Dorico 5 update - thoughts

I agree, and I think the world is a lot less binary than that. There are at least 3 major areas of interest:

  • Notation: meaning what the end product can look like without extraordinary interventions
  • Playback: meaning what the end product can sound like without extraordinary interventions
  • Productivity/workflow/quality: meaning how can you get there as fast as possible.

There was not much in this release in terms of “notation” (i.e. expanding what visual effects can be added). But I don’t feel the product was lacking much of importance in this area. As I see it, 90% of the enhancements were split more-or-less evenly between playback and productivity.

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This is a very nice way to look at it! <3

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And as has been acknowledged umpteen times, the team can only focus on so much at any given time. They have to focus on something to bring it to any maturity. That necessarily precludes working on other things with the given development time.

Who wants to take a bet? If the D6 cycle focuses more squarely on engraving improvements, someone else will come along and complain that “there were essentially no improvements to playback! Dorico already made great scores, but I still can’t get the playback I want! arggggh!”

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I’m not sure if it has been mentioned here anywhere but @dspreadbury shared a lot of background on the release in the Dorico FB group which is absolutely worth a read, so for everybody who doesn’t have FB, I’m posting it here again.

Original source: DORICO – The Next-Generation Scoring Software | Hello everybody, Daniel here | Facebook

Hello everybody, Daniel here. Thanks for the lively discussion about Dorico 5 since its release yesterday, and thanks to John for being on hand here to answer questions from the user community. I want to step in to provide a bit of additional context for what we’ve worked on in Dorico 5, and why.

Firstly, I think it’s important to state that our vision for Dorico has not changed. We set out to build the ultimate tool for music notation, in all its forms. The fact that we had both Engrave mode and Play mode in the very first version of the software released back in 2016 indicates that we have always considered those two aspects of the application to be of more or less equal importance. To articulate it more clearly, our vision is to make Dorico the best tool to produce any kind of printed sheet music (within the confines of CWMN, in practical terms from the late Renaissance to the present day), to make it a comfortable, creative and productive environment to compose in, and to make it capable of producing high-quality, expressive audio renditions of the music that is composed or copied into it.

Each version takes us towards that initial vision in larger or smaller steps. Dorico 5 definitely takes us closer to the second and third of those three elements of our vision than to the first, though I hope that the steps we have taken towards the first, while perhaps small, are nevertheless useful and beneficial.

Though I’m sure nobody is really interested in a history lesson, we devoted the majority of our development time in the first seven or so years of working on Dorico to areas other than playback – essentially, only Paul was working on the Dorico side of the playback system, with Ulf leading the small team of borrowed Cubase engineers on the audio engine side. The piano roll editor that was in Dorico from version 1.0 until 3.5 started life as a proof of concept knocked up in a couple of weeks in 2015 and then heroically maintained by Paul over the coming years. The rest of the team was working on the application infrastructure, the user interface, the note input and editing code, the hundreds of engraving processors, major unique features like condensing, and so on.

In order to take bigger strides towards our goal of making Dorico capable of producing high-quality, expressive audio renditions, we needed to completely re-engineer the piano roll editor, and in particular, once we had come up with a satisfactory way to make orientating yourself between the music in notation and piano roll easier, we needed to bring it into Write mode, so that it can be fully integrated into the composition and editing process. This was a huge effort – one of our engineers worked on it throughout most of 2021, and then when he left the team at the end of the year, he handed the baton to another engineer, who then worked on it solidly for a further year, through the Dorico 4.0 release and all the way up through Dorico 4.3, which was released towards the end of last year. It’s hard to overstate what a massive effort it was to make the Key Editor in Dorico 4 as functional, powerful and well-integrated into the software as it now is – and to add some unique features along the way (like the histogram editor, and the ability to edit and sync data between multiple instruments simply and easily).

To put that effort into context, there are nominally seven engineers in the Dorico team. There were eight, but when András left us at the end of 2021, and it was judged that other teams in the company needed that extra pair of hands more than we did. And during Dorico 4 development, two of those seven engineers were working on Steinberg Licensing for the majority of the development period, so as to help deliver that vital new infrastructure not only to Dorico users but to all Steinberg customers – a high price to pay in terms of Dorico feature work, but we were pleased to put our shoulders to the wheel to make sure Steinberg Licensing is successful.

