Hey Dan,
These are my opinions - but I do have some experience by now, and wanted to give some advice to the OP, so he can make more informed desicions for workflow.
John Williams is doing OK, but he is also the last of the old guard to be using paper and pen. An important aspect of this is that he doesn’t have to provide 99% finished demos of his music - mainly because… I guess - he’s John Willimas!
Most, if not all recently established composers will work to DAW directly for the reson of demos alone, and for the time available to create those demos.
I never ment to say it’s impossible, but I’m saying it will most likely take more time to do notation → DAW → notation, rather than composing straight in DAW. Time constraints is a big part of the business. And when you have several years of looking at piano roll arrangements, you can read it just like notation, what’s the difference then?
I tried to establish a real sense of the dealines on a day to day basis, and then it’s up to each composer make her/his own decisions about what skills to work on and where to put your energy. But I doubt you will be able to craft demos to the quality required using only Dorico. And how will you add in, edit and mix the soloist recordings? And what if you have a rewrite in the middle, and you already transferred to DAW? Or if you re-conform to a new edit? In those scenarios - efficiancy in the DAW for composing and arranging is essential.
All that aside, a lot of composers will start in notation during the idea/development phase of a project. Developing the themes, structures, harmony and musical language. Then you can take your carefully crafted, notated ideas/sketches and write furiously fast to a bunch of scenes directly in DAW.
Again, I’m speaking from the perspective of a busy film and tv composer. These are my observations if someone was to puruse that field of work. In the end we all find our own way of working.
PS
And to insunuate the DAW is the source of “bad music”, and a tool not suited for composers might be a little narrow minded. Maybe our difference of opinion here is that you think the medium is MIDI, while I think the medium is sound.
Midi and notation are just tools to communicate the intended sounds we want from a performer. And while I can agree some of Zimmer’s latest can be overly sound designed - sound design, synths and other non-midi/non-notated audio elements are becoming important parts of modern music. We can either embrace that, or cling to the past. (the past will certainly have it’s audence as well - so doesn’t have to be a bad thing - just make your concious choice.)
But I hope we can agree on this:
In the end it’s the strenght of idea and intention that will make great music - not the tools we are using.