I’d suggest this is a dilemma that has faced every software product manager (every car maker and most other products) since the beginning of marketing as a discipline. If I understand things correctly, the D4 release concentrated (among other things) on taking a major leap in the playback portion of the product. At some point, they concluded it was best to essentially rewrite large parts of that.
D4 delivers some real benefits in that area having to do with allowing more control over the various MIDI parameters and automation curves. It also seems that in a few cases, some users of certain VSTs find this to be a big step backwards. I don’t doubt what you are saying, but I would suggest that of those who are keenly interested in this part of the program, D4 is mostly seen as an advance. It does seem unfortunate that you suffered a setback that came as a surprise. I doubt that Steinberg did that intentionally, and perhaps there could have been better warnings.
I am just another user so I can’t speak for the company, of course, but I would be very surprised if they were not willing to give you a full refund, if that matters to you. That wouldn’t compensate for the time lost and frustration, but maybe it would help. Or maybe they can give you some guidance when your setback might be addressed.
in Dorico once you set triplets going they continue until you press backspace. In Sibelius – at any rate my version – you had to keep on reinitiating them as far as I can remember.
As the Dorico 4 manual mentions, somethings are not yet included in this version (tempo, dynamics lane,…). So at one point they decided to release 4 without those be finished.
Welcome to the forum, @mrphyzz, and thanks for your feedback. In an ideal world, of course we would have waited to release Dorico 4 until every last bit of the existing Play mode had been reimplemented in the new rebuilt version, but unfortunately that wasn’t a viable option for us, for a variety of reasons. We have done our best to be transparent and up-front about that, both in the PDF documentation provided with the application, and in the blog posts etc. that I wrote about the software at the time of its launch.
It does, however, sound to me as if some of the problems you are experiencing are not to do with functionality that is missing in Dorico 4.0, but rather with some misconfiguration on your computer. I’d be very happy to try to assist you with that. The first thing to try with your existing project where everything sounds the same would be to go to Play > Playback Template and to re-apply your chosen playback template. Let me know how you get on.
thanks for your response. i cannot decipher what is expected in “playback template”. i may have gone through setting it up before, but i don’t recall. an attempt at locating documentation by searching dorico help for “playback template” yields the definition of “play” and “playback techniques”.
an attempt at simply setting up various vst instruments and assigning them channels failed. wasn’t this possible in 3.5? i do not recall it being difficult.
what is the meaning of the various settings in “playback template”? where is the documentation located? thank you.
thanks for the practical question . i don’t think it’s a matter of which vst i use in terms of assigning channel to instrument and hearing playback of proper instrument per channel, which is my main current problem, but it’s also no secret. this is my setup, which ran for a couple of years without hitch on d3 pro, then 3.5 pro:
1.vienna instruments pro (bass clarinet) shares part with 2. vi pro clarinet
3…vi pro (baritone sax) shares part with 4. vi pro soprano sax
5. superior drummer 3 drum set
6. vi pro vibraphone
7. electri6ity electric guitar (kontakt)
8. synthogy ivory piano
9. spectrasonics omnisphere electric piano
10. vi pro contrabass
incidentally, i don’t see the use of playback template for this situation. i just want to (a) select vst per track, or part; (b) assign it a playback channel corresponding to its place in the score, as above.
thanks!
i am aware that this is indeed a question for product managers, and i remain unsatisfied with the choice that was made here. i don’t see nearly as much of this kind of thing with logic (user since '89) or ableton (user since '10), to cite two somewhat related examples. well before the sale of logic to apple, c-lab was careful to meticulously document their releases, and new features were for the most part intuitive and even fun to learn and use. of course, logic/apple did drop significant further development of their notation section altogether, but that’s another matter…
I am not disputing your conclusion at all. But I would point out that Dorico has been primarily focused on notation. They put a basic playback capability in place, but it was never the main priority in the earlier releases.
Many of us have encouraged an expansive view of the notation program to encompass big parts of the DAW functionality. It seems to me that the Dorico team concluded this really required a big rewrite. And they also concluded they couldn’t get everything 100% done in a time-frame that made sense for a product release.
This did result in some awkward loose ends. There is a dichotomy here. Much of the existing user base appreciates the release coming out at this time, even with the loose ends. But it could be very off-putting to new users. However, most new users just aren’t very likely to dig this deeply into the playback section in their first few months on Dorico. That is the calculus, I believe.
I would also point out that this time line was largely driven by Steingerg’s desire to have Dorico launch with the new licensing scheme ahead of Cubase and Nuendo in order to shake down any issues resulting from the licensing. That probably was a significant factor in the decision to go forward with the loose ends in the playback area. And once again, the new licensing was something that much of the user base is very passionate about.
Bottom line, Dorico is less mature and much faster-evolving than either Logic or Ableton. it is definitely a trade-off.
FWIW I am quite happy with the choices - and yes I am a very heavy user of the Play tab and VST’s. I guess this is a data point that you can’t please all of us, and I think this was an extraordinary confluence of technical factors that doesn’t make a good comparison to any other release. Factors like M4 that hit the whole industry and weren’t limited to Dorico, as it seems to be raining issues and updates in most of my stack from Cherry Audio to Opus to Spitfire to Slate and Sound ID…
That said - I agree that the play panel changes take some getting used to. I think the key is in accepting that while it is a hybrid view, it remains focused on parts like the notation. Note that the sequencer for PARTS mostly takes center stage on this tab. The inspector allows you to dig into the routing of a part.