So to have 20% of our available engineering resources devoted to a single feature area for a year is really a very significant effort – and because the members of our team are individual, talented humans with complementary skills and expertise, they are not simply interchangeable cogs in a machine that can be swapped in and out at will. It doesn’t make sense to work on particular kinds of features if the developers best suited to those features are already allocated to another feature or another project. We’re all familiar with this idea: by working on one thing, we cannot also be working on something else at the same time.

And several members of the Dorico team have not been working directly on Dorico 5, either, instead turning their efforts towards another project that will not see the light of day for some time to come. We have to be able to take the difficult decision to invest in long-term projects at the expense of delivering more functionality today, and in the end we have to work with the people that we currently have on the team. It would be lovely to think that we could simply hire more engineers, but that’s not the reality we find ourselves in.

Looking at the strategic goals for Dorico 5 specifically, there has been a marked shift in the expectations of users of notation software over the past several years – a shift in which I think Dorico has played a significant role, but by no means the only one. People expect and want to be able to get better sounding playback out of their notation software, with less effort expended to get there. Real professional musicians working in the commercial/film/TV/games worlds need to be able to efficiently produce high-quality renders of their music in order to win pitches or even supplement live musicians in real productions. Even home-based composers and arrangers are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on high-end sample libaries and expect to be able to use them in their scoring software.

Our traditional competitors, Finale and Sibelius, are making no strides to meet this need – they are completely reliant on the heroic efforts of Arne Wallander to achieve it. This gives Dorico an opportunity to meet this growing need in the market, and to become the go-to software that allows you to efficiently write, compose and produce music in a notation-based environment. We want to meet this opportunity head-on, as we feel it’s absolutely in line with the original vision we have had and have been pursuing since the very beginning.

At the same time, we are also facing competitive pressure in the wider market from free solutions like MuseScore, which has a (much!) larger engineering team than Dorico, has an unbeatable price point, and can really be a strong “fast follower” in the market, seeing what its commercial rivals are doing and using its scale and level of investment to clone or even improve upon some of those things. While professional engravers might not look at MuseScore today and see a tool that interests them, that might not be the case in two or three years – and it is already the case for people who are interested in producing high-quality audio renders of their music, thanks to the very promising MuseSounds library that the Muse team are no doubt busily iterating on to improve its performance, sound quality, and interpetive capabilities.

This is the environment we’re operating in. A small, dedicated team with many more ideas than we have pairs of hands and brains to work on in any given period of time. A fiercely competitive market that has shifted dramatically in the past few years. A broad user base with hugely divergent use cases and demands.

Obviously we are well aware that Dorico 5.0 does not meet the needs of every group of users. It represents our best efforts to deliver a valuable set of features to address the current market needs as we perceive them, using the limited engineering resources available to us, and the very limited time (don’t forget that the last Dorico 4 update came out in March, just two months ago – we don’t have huge, separate teams working on different versions concurrently). We also have business objectives to meet: simply put, Dorico needs to make money for Steinberg, or we won’t be able to keep working on it indefinitely. Delivering update revenue, and even more importantly bringing in new customers who will hopefully stick with Dorico for the long term, is imperative.

I know it’s frustrating that one of the three main planks of our vision hasn’t taken significant steps forward in this release. I know, too, that these are all just words, and what you want to see is progress in the software itself. But I hope that this additional context at least provides you with some insight into our thought process, and into the constraints that we’re working under.

Making Dorico the ideal tool for engraving and publishing music remains absolutely as core to our vision today as it was when we joined Steinberg 11 years ago. We cannot make equal progress towards all aspects of our vision in every version. But no individual release is the end of the story. We are working as hard on Dorico today as ever, and you have my commitment that developing the engraving and graphical side of the software is as important to us as it has ever been.

