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Dorico: Thoughts?

Articulations should change from arco to pizz but doesn't either on my system.
That sort of playback hasn't been implemented yet, so it won't change. However, as long as you input it correctly, it will change, when the update has been delivered.
 
Thank you for reporting your experience. I was eagerly waiting to see if Dorico was a viable option, but nothing I have seen or read would convince me at this point to invest countless hours into learning the Dorico software. It is really sad. I am still trying to decide if I want to give Overture 5 a try. It isn't the price of the software that stops me, it is the price in hours of effort to learn a new software package. I want to be sure it will be something better than Sibelius for notation and Cubase for performance.
Overture is more basic than Sibelius for notation and more basic than Cubase for sequencing, so it depends on what level you're working at for both of those needs.

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

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

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

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

Have you worked in Overture 5? Despite being a one man effort, it might be the best combination of notation and sequencing if everything works.
 
Importing xml from Logic is a nightmare.
Is there a way to return purchased software?
I want to buy it when it is a stable application.
 
This was my great fear. $279 crossgrade price (way higher than Finale's and Sibelius's crossgrade pricing) for a product that is not ready for prime time. They are starting on the wrong foot.
 
Rather disappointing to hear. As a long time Finale user I was looking forward to a big release so it might prompt MakeMusic to improve Finale and fix some old bugs. I was thinking it might be the only Notation app I'd purchase away from Finale and maybe take it for a test drive. Not really interested in driving on an obstacle course at the moment, so thanks for the head's up Christof .
 
I am eager to hear additional reports. I was actually struck that Daniel S didn't cover triplets in the live presentation. My favorite feature of Finale - the thing that always kept me from switching to Sibelius - was the way it handles tuplets. The way you can take any notes and instantly convert them into tuplets...take three quarter notes, quickly change them to a quarter-note triplet...doesn't work? Make them into a quintuplet with a tie on either end...etc. etc.

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

Also - how does Dorico deal w/ percussion? Is that still beta? Finale's method is cumbersome, difficult to learn, and then ultimately quite powerful. How many features do I have to give up to become a $279 beta tester?
 
In some ways. In others Dorico is already far superior. It all depends on what you want out of it.
Examples? I've used Finale since 1990, so I'm interested to hear how it is more advanced - I'm being honest, not snide.
 
And this is after 4 years of development. The Steinberg folks must be crying in their beer today. And the Dorico team didn't get around to doing anything at all about playback. This summer that was dumped onto the Cubase team to quickly put something, anything, together so that a crippled version of Dorico could be put on the market. My guess is that the Steinberg executives told the Dorico team that if they didn't start bringing in some revenue they would have to pull the plug on the entire project. As much as music is an art to us, it is still a business for the Steinberg folks, and they have dumped millions into Dorico.
 
Examples? I've used Finale since 1990, so I'm interested to hear how it is more advanced - I'm being honest, not snide.

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

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

So I think if you're not that interested in playback, and write lots of piano music, Dorico may already be better.
 
I was looking forward to Dorico, but it's too expensive for me to take a chance on when users are having experiences like this.
 
Have you worked in Overture 5? Despite being a one man effort, it might be the best combination of notation and sequencing if everything works.
Yes I did try it, and it was far too basic in all respects for it to be of any use to me, but that's not to say that with your needs and workflow it won't be useful for you.
 
Steinberg told me (after my rant) that they are working on most features for the next updates.
 
-The documentation is only online and not helpful at all, why not a PDF as well?
-The languages are mixed, I set it to german, but some dialogues are still in english.
-Due to a missing manual I am not able to create a single triplet, and I don't want to go through a Steinberg forum to find out how to create cue notes.These are just examples.
-The playback is a joke, articulations won't change at all (e.g.legato to pizz.).Maybe they do, but without manual it may be hard to find out.
-The App crashes constantly without giving the option to do automatic backup saving.
If it's unusable, I hope you'll get back your money, Christof.
Looking at your list again, the crashes seem like the most important problem to me. The manual is available, but only online right now, the language thing is probably easy to fix, and maybe there's a known bug with the articulations, but I vaguely remember they they said or wrote something about only calling the 8 main articulations for articulations - while the articulations that weren't globally relevant (for all instruments) were called playing styles (or something similar). I did also read something about a new internal version which already had solved some of the quirks in 1.0, so maybe the next version will be out very soon. Again, 1.0 versions are always buggy, and since you use Logic, you have probably also noticed that the list of bugs that have been fixed in the various Logic 10 versions is extremely long; something around 2000 (!) bugs probably. I wouldn't expect a 1.0 version to be more reliable or finished than a 10.0 version.
Good luck with trying to get a refund.
 
Thank you for reporting your experience. I was eagerly waiting to see if Dorico was a viable option, but nothing I have seen or read would convince me at this point to invest countless hours into learning the Dorico software. It is really sad. I am still trying to decide if I want to give Overture 5 a try. It isn't the price of the software that stops me, it is the price in hours of effort to learn a new software package. I want to be sure it will be something better than Sibelius for notation and Cubase for performance.

Hi Paul,

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

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

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

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

Sorry to hear about the people that purchased and are disappointed but this is the nature of the beast... Version 1 is bound to have bugs and lacking certain features... I really hope that updates will come out regularly and we don't have to wait for a few months before seeing some of the promised features implemented.
 
Again, 1.0 versions are always buggy....I wouldn't expect a 1.0 version to be more reliable or finished than a 10.0 version.
Good luck with trying to get a refund.

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

People are always so critical and harsh about Finale and, to a lesser extent, Sibelius. But those are very powerful programs that, when mastered, enable a composer to do almost all he or she needs to do. There are bugs and shortcomings in both programs that should have been fixed years ago - but I think the lesson is, it's really HARD to make a program that does so many different things do them well and make everyone happy. Users who were expecting this to be instantly better than the two big dinosaurs in the room were bound to be disappointed, but it doesn't help that the pricing and the hype - all Steinberg's doing - set up very high expectations.
 
Welcome to version 1.0. I knew, from the size of the team, that this launch of version 1 would be pretty rough. Like many software developers, they really rely on their customers for beta testing. Not agreeing with or defending the Dorico team and Steinberg, just stating the trending reality I've noticed in the industry over the last few years.

On a personal note, I do feel like this program has potential. The concepts are there. The workflow and questions they've pursued to tackle are ones that I've wanted fixed compared to the current standards of Finale and Sibelius.
 
Waiting for an update to playback. Dynamics and articulations don't work at all, when playing the score. Couldn't find how to drag the playback line. Also when inputting notes, they are not played, and I have to press play button. So the playback has to be improved quite a lot. Otherwise I'm liking it so far.
 
Very rough around the edges, but I'm counting on promised free updates as well as the approach and ethos of the team to make substantial progress over the next few weeks and months. I don't believe I'll be disappointed, but there's always that chance.

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

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

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

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