Dorico 2 system requirements?

I’m trying to find the Dorico 2 system requirements, and I’m having a hard time. I found a thread from last December asking for the system specs required for Dorico 1…

…but the link that Ulf provided in that thread redirects to the Tutorials page. I also searched the forum, and nothing more recent than that thread came up. Could anyone point me toward the page that lists the system requirements?

The details at the bottom of this page are accurate, as far as I can tell: Steinberg Dorico Pro 2 Scoring Software (download) | Sweetwater

On Mac you MUST have OSX 10.11 (El Capitan) or later
On Windows, 7 is officially unsupported but mostly seems to work.

On either:
Dual-core professor (but quad-core is preferable)
8gb RAM

That’s pretty much all that matters.

Indeed, while not officialy supported Win7 works
I had to re-activate Aero for v.2 but otherwise, it runs great with a i5 8gig RAM.
I also used it on another computer with i5 4gig on Win10 and it was OK but I added another 4gb anyways: didn’t see any difference from 4gb to 8gb ram on the latter…

Here are the official system requirements. I’m sorry they’re so hard to find on the web site – I have asked the team to make them more prominent, but at the moment an abbreviated version of them appears when you click the ‘Buy Dorico’ button in the pop-up that shows prices, etc.

64-bit Windows 10, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan or later. Intel or AMD dual core CPU. 8 GB RAM recommended (4 GB minimum). 12 GB free storage space (SSD recommended). Display resolution of 1,920 x 1,280 or greater recommended (1,366 x 768 minimum). OS- compatible audio hardware (ASIO-compatible audio hardware recommended).
Internet connection required for activation, account setup and personal product registration. Additional downloads will be required for installation.

Will Dorico work properly on a new Intel Core i3 (8 GB RAM) Notebook?
Yours,
Oliver

The bigger the project, the slower Dorico runs. For big projects you should really look at quad-core machines. I don’t know whether you’re currently looking at a dual-code or a quad-core (or more!).

When we talk about project size, roughly this means number of players x total length of all flows. If your main user of Dorico is for short piano pieces, arrangements for small ensembles, etc then i3 would probably be ok, but I think this is a machine that you would outgrow very quickly. I would personally suggest an i5 quad core with 12gb at minimum, along with an SSD. Anything less and you’ll find yourself wanting a new machine in 2 years.

If though you’re wanting to work on big orchestral scores then I’d say you should go for an i7 at the minimum. If you want to use big orchestral libraries then you’ll need lots more ram too.

Thank you! That’s what I thought.

I have Dorico 2.2.10.1256 installed over Dorico 1, and at present the Steinberg files in Program Files and Program Data (c. 10 GB of .vstsound) are occupying just over 32 GB of my SSD. My installation (installed January 2019) may need a bit more than Daniel’s figure, which nevertheless suggests that not all of this is necessary. At present, I still have 27 GB of SSD free, but Windows updates are bound to nibble away at that and the time may come when I need to get rid of large items that are not needed, or could be on the hard disc, which has plenty of free space.

How can I tell what is needed of all this? and is there a way of relegating infrequently used files to another volume. I keep current project files (including the automatic back-up) on the SSD but move older copies to the hard disc whenever I “save as”.

In theory you can move the HALion Sonic SE content to another drive, but it’s a little complicated without the use of the new Steinberg Library Manager, which makes it simple to tell Steinberg apps where you’ve moved your sample content to. So my advice would be to wait until later in the year when the next major version will be released, as that version will include Steinberg Library Manager, at which point it should be easy for you to relocate your sample content to another drive.

By the way, you’re missing the latest Dorico 2.2.20 update, which I recommend you get and install at your earliest convenience.

I put my larger data folders on the HD and reserve the SSD for applications and some smaller data folders. It seems to work well for me.

Thanks. I suppose the implication of your reply is that Dorico2 really is that big now. Your suggestion will work well for me. I’m sure I shall be OK for space until 2020 and I use playback sparsely, so slowing it will be no great problem.

By the way, you’re missing the latest Dorico 2.2.20 update, which I recommend you get and install at your earliest convenience.

I’ll have a look at its improvements. I usually get my daughter to deal with Dorico downloads, and I expect her next visit at the end of this month.

If you use Playback sparingly, you can save a lot of space by setting the playback template to silent (particularly on archived/past version of your files).

Now I would like to know if Dorico 3 will change these requirements significantly. I’m sticking with an upgraded MacBook Pro 2012 Unibody, with an i7, an SSD and 16GB of RAM on macOS 10.12 Sierra, and Dorico 2 is reliable but a bit sluggish. I would like to know if Dorico 3 will change this significantly or not.

I know the team has talked a great deal about improving Dorico’s performance of certain tasks. I very much doubt that would translate to heightened system requirements, though of course I’m just speculating.

The system requirements for the next version of Dorico won’t be different than those for Dorico 2, except as already stated (back in May) that it will require macOS 10.12 or later. We haven’t yet had a chance to rework the Setup mode operations that are especially slow, but we have plans in hand for this, and we have also looked for opportunities to improve the performance of general editing where possible. Certainly you should find the next version of Dorico no slower than the current version, and hopefully faster in some areas.

Nice! That’s wonderful news. I have no plans for changing my computer in the near future.