In the meantime, while I do genuinely mean it when I say that if you don’t see $100 worth of value in this release, please don’t feel obliged to buy it – it really helps us if you do. It allows us to be sure that we can continue to pursue our vision, which includes everybody who is using Dorico today, and countless thousands more musicians who haven’t yet seen the light. We don’t take your support for granted, and we really do care about our users and your requirements.

Thanks for reading. I won’t be able to spend a huge amount of time in real-time looking at responses to this post, but I will definitely check in and read any feedback you take the time to share.

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Thanks for posting that here, Robin. I am an occasional Facebook user at best, and I do not participate in the Dorico group.

On top of Daniel’s comments here, I think it is worth emphasising the ongoing development that will happen now Dorico 5.0 is released. A lot of software using a non-subscription model delivers all its new features at a major version update, which is all you get until the next paid update as minor version updates are only used for bug and compatibility fixes. Daniel was explicit in the blog that more new features will emerge during the life of Dorico 5.x, just as they did for Dorico 4.x.

It is also the case that as Dorico matures, many potential new features are of more niche interest. This means some will find immense value in Dorico 5.0 whilst others find it has little to no value to them. Daniel is humble enough to say “do not upgrade now if you don’t find sufficient value in Dorico 5.0”. However, from a user perspective, I would encourage those that use Dorico and can afford an upgrade to upgrade now, to send a message to Steinberg that ongoing development is worthwhile and so that you will benefit from the further upgrades to come in the Dorico 5.x cycle.

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In addition to this, moving to Dorico 5 now allows one to incorporate its new features (where useful) into one’s use of the program before additional features pile up. Many of the users folks rely on here for answers were those I recall from the very early versions of the program; that is why they seem to (if they do not actually possess) such familiarity with the in’s and out’s of the program.

There is no substitute for experience (and, as Janus has recently mentioned, experimentation) with the software. Learning bit-by-bit is often the most useful course.

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Thank you, sincerely. I’m not on any social media anymore, so I’m grateful you shared this here.

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Thanks for sharing that !
I’m on FB but didn’t see this post.

To me, as I’m developping an app and have to do alone everything from design to coding to social media, etc… I’m seeing this v5 as the 80/20 rule I learnt about in some dev courses and that I am actually experiencing : 80% of the job is done in 20% of the time but the remaining 20% to be done takes 80% of the time.
Given how “few” new features were released in this version - especially in the notation area - compared to previous versions like v4, I have a feeling those were more these 20% things that took the team 80% of the time, probably because they were more demanding to develop.
Maybe I’m wrong though ?

But anyway, regardless, I think maybe now more than ever in this regard, as many people are feeling that v5 is underwhelming yet want to support the team, @dspreadbury & the team might you consider exceptionally sharing a roadmap of what’s to come this year in terms of features (even if not all of them), to keep us excited and motivate us to support your work right now rather than wait for 5.x ?
I know this goes against your usual practice but if it results in making more money and Steinberg giving you more resources that can’t be bad, right ?
I mean if you tell us now that this year will finally see the ability to hide cautionary time & key signatures & handle swing/straight metric modulation without workarounds and using Metrico, those will be worth alone the cost of the upgrade to me and I’ll do the update now :grin:

We really can’t share our roadmap in any kind of detail because the risk that plans will go awry is just too high. Software development is hard, and all manner of unanticipated problems can occur. The only time I really feel confident saying that something will be delivered is if we’ve already implemented it and it’s run the gauntlet of getting past our testers.

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I don’t think anyone is lacking enough common sense to actually think that.

It’s more about product direction and where development focus will be put moving forwards. They are basically concerned that focus is being put more on playback-oriented features than the notation/engraving features - so any improvements in the future will bias in that direction.

No one thinks that adding playback features “intrinsically” (lol) removes any notation features. That makes zero sense :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t agree with your supposition (e.g. why they think this), but I do empathize with their concerns, even if I don’t necessarily agree that is the case.

I see that attempts at humour can only be counted as successful if they aren’t inadvertently taken seriously…

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The “lol” was because the term intrinsically isn’t exactly the optimal adverb to use in that scenario - it’s a nuance thing.

Also, nothing about that statement or those directly surrounding it has a hint of humor in it.

