Dorico - An Ongoing Journey

[MIDI Life Crisis]

The cross-grade to Doritos from The Finale Countdown or The Swan of Tuonela is half price at the moment.

Wow. $560 bucks? I don't see the cross grade pricing, but to no avail as I won't be leaving Finale any time soon.

Oh wait... you said Doritos. My bad. I usually make my own tortilla chips. lol Actually, I do. Use a pizza blade (rolling) to cut several tortillas into 6 pieces. Pop them in a toaster oven and bake at 350 for 10-ish minutes (or toast them a few times). Flour tortillas take less time; blue corn takes much longer. Corn as the best! So much better than buying a bag of chip and a heck of a lot cheaper. Great for a long, uncertain, ongoing journey.

[mikehalloran]

Dorico Pro 3.5
Competitive Crossgrade from
Finale (Retail, Academic. Theological)
Sibelius (Retail, Professional, Educational, Academic)
Download

Available
Normally $279.99

Sale $140.00

Probably what I paid three years ago or so. Not a fan for so many reasons, none worth discussing.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Not a fan for so many reasons, none worth discussing.

Yep. Different from Finale and SIbelius? Sure enough. Better? Not so much.

But that said, can I add (and I will anyway) a BIG thank you to Elektroakoustika, mhschmieder, stubbsonic, and mikehalloran, et al, for staying on top of this. I always viewed Cubase and Nuendo from Steinberg as bit players in the DAW marketplace. Capable apps that are made for the dilettante, not for the pros. Dorico fits right in. Still, it's good to know people are at least trying to compete with the big boys. If you guys hadn't kept this thread alive, I [personally] would probably not even have heard of this as I tend to ignore Steinberg, pretty much.

There's another thing to consider here. Apparently, it is [apparently] extremely difficult to program a notation app. If it were easy, there'd be a lot of great apps out there. There aren't. My pipe dream (so to speak...) is that MOTU would jump into the pool. The closest they come is a fairly limited Quickscribe feature and the poor, abused, abandoned, Notation window.

Frankly, I'd pay double the price for a DP that added solid notation to rival Finale and Sibelius, but I digress...

(I meant Doritos... )

[stubbsonic]

My pipe dream (so to speak...) is that MOTU would jump into the pool. The closest they come is a fairly limited Quickscribe feature and the poor, abused, abandoned, Notation window.

Frankly, I'd pay double the price for a DP that added solid notation to rival Finale and Sibelius, but I digress...

I agree. Though there are some limitations & bugs with Quickscribe, it's helpful having it integrated with DP's MIDI environment.

Perhaps it could happen in phases. Like for a first push, filling in the needed basic things like articulations, ability to set bars per line, some sizing options, clef switching, chord symbols, etc.

[mhschmieder]

How good was MOTU Mosaic while it was still around, both by the standards of its time and by today's standards (and relative to Quickscribe and DP Notation)?

I came so close to buying Sweetwater's last boxed copy of it a number of years ago. I guess there's not much shared DNA (and especially no shared code) with DP's notation support.

One of my former co-workers helped with the re-write of Encore back in the early 2000's. I can't remember how he characterized the complexity of the job compared to the DSP stuff we were doing.

[stubbsonic]

How does the latest version of Dorico 4 stack up in terms of it being a Finale/Sibelius replacement? Or I suppose, put another way, is it ready for prime-time yet?

I'm likely to use it for reference sheets, piano, guitar, bass, and small ensemble arrangements.

The fact that it has a MIDI piano roll is very appealing-- considering I still do most of my notation work in DP.

I wonder if those who are long-time Finale users are tempted to make the switch, or whether Dorico at this point is at least a more user-friendly option that isn't too limiting.

[mhschmieder]

Warning: I just "upgraded" to Dorico 4 and am dead in the water, even though it doesn't use eLicenser, just as I can't use my Cubase 11 upgrade.

Little did I suspect that the new non-eLicenser based approach would still require the old eLicenser to work.

My eLicenser has been broken since March 2020 due to truly crappy firmware by Steinberg, which of course is what led to the abandonment of this license approach. I had bought the latest version of the dongle in FEB 2020 to future-proof myself against glitches, only to have that one be the one that got in to a Catch-22 that couldn't resolve after about 300 cumulative hours of dealing with it (at CVSL's end as well, much to their credit).

I thought I'd be back on track with Cubase 12 and could just suffer Cubase 11.5 being nothing more than a cheaper incremental upgrade path for me.

But now I know better. I will be dead in the water until VSL switches to iLok, at which point I can follow Steinberg's one and only problem resolution approach, which is to wipe the entire eLicenser of all licenses, regardless of vendor or product or the fact that all the licenses are working.

The problem with the latest dongle is that it ran out of space without warning me (their marketing claim was quite contrary to this possibility, and I bought the latest dongle to help consolidate to one dongle and save a USB slot). It put me into a permanent situation of not being able to upgrade any license on that dongle or move any licenses from it or to it. I can't believe they haven't addressed this in any software update for eLicenser.

For those who have full faith in their dongles, there should be no issue, but be aware that the switch to dongle-free licensing is only half-true for those who are doing an update/upgrade path vs. buying this as a new purchase.

[stubbsonic]

I haven't had a dongle-based authorization since my Atari 1040 ST.

So far I've managed to choose software that didn't require one. Sounds like a sizzling pain in the ass.

