Hello, today I imported a midi file from Cubase 13 into Dorico 5. I chose the same piano instrument (Pianotech 8: Grotrian Recording 2) and played the piece. In Cubase I did not have any effects going on and just the standard settings in Pianotech). In Dorico the piano sounds dull, lacks character and high overtones. Is Dorico using a different audio engine? How can there be differences between the sound from the same file? Is the midi data being corrupted or changed when exported from Cubase?
I don’t like to use xml because I like the way Dorico is interpreting triplets etc better than Cubase, would a xml file be any different?
I wouldn’t think there should be a difference. Did you do anything aside from just importing the MIDI into Dorico (ex. make edits to dynamics or things like that)? Are you sure that the settings in the Pianoteq plugin are the same? Normally Pianoteq would load the Steinway D by default and not the other piano you are using.
I’m guessing that likely either you’ve made changes to the MIDI in Dorico by doing things like adding dynamic markings, or you have a wrong expression map applied, or your settings inside the Pianoteq plugin don’t match.
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Well, all I can say is, that the Dorico audio engine is based on the Cubase audio engine. So audio processing wise it is identical. The only thing is, the Dorico audio engine is most of the time one step behind the Cubase development.
That means, improvements of the audio engine take place during the Cubase development; after a new Cubase release we then merge the changes into the Dorico audio engine but it will then take some time for the Dorico release.
So Dorico is always a step behind, but that cannot explain the differences that you think there are.
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I guess there are things in Cubase that did not get transferred into Dorico, like CC values or velocity data.
Cubase exports all velocity and MIDI CC data by default. If they are missing from Dorico, it is because Dorico didn’t import them. I haven’t tried importing MIDI into Dorico to see if it keeps all velocity and CC’s by default from the MIDI, but I would expect it to. This would not be the case if you then went through the score and added dynamic markings and things like that - adding dynamic markings would cause the velocity/CC’s to be replaced there, I would expect.
Save the setup that your instrument plugin is using in Cubase from within the plugin.
Load your saved settings into the instance occurring in Dorico.
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Are You sure there are no effects on the masterbus? Dorico always load an compressor on the master.
Thanks all for your comments and suggestions. What I described is just what happened. Same model and same settings in Pianoteq. Because of your suggestions I checked Dorico and muted the reverb it installed and the doricobeep but this did not make any change to the dull sound. Ulf’s remark that it is the same audio engine as Cubase and that all cc and velocity is transferred through the midi file makes me wonder even more what could cause this and am I really the only one who is experiencing this? If anyone is interested I could make two short sound clips of Cubase and Dorico. (have to figure out first how to do that in Dorico and how to post them here)
In Dorico simply do File > Export > Audio. That will take the audio stream from the master channel and write it to disc.
Are you using the same ASIO driver in both programs?
Very good remark Fratveno. I checked and Dorico was set to 96kHz and Cubase to 48 kHz but the same driver (Motu) . I changed Dorico to 48kHz but did not hear any difference. I exported the audio from Dorico and Cubase and I could see the difference even visually. This the Cubase file
This is the Dorico file
So left channel is Cubase, and right channel Dorico? Is that correct?
Then i would compare the MIDI velocity data of the two.
I’d even break down the project to something very small, just one bar with 4 same notes, only different velocity and then compare again.
Are you sure you uploaded two different files? Those look exactly the same…
(It would help if they had different descriptions - all I see in both links is “Test for difference in audio quality Dorico and Cubase”)
@Ulf Those are not “right” and “left”, it’s only Soundcloud shrinking the lower half of the graphic to make it look nicer 
Ah, okay, thank you!
I’ve put the two pages now side by side in different windows and as Estigy said, the waveforms look same. Also listening - to me - they sound same.
I would make the test much smaller, just a few notes with different velocity. Then zip up the wave files and upload to here, so we can download and drag into Cubase. There we can look at them side by side in the sample editor and zoom in up to a single sample.
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