Whereas VST’s in the rack are shared assets (or can be) I think of them as infrastructure of a sort, and the better my library / templates are, then the less often that I need to open up the Rack at all since there are quick links in the inspector.
Anyway, does that help at all?
I do wish that the channel in the inspector was the full version of the channel as it appears in the mixer with access to inserts and send level. Since I try to not spend my life at one desk, It would be handy when I’m running my laptop without an external monitor not to need the full mixer window just to tweak the reverb say. But that is a far cry from calling anything broken.
As an aside - I WANT to like the EQ built into the mixer as a quick-and-dirty, but I’m struggling with it. What I really want at the moment are low and high pass filters. Maybe you could make the filter type selectable? I’m sure we all have some fancy pants, analyzer, dynamic or magic sweetener go-to EQ. This is just for utility tasks like that for me. Not broken, just not my use case. Less you want to throw in a swap-able SSL or something…
thanks @wcreed, appreciate the screenshot! alas, i have no idea how to make an expression map, or what that has to do with a playback template. and i dare not refer to the documentation, if it exists, for it may be out of date.
i did however manage to finally get most vst instrument sounds assigned. it’s as shockingly simple as selecting your instrument on the play page, adding a vst for it under “vst rack” and choosing its patch in the vst, then opening “routing” and selecting the vst you previously added. there it is. thanks @MiloDC for the graphics!
i still have a drum set problem though, the thing about playing only note. any tips and tricks-- the more graphically shown and simply explained, the better-- on how to make drum mapping possible would be greatly appreciated. i know how to midi map in superior drummer, and my midi keyboard will play back all the drums and cymbals nicely. why they do not simply appear as notation on the write page, i do not know, but then i never owned a program that would do that.
i do wonder how others work; to me, the first thing before writing a single note is selecting the instruments i want to hear.
agreed about the licensing. i was in touch with steinberg help about that dinosaur (so, dare i disconnect my ilok key now?). agreed also about less mature than logic, although logic was always great about releasing stuff that worked and was painstakingly documented, even when they were young. bottom line for studio types who also notate though, logic/apple dropped notation integration development some time ago, so dorico is the way to go, no question. the takeaway: dorico 4 is all i have (3.5 not better, upon renewed inspection), and i need to make it work. so thanks to all for the help!
It’s the right workflow. Let me explicit this in the Dorico ecosystem.
You add a player in Setup mode. You give it an instrument (or a set of instruments, for instance a drum set). Then Dorico will apply automatically the default playback template (the original is HSSE+HSO) will assign one drum set from HSSE, along with the appropriate percussion map. You notate your music and Dorico will play it accordingly. But it only works flawlessly if you let Dorico do it. If you modify manually anything in Play mode in the routing, or in any vsti applied, Dorico ceases to help you (because it assumes you know what you are doing and does not modify anything you changed).
There’s a very easy way to give Dorico its powers back, Play menu>Playback Template > apply a playback template (again). You will lose any manual change you’ve done but chances are it will all work again.
Another thing, you mention you have problems to input notes with your keyboard. There are some very interesting options here in Dorico (Input note Options I think). You can choose either to enter notes as if the drum set were a g clef staff, or use the notes defined in the percussion map. Once you understand those two options, I am confident you will understand how to input your score easily.
Hope it helps.
A small addition in subject of Mixer that may be a helpful hint to the developers team. I have a classic strings setup (v1, v2, vlas, cli, double basses on VEP7) each section to its own port. The expression map for basses sitting in port 5 has in “init” a C#4 ks to initiate basses on sus articulation. For some reasons this information is also sent to v1 sitting in port 1 what makes them play this note endlessly. More details: this C#4 is sent only to port 1 channel 1, other ports are not impacted, removing the key or switching v1 to channel 2 removes the sound, the same VST config connected to Cubase with C#4 played in basses is not sent to v1. So, it seems that there is kind of “leak” between port 1 and port 5.
Witold
I have read this whole exchange with a great interest that also prompted me to pass a sort of explaining message:
Dorico from the beginning had in mind the additional possibility of sculpting the score by letting us access its details in DAW-like way. And, together with the concept of expression maps, this idea made it the candidate for the best notation program on the market.
Obviously, seems like the more experienced users’ appetite “grew with eating” and we not only find this functionality “intrinsic”, but we see more and more use for it so its hiccups are more unnerving than it really deserves.
In my opinion Dorico 4 is a great, great concept, we only want to get to the point where it works 100%. And, following Daniel’s responses, it will happen, hopefully sooner than later.
And why is it important? Because in my experience fully working Dorico 4 shortens my composition-release cycle in half or in some case reduces it to 1/4, especially when the score does not require extremely sophisticated sound processing that must be done in Cubase. Access to all CCs, velocities, full control of articulations, note lengths and expressions plus basic abilities of using FXs in some cases allows for producing more than a decent mockup without even leaving Dorico. And that is the real power of this software.
Witold
…will report back)
. i don’t think it’s a matter of which vst i use in terms of assigning channel to instrument and hearing playback of proper instrument per channel, which is my main current problem, but it’s also no secret. this is my setup, which ran for a couple of years without hitch on d3 pro, then 3.5 pro:
