Beginner - SE 6 or Elements 6?

Dorico
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I have started my journey into Music Theory (again after 50 years). Obviously, the college courses I’m taking are score centric and I’m just beginning to get my feet wet again. For the moment SE 6 seems to do what I need it to do for my level. But with an upgrade to Elements for only $75 it at least seems like a no-brainer on that level.

I guess my question is should I just jump into Elements 6 for where I’m at right now? I’m not writing anything large at all. Mostly just writing (or trying to write) pieces for string quartets and stuff like that. Since SE will allow up to 8 players it seems to do what I require. Is there another advantage about upgrading that I am missing?

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Maybe the comparison chart could answer your question?

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There’s a chart which compares the editions here, so you can see what the differences are:

For basic usage like what you describe, I would generally say that you’re fine with SE for now, as long as you can live with the limitation of 8 players in a project. What you start getting with Elements (and then get much more of with Pro) is the ability to customize how your music looks – changing spacing, layout, fonts, etc. – and I would guess that’s probably not too important for music theory classes.

You can also get a 60-day trial license for either Elements or Pro, so that you can try them out and see for yourself if the added functionality is useful to you. If you decide not to upgrade, any files you have worked on in Elements or Pro can still be opened in SE; most of the things you may have tweaked that are not available in SE should still display correctly, although if you have created a score with more than 8 players, SE will only let you open it in read-only mode.

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Thank you. Yes, I was familiar with the Dorico comparison page. I think for now I will stick with the SE (heck, free is “free”). I think I need some more time with it anyway before I really start making any adjustments or upgrades. Again, other than the number of players and a larger sound library I wasn’t sure if I had missed something. And for now I have no problem sticking to how Dorico presents and prints out my scores.

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