And I believe they intentionally concentrated on playback on this release because it may be more efficient to develop and test 10 enhancements in the same region of the code.
There certainly are many improvements in this release that are totally unrelated to playback. It is my guess that the next release will have a primary concentration of a different part of the software.
For me this release is very much a dream come true (as if it were tailor made for my needs) and its features could not have come at a better time. Like having my own personal Christmas. Thank you so VERY much to the Dorico team…
There are different kinds of composers for sure and I’m not saying one way is right or better. Those like me are aiming for film or other types of placements and want to work from notation because frankly I (or we) just can’t THINK the same way about music and orchestration inside a DAW as we can from a score.
When I think of someone like Morton Subotnick, whose “Silver Apples of the Moon” was done in 1959 or so by combining loops and loops of hand cut magnetic tape and paper leaders - well that is just about as foreign as composing in a DAW feels like to me. Sure, I can drive one. But my brain would be in a whole other headspace. I’m VERY happy with the V5 approach.
The Pitch Contour Emphasis puts the resulting output of its player heuristics into the key editor. I see that as being farsighted. Magic is cool but you HAVE to be able to fix things, and that’s something the NP4 approach under-estimated, IMO.
And V5 does it with the least degree of distraction from the main task of writing music or score clutter. I don’t think you can expect any VSTi to match this kind of synergy with the score on its own. Especially with midi regions you can do pretty much whatever it takes to sculpt the output that you need (Very nice, creative implementation of that BTW, thank you! I HATED working with C0 key switches on a treble clef instrument, etc.) I predict that pitch contour is just the tip of the AI/rules playback iceberg this year.
I feel like Dorico sorta casually just crushed and redefined the MIR and visual mixer paradigms. I think few if any listeners are really gonna notice whether the clarinet player is 23 feet versus 27 feet away. But with the flexibility to use whatever sends in the stage model? My evil side thinks that can be ANYTHING. I’ll be casually swapping out my new “Rings of Saturn”, “cliffs of doom”, “Klezmer cafe” stages now 
Having 8 sends - there were ways around it before with the right libraries, but this opens up what I felt was one of the bigger limitations. Can do 5.1 surround now - can do lots of things with that.
I saw that Groove didn’t get a lot of up votes today. The thing is though - any music with a pop/modern drum set part is a pain for me. It’s on the list of parts I am most likely to want to have replaced with a live player, and I do feel silly writing endless bars that I know they aren’t going to attempt to actually read.
So Thank You!!! And if the next release is more focused on a different type of user, then I can’t in good conscience offer any complaints and you’ll still get my money.
I think the talk about notation or playback is exaggerated. Dorico is a composition AND notation application. And this version, as always, has a lot to offer for both sides. Until the scale stops exactly in the middle - nobody wants to wait that long.
As Daniel has already noted, the audible side has been neglected lately. Dorico 5 has caught up a bit. It’s high time for those who can also see and hear other applications with one eye.
Greetings
Bertram
Also educators of all kind need notation.
I personally do both. I teach in school and compose for a small Theater. Since they mostly can’t afford live musicians I used to write and produce in samplitude or Cubase. When I discovered Noteperformer 3 I changed the way I write. Demoed Sibelius an Dorico and chose Dorico (2) the same day!!! Interestingly a lot of my NP-Mock-ups where used. With NP4 and HOOPUS I’m sure even more of the Mock-ups I won’t have to re-do in Cubase.
And I think since mock-ups in Dorico (along with NP) come so close to usable/perfect, there’s a new group of customers. And that’s why many of them appreciate the playback improvements. Daniel S. posted in another forum, that Dorico could read the whole score at once in order to make phrasing decisions. That could be huge. For now it’s not even close to what NP does. But it gets work done for you, when you mix other instruments in with NP.
Also we should not forget the massive workflow improvements!
I am also one of those who would like Dorico to focus on the notation and engraving area of the program. The playback in Dorico is already good enough for my needs, as I write scores for human performers to play. But I do understand they are small team and the fact that most of Dorico users are probably not engravers.
While this update didn’t bring much for me, except a few things (multiple item creation, for example), I still paid the upgrade a few minutes after it was released because I am hopeful that more features for us engravers will be added in future releases.
I’m definitely looking forward to Dorico 5.1!
Yeah, me too: thank you so much for this amazing tool for all of us musicians and alike.!!!
Yes: because the Groove Agent drum sets are recorded with multiple mics and already have a reasonable stereo field, we default to not allowing you to position them on the Live Stage. But you definitely can do it: go to the Percussion Maps dialog, find the Groove Agent SE Studio Kit percussion map, and enable the option in the top section of the dialog to allow stage/space templates to be applied.
A.
Maz.
Ing.
Dorico 5 has solved basically the only two major issues I had with Dorico 4. Fab.
For those who are concerned that it is moving “too far” towards playback rather than notation, sleep easy. Adding playback features does not, as far as I know, intrinsically remove any notation features.
And yes, some of the new features are ones I won’t use. But presumably others will, so in general, hooray.
I know it isn’t exactly going to double Steinberg’s profits, but I can say with confidence that £85 will be winging it’s way too their coffers really rather soon.
Well done all the developers and three cheers!
Charlie
I’m assuming that this is out of the control of the Dorico team and completely on the Groove Agent team, but it would be nice if the Dorico team could lobby for at least one swing pattern and one son clave pattern to be included with GASE. It appears like none of the samples included with GASE are usable in a traditional jazz setting anyway. Obviously there are upgrade paths and add-ons with GA, but I would think jazz users would be more likely to upgrade if they could try out at least one pattern first.
