podcast this past weekend in which...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> blog.dorico.com


I caught this on YouTube late last night. Great response Daniel! Love how quick you were to change that! I opened up a massive orchestra template on my iPad today and I could swear I heard glorious choir when the 12 stave limit was no longer there. LOL. 

Looking forward to Dorico 4 whenever it drops as well.


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## Starsprinkler

Toecutter said:


> @Daniel S. Is there something preventing Steinberg to include a one-time payment option? Other apps do that... like an *in-app purchase for a perpetual license*. You are just offering another option to another type of customer  I'd be totally in if that was the case.





Daniel S. said:


> No, there's no technical reason why we couldn't do this, but it's not clear to me what the price for such an option should be. The same as subscribing for two years, maybe? Three? Five? Would you really want to plunk that down in one go in the hopes that we would continue to develop the app in the way that you would feel pays back your investment?


A perpetual license for the price of a 2 year subscription sounds very reasonable to me.

Obviously the price for a permanent license must be higher than a 1 year sub... but since updating to a newer major version is not possible, but a full new perpetual license must be bought for a new major version, paying the same as for 3 years would be clearly too much. So, the same as 2 years sub (=$79.99 currently), seems to be well balanced to me. The user would then have a choice of which alternative he/she finds most favorable. Subscription refusers would not be excluded.

A problem would be though if a user buys a perpetual license close to the release of a new major version (and needs to buy a full license again almost direcly to get up to date - that could get some angry customers). Could that be handled in some way (e.g. lowering price close to release and a discount code for the next major version...)? Food for thought...

On the other hand, maybe you are not planning to have such distinct major version releases for the iPad version, as you have for the desktop version, but more of gradual releases suited for the subscription model?


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## Daniel S.

Our plan is to continually update the existing Dorico app rather than to eventually release a separate "Dorico 2" app, so any "lifetime" option really would be for life. That makes it quite difficult to price, and I think that even pricing it equivalent to two years' subscription wouldn't be sufficient.


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## Starsprinkler

Aha, it's supposed to be an infinite app, there's no plan for a separate version 2 app. Yes, that sounds very logical with regard to the subscription model.

Then I agree, it's difficult (or impossible) to set a price. Nobody knows how long it will be developed (and the user don't know how long he/she needs the app), and infinite perpetual licenses takes away the economic incentive to actually continue developing it.

The 2-year-price suggestion was assuming it would go out-of-date with a new major version, but it will not. It will be updated "forever". I agree then that a 2-year-price is not enough. And also, for reasons stated above, that it's very difficult to sell this as anything else than as a subscription, at all.


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## DCPImages

I don't buy the arguments about having to be subscription. Steinberg could (and probably will) monetise the app further by adding instruments and features. Moreover, Steinberg's very own Cubasis app is not subscription - when they want to make a major upgrade, they simply add Cubasis 2, 3 etc for an extra fee.


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## Starsprinkler

Hmmmm.... on the other hand, it would be possible to release a _separate _Dorico app with a perpetual license model (that is _not _updated for "lifetime", but just within the lifespan of that major version).

So you would then have:
A) current: a subscription Dorico app, always updated.
B) new: a perpetual Dorico app, only maintained until there's a new major version that's released.

If the apps are separated like that, a perpetual license would be easier to price, since it will not any longer mean infinite updates. Such a license would only be valid for that particular major version, not future versions. Also, the subscription app would not be affected by major releases for the perpetual apps.


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## ALittleNightMusic

Nice to read in the blog that further Apple Pencil support is high on your list!


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## Antkn33

What are the options for sound sources. I don’t see much for orchestral instruments in the App Store.


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## Daniel S.

Just popping back in to say that this past week we released another minor update to Dorico for iPad (and a couple of days later a little hotfix to sort out a couple of issues arising), version 1.2. The main news for this update is that it adds support for iPadOS 15, but there are a couple of other nice improvements as well:









Dorico for iPad 1.2 released, with kinetic scrolling, better Bluetooth MIDI, and more – Dorico


We’re pleased to announce the immediate availability of a second update to Dorico for iPad, bringing it to version 1.2. Firstly, this update is compatible with the forthcoming iPadOS 15 update: if you’ve been running the iPadOS 15 Public Beta, you may have experienced some issues with the...




blog.dorico.com


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## RSK

Antkn33 said:


> What are the options for sound sources. I don’t see much for orchestral instruments in the App Store.


I’d like to know this myself. Noteperformer would be sufficient.


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## Markrs

Dorico for iOS now allows for a Lifetime licence to be purchased!

Introducing the Lifetime Unlock in-app purchase​For those people, we are pleased to announce that as of Dorico for iPad 2.3, we have introduced a new one-off in-app purchase that will unlock all of the subscription-only functionality in Dorico for iPad, with a regular price of $119.99 US or equivalent in your local App Store.

If you subscribe to Dorico for iPad via the annual subscription, you will pay $39.99 per year (or equivalent), so this one-off purchase is priced the same as subscribing for three years – but you will not only get access to all of the current subscription-only features, but also all future subscription-only features.

The Dorico for iPad Lifetime Unlock in-app purchase also makes use of Apple’s Family Sharing feature, so any other iPads in your family group will benefit from a single purchase.

*We expect to include the Lifetime Unlock in-app purchase in a forthcoming sales promotion, so you may want to consider delaying your purchase of the Lifetime Unlock until it is available at a lower price than its regular price of $119.99.*









Dorico for iPad 2.3 introduces one-off purchase Lifetime Unlock option – Dorico


In addition to releasing Dorico 4.1 for macOS and Windows, we have today also released an update to Dorico for iPad, bringing it to version 2.3. This brings new enhancements and fixes, including the reinstated dynamics editor in the Key Editor, more flexibility in the velocity editor, and...




blog.dorico.com


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## Daniel S.

We have just discovered that there is also some kind of App Store issue affecting the new Lifetime Unlock in-app purchase, and it's not currently available to buy (though the button appears in the app, if you tap it nothing will happen, and you won't be charged). We're in touch with Apple to ask their assistance to resolve this as quickly as possible. Sorry in the meantime for the inconvenience. I'll provide an update here when the issue is resolved.


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## Nimrod7

In app purchases are so confusing to deal with from coding perspective… good luck with Apple!


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## Nimrod7

@Daniel S. I am wondering if there is an ETA for the fix. Looking forward to get it.


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## Daniel S.

Sorry for not closing the loop: Apple sorted this out on Tuesday this week so you should be able to purchase the Lifetime Unlock option successfully now.

You may still wish to wait a short while as we plan a sale in the relatively near future.


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## Nimrod7

Daniel S. said:


> You may still wish to wait a short while as we plan a sale in the relatively near future.


Thanks for the heads up! Much appreciated!


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