Clarification about updates

Dorico
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tl;dr How long will Steinberg provide free updates and to what extent?

I am happy to support the team, and I am happy to pay for Dorico, even though Dorico at its current state IS undoubtedly unusable for most users.

I am happy to pay, since I can afford it, and since I do have other programs that I can use to produce usable scores. I am happy to pay because I have full trust in Daniel and the team, and I have been reading Making Notes for the past 3 and half years piously.

But had I been a person who decided to invest in his first scoring program and I debated between Finale, Sibelius and Dorico, and ended up purchasing Dorico, I would be (rightfully) feeling cheated out of my money.

While, I have very little doubt that Dorico WILL turn into an amazing, and honestly probably the best scoring program out there, at its current stage it is not at pare with Sibelius or Finale, both of which cost LESS than Dorico. In fact, Steinberg’s flagship product, Cubase 8.5 is CHEAPER than Dorico.

My biggest fear, is that one year from today, still lacking many feature, Steinberg will announce Dorico 2.0 that will force us to pay again. So yes, I know free updates were promised, but for how long, and to what extent. No one knows. Will version 1.x (even with some features lacking) ever be usable or would we have to buy 2.0 in a year? How long will these free updates be coming? What is the (estimated) full list of features expected to be integrated for free? (I know, I know about the chord symbols, but what else?).
I am happy to make this investment as a benefactor, and a crowd-funder, but I wonder if I’ll ever get my money’s worth.

Prior to buying I knew many features will be missing, but the list turned out to be longer than I could imagine, and frankly even if all the features were there, with Dorico’s horrifying responsiveness, no number of features would make it usable.


Please reassure me that without adding more money, I would be able to make Dorico my go to scoring software.

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Dear Staff at Steinburg,

When you have time to answer (hopefully within the next month and before the 30-day demo will be offered), I would like to know the following…

(1) How long will version 1 be continually updated without additional cost – one year? two years? some other period of time?

(2) What percentage of the current cost of the version 1.0 price will the upgrades be? (Surely Steinburg already has a way of estimating that based on current products.)

(3) What is the feature-set goal for version 1? I.e., which features will be added at no additional charge while it’s still version 1.0? Another way to say it is, what is predicted to be the major improvement(s) that justifies moving from v. 1.x to 2.0? (I think knowing this will help some potential buyers know when to jump on board.)

Thank you!

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“…Dorico at its current state IS undoubtedly unusable for most users.”

Highly questionable. Someone has already reported he’s using it on a commercial project, someone says he is hundreds of bars into a composition. What you will get on this forum, mostly, is people who have problems. Others, like myself, are just getting with using the program. I’ve had no problems, except one of my own making, where I installed the HALion sounds on the wrong drive.

“…had I been a person who decided to invest in his first scoring program and I debated between Finale, Sibelius and Dorico, and ended up purchasing Dorico, I would be (rightfully) feeling cheated out of my money.” Then you didn’t do your homework. It’s been very clear from the outset what Dorico can and cannot do. No-one should have bought Dorico as their first and only scoring program.

4

If you haven’t seen the statement towards the end of the What is Dorico? page on the main Steinberg website, it says:

Dorico has many unique and innovative features not found in any other software, and presents a whole new way of working with music notation, but because it is brand new, it does not yet have every feature necessary for every kind of score. Dorico will receive a number of updates in the coming months that will be > free to existing users> , adding new functionality. Some of the functionality that is planned to be added in these updates includes*:

  • Chord symbols
  • Repeat ending (1st, 2nd time or volta) lines
  • Fingerings
  • Jazz articulations
  • Rhythm slashes
  • More flexible unpitched percussion notation
  • Improvements to playback and support for third-party virtual instruments

It’s too early to say when exactly all these features will be delivered; we’re very much listening to customer feedback right now. Rest assured we are working hard on it!

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…

had I been a person who decided to invest in his first scoring program and I debated between Finale, Sibelius and Dorico, and ended up purchasing Dorico, I would be (rightfully) feeling cheated out of my money." Then you didn’t do your homework. It’s been very clear from the outset what Dorico can and cannot do. No-one should have bought Dorico as their first and only scoring program.

[/quote]
Unbelievable quote, I would totally agree if Dorico were charging a realistic price for what you get, but to charge well over £400 which is more expensive than its competitors, I would expect it to be better. Would you pay more money for a worse car than the one you already have?

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Finale and Sibelius both cost $600, which is £489 or €549 right now. I don’t see how Dorico is more expensive than its competitors :wink:

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Ben, thank you for the reply! I was aware of that list but I hoped it’s just a taste of some of the features to come and not the full list

Does this mean that version 1.x will not be able to:

  • Transpose
  • Select by filter (dynamics, 1st voice only, bass only)
  • Select bar/staff
  • Have user defined graphics and symbols
  • Have user defined techniques
  • Insert cues
  • Insert annotations
  • Create ossia staves
  • Allow explosion and reducing of sections
  • Create custom lines
  • Allow to change the size of the staff between pages of the same part/mid page
  • Allow to adjust the distance between staves on the page
  • Allow to create house styles
  • Allow to write custom meaningful scripts (beyond macros)
  • Play back the note when it’s pressed
  • Create cut-away scores
  • Have arpeggio lines
  • Break a chord into different voices
  • Respell accidentals
  • Show/Hide elements
  • Create custom staff types

Will we get a manual at some point?