Dear Todd,
I happen to have bought Absolute 6 when it was on sale earlier this year, so I do have the whole Groove Agent (which I never used before, since I was so fond of Superior Drummer 3…)
Anyway, I just downloaded the Jazz Essentials library, if you want me to apply it to a file of yours, be my guest!
Thanks for the offer!!! I honestly usually just trigger a SA! Jazz Drums sample or a SA! Bongos & Congas sample when I need some sort of basic groove in Dorico. It just seems like an odd omission that GASE doesn’t have any of those styles when bundled with a notation program. Obviously when bundled with a DAW or a standalone product, the grooves that it comes with are going to be more popular, but I would think the majority of people using those styles aren’t going to be overly concerned about notation.
What do you think of the Jazz Essentials library? I don’t have the full GA yet, but worth looking into?
John tells me that the Jazz Essentials expansion used to be included with older versions of Groove Agent SE, but was removed from version 5 for some reason. I’m going to talk to my counterpart who manages our instruments products to see whether there’s any chance he could be convinced to allow us to bundle Jazz Essentials with Dorico. I’ll report back in due course.
We’re doing similar kinds of work but I didn’t get the hit off this release the way you are talking, so it’s good to hear your perspective. I see what you’re saying now, yeah the humanizing is a toe in the door, just like what they did with the key editor this will go far beyond with this years updates. Maybe it’ll make NP optional now? Except as you say here we can do the necessary touchups, and maybe NP will still be there for those who don’t want to do any touchups.
On 5.1 I’ll have disagree, doing that kind of mixing just isn’t in the cards here, Dorico doesn’t have the final bounce capability to all the different formats you’ll probably need. And a lot of work is in ATMOS in Nuendo anyhow now, at least internally because it outputs to whatever final format people use (including earpods surround which are probably the most common these days.)
But finally good thinking on Groove Agent, you’re right I feel the same way, I have work to do with drums, synths and such and while I’d love to do that in Dorico it was too PITA, but now hmmmmm, you got me thinking.
In this update they did a great job in play mode do you have any plan to interpret the trills ?
Thanks for the solution, I will definitely do that. Even with a stereo field, it is not always desirable to “place” the drums in the center. In a big band, the drums are usually at stage right, so it is ideal to shift, even that stereo field, to the audience’s left. It can be a little disorienting to hear the instruments in the “wrong place.”
Personally, I would suggest defaulting to include the GA drums in the stage map. There is no reason not to, IMHO. Even if you leave it at center, it probably should go upstage.
I’m not sure that there are any useful jazz or Latin patterns, even in the full GA. I tried to find this information and could not find any listing of the loops that are available in full GA. I came to the conclusion that the people doing GA are all rockers. It is a shame because it is good technology and it would not be difficult to develop a basic set of 20 patterns that would cover much of the jazz/Latin spectrum at least at a minimal level.
This orientation is not surprising. The competitive VSTs also have a strong orientation to pop/rock/hiphop/contemporary Christian. But literally 1 good week of work could add an important dimension to the GA product.
========
On edit, I see from Marc’s post that Steinberg does have a “jazz essentials” pack. So I agree with you. They ought to sprinkle a little of that in into the GASE product.
========
On further research, here is the page that has all the GA expansions. It looks like they are each $25 and can be used with GASE. It isn’t 100% clear to me that these would actually emit MIDI that can be dragged into the Dorico PLAY view.
This covers a lot of jazz territory, but I can’t find your basic Latin styles anywhere in any of these packages.
There’s also Simon Phillips Jazz drums addon. Don’t have them, but they seem to cover some nice bits e.g. brushes
Here’s a little play-a-long track I had made last fall for students to practice with. I just updated it to D5, and added a SA! Brushes sample. I don’t have that Simon Phillips set either, but if it can do any brush stuff like this, it would be great to have at least one freebie sample in GASE!
One thing I just realized while assigning a MIDI Trigger to the above is that the popover only appears at the first bar. If I select a first bar in a region and scroll way forward in the project to select a bar at a much later point, the popover will of course be off screen when I go to assign a trigger. Maybe nothing can be done about it, but it could be nice if a trigger popover would just appear wherever the user currently is when assigning a trigger to a large region.
It’s a real disappointment that Dorico and Cubase are still not yet integrated. Switching between the two software is really painful. I hoped they could work together by now 
In my private opinion Dorico goes in a very right direction. In my work two the most frequent scenarios are: compose in Dorico and compose in Cubase. When I compose in Dorico I need proper tools to create partition and parts, BUT I also need a high quality mockup. Till D4 my fastest route was to compose then export individual instruments’ audio from Dorico to Cubase and there work on polishing the mockup. A (much) longer way was to export MIDI to Cubase and then work on a mockup. D5 seems to give now toolbox similar to Cubase. Of course less precise and the toolbox itself is smaller, but I have access to controllers and most of MIDI parameters, I have inserts, sends and, what is very important, more than one FX channel. Also the live stage and space features may help there as well if the proper reverb plugin is used. In general I’d say that Dorico team listens more than any other known to me company to what users say. I also appreciate some smaller changes, like the enhanced possibility to operate on material with mouse, not only with caret and keyboards. And a “double tap” is a cherry on the whole cake.