Unless your humor is drier than the Sahara.

Ok! I had tried to signpost the humour with the words “sleep easy” and the word “intrinsically” is meant to convey irony.

I suspect from your spelling of the word “humor” that you are not the target audience of this type of dry British humour…

Two nations divided by a common language &c.

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This is true at all levels from full-time professional composer/arrangers to those doing smaller projects with more limited reach. And this acceleration of technology is by no means limited to music notation. A graphics artist who continues to use the same tools and approaches that worked in 2010 would find it considerably more difficult to sell their work today. A person producing short videos to promote a business on social channels simply cannot succeed using the tools and quality of results that were well accepted in 2015. And so on.

I know there are many people who have keen interest in periods of music that are archaic or at least arcane today. I certainly admire people who pursue fields of interest off the beaten path. But I do think a certain realism has to come into play when vendors are trying to figure out what development priorities are most likely to keep the rent paid and the lights on.

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Agreed.

A few years ago, I remarked on how nice it was to see so much more enthusiasm for playback compared to the days of Sibelius, but with Dorico 5, I see that the attitude of the notation crowd hasn’t abated much. There’s still considerable hand-wringing and open malcontentedness at any episodic focus on playback by the developers. It’s 2023 and people are still doing this.

I’m hugely thankful that Daniel and his team have committed to a more visionary approach that doesn’t relegate playback and production to third-class status.

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I do think it’s a bit funny when people who are upset about this 5.0 release claim that they know what the broader market is.

Err, no. I doubt you do. Better to just stick with, “I wanted X and didn’t get it.”

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I very much agree with that. Acknowledge this once and go on. Furthermore, what Craig said above is very true. My eldest is a 3D artist and 3D lighter. He just finished participating in the lighting for the soon to be released Transformers movie for example (insert snarky, cynical comment here). He is CONSTANTLY taking online upgrade courses on new technology. The ground shifts under that profession all the time. For me, I have indeed gained more interest in playback as well as engraving in order to remain competitive. I’m turning 61 on Monday and I’m still learning new tricks - both big and small. No feature is truly insignificant to me. My mock-ups are expected to sound better and better as time goes by for example. I do this for a living and I need tools like Dorico, so every update counts.

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Thanks for the repost, iterates what I thought for the most part, but really good to hear that the philosophy is that Dorico is a three legged stool, equal parts engraving, productivity and playback. As important as playback is for me I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see how much effort is going into it (FYI tweak on Daniel’s post, only the top AAA games have budget for extensive live musician tracks, most games rely on bounces, if they can afford a composer at all because games are probably the hardest of all software projects).

I had kind of assumed playback was an add-on to the seemingly most important jobs of engraving and productivity, but as a product differentiator it’s a smart move to make world class notation program playback.

We live in the best of times folks! The engravers already have a fantastic feature set, productivity is high with Dorico and still improving, and now playback is becoming absolutely top drawer.

Yeah in our small team I also spend a good portion of my time doing 3D art, lighting and rendering. I kind of laugh when I see some of the angst here in the forums, folks just don’t know how good they have it.

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I’ll go on a limb and put my bet that this is DAW integration. One engineer on the Dorico/Core library side, the other on the DAW (Cubase/Nuendo) side. This cycle looks to be all about playback, and the perfect end to the fireworks will be to enable seamless handoff to DAW for futher mixing/rendering if desired. Two engineers is a lot for this feature maybe, but I’d guess it’s more of the Dorico “goodwill” loans, since the bulk of the revenue probably comes from the DAW side and they probably can’ t afford putting anybody on it anyhow. Just maintenance of Cubase/Nuendo must be a nightmare.

There, I said it, we can laugh at this post later.

I very much disagree with this. I’m quite happy for Dorico to please and prove a useful tool for lots of people but I think it’s extremely depressing that it seems the market won’t support the development of publisher-grade notation software. If Dorico will fail in this respect, it’s a bleak outlook.
Whatever good things there are in Dorico 5, there’s something odd going on when the Dorico 5 wishlists found in this forum could, with very few changes, be renamed for Dorico 6.

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