If I was to shift to Dorico, I'd need to not have to use any hardware dongle. ILok is ok, now that it's not a USB thingy.

[mhschmieder]

Yamaha was very quick to provide me with a separate license to accommodate the stuck eLicenser issue, so I'm confident they'll do the same for Cubase and WaveLab once they get updated soon. I was a bit aggressive in my statements about their level of responsibility in the matter, but feel it was justified -- especially as I spent so much time trying to debug and solve the issue using my own software skills.

Anyway, having launched the new version and gone through its interface a bit tonight, it does seem like a major move forward, but I wasn't really focusing on feature par with Finale vs. the improvements from Dorico 3.5. It feels like the biggest update since the app was first launched.

[artfarm1]

I was really trying to like Dorico (and Cubase) a couple of years ago and gave them a real good shot for a year.

But, one of my complaints against Steinberg is all the 'bloat' you need to install in order for Dorico (and Cubase) to keep track of and even open up before being able to use them. All the added Halion library instruments, etc. , the iLok, etc.

Maybe their new licensing scheme will be an improvement.

Having said that, there's absolutely nothing in Dorico I need that I can't accomplish in Sibelius (and as our loveable Finale users here will also attest to for their notation program of choice!)

Do I need to be able to have my notation play back any VI's? Not really, except for self-amusement and if I want to waste years of my life trying to sound like everyone else, or for times when I don't have ever have any 'real-world' projects to work on in which musicians want music on their stands that they'll be playing.

I agree that DP's built-in notation is really great for what it is, and it would be amazing if it could be even better. It even works instead of Sibelius or Finale for a lot of composers.

But, all in all, between the current DP11, the current Sibelius (or Finale!), and the amazing selection of VI's already out there (and that I've bought way too many of!) it's hard to get excited about Steinberg and Dorico any more and thinking that they can 'solve life's problems'.

[bkshepard]

I have been a Finale user since 1992 and probably know just about every trick that program can do. However, I have refused to upgrade to F27 due to all the problems people have reported with it, primarily related to its new SMuFL font implementation. A few days ago, I bit the bullet and bought the new version of Dorico 4 as an upgrade from Dorico 2 that I purchased a few years back. I never really liked Dorico 2 as it didn't have enough features that I needed and I wasn't willing to invest in the learning curve for a program that didn't do all I wanted.

However, I am really digging Dorico 4. Yes, it's still a big learning curve, but the logic behind it is impressive AND it now does everything I need for my projects. My biggest hang-up with the switch was the Dorico version of Finale's "Speedy Entry" was just different enough that I kept screwing up the MIDI entry. However, after tweaking a couple of settings in Dorico, that process now works exactly like I am used to in Finale. I'm still working through the learning curve, but I suspect I have just become a convert.

[stubbsonic]

I'd love it if someone created an unbiased comparison grid showing features amongst: Finale, Sibelius, Notion, Dorico, and MuseScore.

Cell entries could include: NEVER, NO, NOT YET, BARELY, YES BUT PAINFUL, YES BUT CLUNKY/STUPID, YES, BEST-IN-CLASS

[mikehalloran]

So Dorico 4 is finally out. I suppose I should upgrade to see if I can finally stand it.

I like Finale 27 more than I liked 26. Both are a lot better over Monterey than they were over Big Sur. Actually, Monterey fixed issues I was having with a few other apps including Apple Books.app. Seriously, Apple broke their own Books app in Big Sur and didn’t fix it till Monterey.

I'd love it if someone created an unbiased comparison grid showing features amongst: Finale, Sibelius, Notion, Dorico, and MuseScore.

Cell entries could include: NEVER, NO, NOT YET, BARELY, YES BUT PAINFUL, YES BUT CLUNKY/STUPID, YES, BEST-IN-CLASS

Wouldn’t that be nice?

The best anyone can do is subscribe to the Scoring Notes newsletter. It’s free and you can search the web site for reviews, past articles and such. It has saved me money by alerting me to upgrades, sales etc. that I don’t find anywhere else.
https://www.scoringnotes.com/

One thing I saw recently is that MakeMusic is looking for Sibelius users to beta test Dolet 8 which will add MusicXML 4. Sibelius never did upgrade to v. 3.1 so this should be big.

Now that Presonus and Muse have new owners, will Notion and MuseScore finally become good? Scoring Notes is likely to be where we find out.

[bkshepard]

+1 for Scoring Notes! A wonderful reservoir of info on Notation apps.

[bkshepard]

I'd love it if someone created an unbiased comparison grid showing features amongst: Finale, Sibelius, Notion, Dorico, and MuseScore.

Cell entries could include: NEVER, NO, NOT YET, BARELY, YES BUT PAINFUL, YES BUT CLUNKY/STUPID, YES, BEST-IN-CLASS

I suspect if you did a comparison grid of whether or not the feature exists in an app, you would find a great deal of similarity--especially in the apps that are targeted for the same kinds of users. The issue is in the ease-of-use category. The difference between "Yes but clunky/stupid" and "best-in-class" might have more to do with a user's familiarity with the process than the process itself. I'm already seeing some of that in my learning of Dorico. After 30 years with Finale some things I think of as easy to do are more about the fact that I'm so familiar with them. When I do the same process in Dorico, it feels clunky because I'm so unfamiliar with it. Yet, I can see how it's logic works and my opinion is likely to shift as I get more comfortable.