Are there any new tools to integrate Dorico in Cubase 12

I didn’t see any mention of Dorico or scoring improvements in the release notes. Are there any new features to simplify scoring or transfer info between cubase and dorico?

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Here is an exhaustive list of the improvements brought to the scoring section in Cubase 12:

Click to expand

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This is firmly on our roadmap and there are people actively working on bringing Dorico and Cubase closer together.

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That’s very good news. A “send to Cubase” or “send to Dorico” button would be fabulous!

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A “send to Cubase” or “send to Dorico” button would not be something interesting in 2022… Give us full integration.

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Depends what you mean by full integration. I do not want my DAW to be overly complex with a full version of Dorico running in it, nor vice-versa. When I’m scoring I do not need all the features of the DAW, so the software would necessarily be over-featured and underused. I would however love to be able to run them both in perfect sync, that for me would be integration. Then I could choose when I needed both running. And allow the outputs of one into the inputs of the other, audio or midi. Hence my “button” !

What would be your idea of full-integration?

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Personally, I totally and respectfully disagree with you.
That’s what I have been doing for 25 years using the Score Editor in Cubase. And despite all the shortcomings of the Score Editor I still consider that it is far superior to all the dedicated Scoring applications that I also used, precisely because of its integration into the DAW.

Now, let’s wait and see what “closer” means. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

An idea of full integration is : Score Editor :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well it really depends how you use Score editor I suppose, but here’s just one scenario that would present a problem to Cubase.

Say you were writing the score to a song, with repeated verses, choruses etc and a coda, obviously in a score you wouldn’t write the whole thing out in linear fashion (well you might but let’s assume you wouldn’t need to for this) - how would Cubase interpret the different sections that are repeated? Suppose you want to record / sing the verses in a linear form for Cubase, but have the score show repeats etc? Very complex for the DAW. Maybe it’ll come but for serious scoring purposes I think a fully integrated DAW would really confuse things in a lot of working cases.

As to Score editor being better than any scoring apps you’ve used, I can only say that I used the Score Editor in Cubase VST for my first degree submissions in 1998 and it was a nightmare. I recently opened the Score editor in C11 just for fun, and it looks just as unwieldy and unhelpful as it did back then! Spend a day with Dorico (or even Musescore 3 - free) and tell me you can get that functionality from the Score editor in Cubase. It’s really limited. It’s fine for an aide memoir, or for simple parts, but try scoring a large piece of music with it, with transposing instruments and parts needing to be printed etc, no contest.

Still, you never know, perhaps it’ll come. But here’s a comparison in another field. Da Vinci Resolve, a video editor, has what may be described as DAW built in, called Fairlight (yep!) - I use DA Vinci for all my videos, but I never use Fairlight because, despite it being quite sophisticated, it simply doesn’t work in the same way as a DAW, and the underlying focus for Da Vinci is the video. To have full DAW capabilities within Resolve would make it so cumbersome, so many menus!

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Your knowledge of the Score Editor is light years away from the real capabilities of the program. I am afraid you have never dug into details.

The Score Editor is a full scoring program, not an “aide-memoire” or “for simple parts” in any way.

FYI The Score Editor interprets and plays repeat signs in the score.
In addition, the Arranger Track in Cubase allows for any complex repeat sequences.
So there is no limit in this area.

I use the Score Editor for very large orchestral scores. Right now I’ve gotten past page 300 in my current score, and still have a long way to go!

But I won’t go into a Dorico/Score Editor comparison here. I just wanted to say that you would have to learn more about the Score Editor before making such statements. (no offense of course :slight_smile: )

Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing what the future holds.

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that’s a fair point, but I guess when I opened the Score editor it just looked so un-appealing, so clumsy, that it reminded me of the hours and hours I spent trying to format my scores for my submission… Let’s see where it all goes, and no offence taken naturally!

As to the Arrange Track, I tend to stay away from that as for recording I really do prefer a more linear “tape based” analogy - I’ve found with complex musicals (short extracts of full songs, different keys, intros etc) it’s far simpler to just copy and paste the entire arrangement further down the timeline and edit these accordingly. I’ve never been comfortable with the Arrange track as I’m often not using a tempo based grid at all, and the Arrange track doesn’t handle parts that cross from one section to another very well - makes it difficult to snap to the exact spot etc. But hey, everyone has their own way off working that works for them, thank goodness!

What I mean by “full integration” is that users who have Cubase and Dorico could be allowed to integrate Dorico into cubase in some way similar to the internal score editor. Nobody would be obliged to do it that way if it is not what they need, but it would be nice if that option existed.
With this I am not saying at all as many say that the Cubase Score Editor is unusable. I totally agree with Maestro that the Score Editor is a great tool and the internal integration with cubase is a great benefit and that combination exceeds in many ways what can be achieved with other editors (for the people who also care about the sound). I have been using it a lot also to work on orchestral scores and I have achieved interesting results.
However, it seems that for Steingberg it is a minor tool where I do not see much interest in correcting its bugs and improving its operation. That seems a shame to me since it is a very good tool with a lot of potential. But it seems that the vast majority of Cubase users do not use the Score editor and that is why it is not on the list of priorities to be developed.
I personally do not fit into the duality of daw on the one hand and score editor on the other, I think that Cubase’s Score editor (although not ideal) is an answer to that and for that reason it should be taken seriously in its development.

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I guess its like getting raster “Cubase” and vector “Dorico” graphics to work together, you’ll need a cleaver engine to do that?

who ever can achieve this will probably own the market

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Thanks for making my coffee come out my nose…

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Any news about this? This feature is a make it or break it condition when it comes to switching to Dorico as a scoring software for us.

Interesting, I made a similar post in the Nuendo forum, asking about N and Dorico integration. I’m a user of both, and I used the score editor within Nuendo for years, eventually exporting midi to Sibelius, and then Dorico, for the engraving options, much more advanced than that of Nuendo score editor. On the other hand, Dorico midi editing and general manipulation is way slower, so an integration is something not quite straightforward, as they rely on different layers of midi information to operate. But I’m eagerly awaiting!

Yes, to say the least.

I’m sure when they do tell us about how it will work it will be on a sea change level of difference.

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I wonder if you want to consider sharing a timeline or roadmap with the forum on when this kind of integration might happen. Even a rough estimate like Q3 in 2023 would be great to know.

It’s good to hear that you’re still interested in this. Nevertheless, I’m afraid we don’t publicly talk about timelines or roadmaps.

I guess it’s not bad that you are actually thinking about bringing features of one software in to the other. I sincerely hope it is bringing some of Dorico’s capabilities into Nuendo, as the just launched Dorico 5 is heavily invested in the daw-side of it (and not so much in enhancing notation features).

I would tend to agree. I would hope that the way forward in the short term is to enhance the import/export capabilities or information transfer between the programs - and not to focus on adding more vst, audio processing and mixing capabilities within Dorico. We already have cubase for that.

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