Dorico 4 - More Stability Please

A month ago, I could not change instruments in Dorico 3.5. I created a support ticket and never heard back from anyone regarding the problem. Several times Dorico crashed while entering in music. I would love to see a note tie to the 2nd ending, and some other easier enhances to the program, but before any more enhancements, Dorico needs to be more stable. Right now I cannot recommend this program to professional composers (even if some are using it now). Dorico has so many really cool features itā€™s fun to use. But if I made a living writing music, I would stay with Finale. So, please try harder to make this program more stable, maybe even have more people test it before the official upgrade. Also, respond to support issues. Most likely, the development team has too many to deal with to respond. Thatā€™s not good.

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Hi David, I really believe these crashes youā€™re experiencing are extremely uncommon, based on my experience with other users and here on the forum. Dorico has crashed for me once in the past three years, and I donā€™t believe my experience is unusual!

Of course that doesnā€™t fix your problem, I understand. Sorry you had such a delay in response. This forum is the place to get answers. I recommend posting your crash logs here, and a team member can help get to the bottom of it very quickly.

The support team and the development team arenā€™t the same people. You donā€™t appear to have mentioned your stability issue on this forum, though you may well have emailed the project and/or a diagnostics zip to somebody on the development team, I suppose, or via Facebook, perhaps.

Last week I worked with Dorico for 20 hours - I guess thatā€™s a quiet week - and I didnā€™t experience any crashes or hangs. I may not be a typical user, but my guess is that if Dorico were so unstable as to overwhelm the development team with support requests (which, again, go to different people), this forum would be similarly overwhelmed with complaints about hangs and crashes. It isnā€™t.

As to your change of instrument, did the existing instrument have ossias or staves added/removed? If so, thatā€™s a known limitation and, had you asked here, I have no doubt you would have received a reply within hours, if not minutes.

For the record, I had an unusual/unexpected wave of crashes (on exit) this weekend, which turned out to be caused by a corrupted expression mapā€¦ (no idea what caused that to developā€¦ But the Xmap editor is probably not totally bug free atmā€¦)

I canā€™t even remember if Dorico has crashed on me once in the last two years.

The trouble is, of course, that every computer is different. We all have third-party VSTs, other software running, different OS configurations. Youā€™ll find Finaleā€™s forum full of posts about crashes and freezes. Same with Photoshop, Word, or any other software. Thatā€™s not because the software is bad, but because ensuring that every possible combination of circumstances is handled correctly is very difficult.

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Dorico has only crashed on me once in the last year and I use it 2-5 hours per day professionally and Iā€™m running 7 year old weak hardware.

Crashes are definitely not normal.

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I had some crashes with Dorico while using The Pianoteq 6 vst, which stopped after pianoteq 7 came out. I donā€™t remember any other crashes. Iā€™m using the program between 4-6 hours daily. Working with large orchestral scores most of the time on a Mac with 8 gb ram.

I thought I read that Doricoā€™s architecture is being revised so they can add more features. Hopefully itā€™ll be really robust. Its been way more stable than a lot of weird issues with several versions of Finale (up to v 25).

Itā€™s encouraging to read so few responding to this post having problems! Most of my crashing in the past has been working with chord symbols. The last crash I experienced was working in the play section of Dorico. Not sure why it happened so I didnā€™t report it. But since I do experience more crashes than most, my confidence in the program is not as high as others.
To answer your question, there was nothing unusual with the instrument I was trying to change. The work around was to create a new instrument, copy the part from the old, and then delete the instrument I could not change. In the future, I will post any problem I have here first. Thanks for the advice.

If you could please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attach the resulting zip file to a reply here on the forum, Iā€™ll be glad to look into the crashes youā€™ve been experiencing.

Dorico Diagnostics.zip (647.8 KB)
I uploaded the file I created on Tuesday. Problems I have with Dorico currently are 1) Sometimes, when I go to play what I have written, all but one of the instruments disappear. I use the stock HALion Sonic SE instruments.


In the screenshot, you see that only the string bass is in the list. When I go to Play ā†’ Load Sound For Unassigned Instruments, all it does is add an extra String Bass to the list. Sometimes, I get my instruments back.
2) When I add a Text Box in Engrave mode onto a master page and it happens to be on top of another text box (Like the title), I am unable to put any text in the box I created. Dorico thinks I trying to edit the box under the one I created.
I have issues like this quite often, probably more than most users for some reason. Thanks for wanting to assist me!
David

  1. This is normal. The way around it is to use Alt-Shift-click to select specific overlapping items. Once you have the text box selected you wish to edit, press Enter to edit it. Donā€™t double-click.

If you inadvertently select one of the square handles instead of the entire box, press Tab to switch to the entire-box selection.

( in my experience Dorico is extremely stable, as long as one keeps playback out of the equation )

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Using the ā€˜Enterā€™ key Allowed me to enter text. Double click does NOT work. However, it does work if doing the same procedure to a single part/page. It would great if the procedure was the same in both areas.
However, when I go to any part, my ā€œHello Thereā€ does not display. I did select ā€˜Applyā€™ and ā€˜Closeā€™. Am I missing something?

Yes, as I said, double-click is not the way to go if there are overlapping frames. Enter is the way to go, as youā€™ve found.

If itā€™s not showing up correctly, either you have page overrides present (look for red triangles on the page icon), or you have a different master page assigned to that part.

There is nothing under ā€˜Pagesā€™. I do not see any red triangles.
There is only one master page set.

Youā€™re going to need to share the project, or at least some full-page screenshots. Otherwise Iā€™m just guessing!

Wave Lead.dorico (508.0 KB)
Itā€™s just a lead sheet for a small combo. I probably did something to mess it up.

You have a page override on page 1:

If you remove this override, your master page design will be displayed on the layout. Right-click and remove it.

PS: I see you deleted the flow header. To remove it, go to Layout Optionsā€”Page Setupā€”Flows.

In case itā€™s of use, hereā€™s a diagram that covers the title/header information shown by default and what Dorico calls them. Hereā€™s also some more information about flow headings.