So far the program seem to crash often, even when performing mundane tasks like opening files, or opening some of the toolbar windows at certain times. This, is not a basic feature that’s missing, this is me not able to work continuously without having to restart the program every 30-60 minutes (sometimes at the cost of losing unsaved changes).

But all that is secondary to the performance issues.
I’m running a 32 core machine with 64GB of RAM, Dorico is installed on an SSD drive, and dorico is painfully slow.
For instance, I inserted about 30 bars of piano music and decided to undo my work, and pressed the “undo” keyboard shortcut for about 20 seconds (I wanted to undo everything).
I saw the program goes about undoing my changes, about once per second. After 10 minutes of Dorico still undoing my changes, I had to force quite. Is this expected to change significantly?
Or, when inserting notes with a midi keyboard, if I insert more than one note per 3/4 of a sec, the notes clump up as chords. I shouldn’t have to wait a full second for every note I input.

Whoever is claiming to use it in a commercial project must not need very basic things like… a “select all” feature for instance, and surely could have bought a cheaper end piece of software.

So, I hope you understand why I am asking about what features are promised for 1.x because, Steinberg will not make refunds, and at its current state, I find it unusable. Mind you, I bought Dorico on day 1, and followed Daniel for years. In fact, I still do have full confidence in the team, and would bet $650 (I guess I already did) that Dorico will be the market leader for all the right reason, but I am wondering if I’ll have to wait a few years, and pay some more hundreds of dollars to see this vision come true. I do believe in you, but I guess Steinberg was rushing you, and forced you hands into releasing this quite faulty, product.

With all do respect, I would appreciate a fuller answer rather than a quotation of 10 lines from another thread. Those 10 lines just don’t cover it.

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Finale is $600, sibelius is $599, and Dorico (without cross-upgrade) is $650. That’s how.

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“Unbelievable quote, I would totally agree if Dorico were charging a realistic price for what you get, but to charge well over £400 which is more expensive than its competitors, I would expect it to be better. Would you pay more money for a worse car than the one you already have?”

Why indeed? If you do your research, you will know (more or less) what you’re getting; in this case it was clear what was in offer.

“… to charge well over £400 which is more expensive than its competitors, I would expect it to be better.” Really? Are you one of those naive consumers who chooses one product over another just because it’s more expensive?

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Chris, please read my last post, and tell me if you knew all of those features are NOT included.

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Really? Are you one of those naive consumers who chooses one product over another just because it’s more expensive?"

are you for real?

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Of course by buying Notion and then doing a crossgrade, you’ve already saved a huge chunk of money, so nobody should be paying $650. Unless you didn’t think of that in time? :wink:

DG

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No I’m just one of those consumers who expects a working product when I’m charged over £400.
If you are one of those naive people who think it’s fine to throw away over £400 on something that doesn’t work, I have a few things lying around the house thad don’t work - I will happily do a Steinberg and take your money (no manuals though I’m afraid).

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Well… I didn’t post a question about the price. I posted a question about what will be included in the updates, and for how long will we get the free updates.

I feel that my question has yet to be answered.

15

I certainly knew of these:

Chord symbols
Repeat ending (1st, 2nd time or volta) lines
Fingerings
Jazz articulations
Rhythm slashes
More flexible unpitched percussion notation
Improvements to playback and support for third-party virtual instruments

As for what is on your extended list - yes, broadly, I did know, or at least I knew that various sophisticated features would not be immediately available. None of these are features that concern me much at this stage. I’m working on a large-scale composition (30-plus staves) in Sibelius, which I’ve used for years and will finish in Sibelius. My next piece, which I’ll probably be on by the New Year, will be for solo instrument and I think that will be a good opportunity start (and, hopefully, finish) with Dorico.

I think it’s a great pity that some people have somehow got carried away by the launch of Dorico. What has become an almost mythological story of how the project came to be started - how the villains of Avid sent the Sibelius team packing, then obviously regretted it when they couldn’t replace them, and meanwhile the good giants of Steinberg took them in and fed them while they worked their magic afresh - all of this has produced a frenzy of expectation. Add to this a sense that Sibelius has had its day - perhaps that is effectively dead in the water - and you have this immense desire for a scoring program that will blind us with its capability from Day One.

My feeling is that the magic is there already, because of the notation core which the program does so well. Yes, there are clearly bugs. One can argue that the launch should have been delayed, though I think I know why it was timed for when it was. But I am very happy to take my time to learn its intricacies in the belief that eventually it will leave its competitors way behind.

16

Really? You knew you wouldn’t be able to use “sophisticated features” like transposition? or select-all?

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And please take a look at another thread I created, and tell me if this looks like a production level output to present to clients.

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“If you are one of those naive people who think it’s fine to throw away over £400 on something that doesn’t work, I have a few things lying around the house thad don’t work - I will happily do a Steinberg and take your money (no manuals though I’m afraid).”

That’s where we disagree, you see. I’m not naive enough to throw away over £400 on something that doesn’t work. For me, Dorico works. I knew what I was getting. I decided it was worth it - though I paid less because of a crossgrade; probably I would have waited otherwise. I did actually give the whole thing a lot of thought - unlike, I suspect, some who bought it and are now complaining.

If you have some stuff you want to sell, let me know and I’ll do my usual thing of finding out what the products do and what you are claiming about their condition and so on. Then I’ll have a think about the price you’re asking. Then I’ll decide whether to buy.

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Cool.
Can I get a reply from somebody at Steinberg?

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