ARA with Dorico 6

[adagio4evergreen]

It seems that Dorico 6 has been announced, but when I read the email, there was no mention of the ARA support and audio tracks that I was waiting for. What should I do? Is it true that there are not many people using Dorico as a DAW?

[jaredhaschek]

Without any support for audio tracks, I don’t think anyone is using Dorico as a DAW. My expectation (and this is entirely a hunch) is that if Dorico ever does support audio tracks, it will be limited to loading an existing audio track to score to, rather than a multi track situation as you would expect in a DAW. I could be wrong!

[klavierpunk]

@adagio4evergreen

Is it true that there are not many people using Dorico as a DAW?

I cannot in any way assess the fraction of users that do, but speaking for myself, I could definitely use some basic DAW functionality within Dorico, as this would spare me the need to open a full-blown DAW (which can be overwhelming and confusing in their own) for the limited functions I need.

I started a discussion some time ago exactly on this matter, but so far I failed to keep it alive due to other obligations and my ADD. Probably now is the time to revisit it:

Limited DAW functionality inside Dorico - what could/would you make use of?

Hey fellow Doriconians, this is indeed meant as another speculative thread about future possibilities (aka things that we or some of us dream of), but let me point this out first: I do not want this to turn into another flame war about “Why hasn’t this been implemented yet, when [insert arbitrary competitor software here] can do this since [insert arbitrary time frame]?” and so on. If it does turn out to move in this direction, I will ask the mods to close or delete this thread, although it wil…

On the subject of this much requested feature missing in Dorico 6: As I understand the dev team’s strategy, they prefer to set a limited number of larger functions as their main focus for a major version upgrade and they do so very early in development - and then they go all out and blow us away with what’s suddenly possible on a technically mature level. I really like this approach and don’t want them to change it.

And while there indeed has been a plethora of minor enhancements beside the spotlight features, I suppose that adding audio functionality as you described (and as I wish for as well) would fall into that category of larger functions which have to be focused on from an early development stage. What they set their focus on is of course solely their own sovereign decision, but I’m absolutely certain that once they tackle this matter, they will once again blow us away.

[benwiggy]

@adagio4evergreen

Is it true that there are not many people using Dorico as a DAW?

Dorico is a music notation tool, and MIDI/audio is one of the things you can produce from notation; as are PDFs/printed pages; MusicXML for computation, etc.

If by “as a DAW” using “creating audio”, then yes, lots of people are doing that; though not exclusively.

@adagio4evergreen

What should I do?

Dorico isn’t finished. We’ve all got wish lists, and while version 6 may have ticked off some items for many (and brought us things we didn’t know we wanted), there’s still lots to add.

If you need to do DAW-style work that Dorico can’t do right now, then you’ll need to use an actual DAW. You may find a benefit using Cubase and being able to import/export Dorico files directly.