Hi All
“I’ve been using Dorico Elements 5 for a short time and, compared with Sibelius, it feels a bit cumbersome. If I subscribe to Dorico Pro, is it worth it?” Sibelius i better?
Thanks
You’re asking on a forum of Dorico users whether they prefer Dorico, so your answer may be somewhat skewed!
There is no subscription to Dorico Pro – only a straight fee for buying in, and small upgrade costs every two years for new versions (which you don’t have to buy, but it’s usually worth it).
But before any answer can be given, we need to know: what kind of music do you write? What are you hoping to do with it?
You can obtain trial versions of Dorico Pro and Sibelius, so you can test and compare them both.
Both will have different ways of doing things. There’s likely to be advantages (for each) in some areas and disadvantages in others.
I’ve never used Sibelius, but there are plenty of folks here who have moved from there. I don’t think there’s much traffic in the opposite direction.
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Dorico of any level is a totally different software from Sibelius. You say that Dorico elements is ‘cumbersome,’ but it’s not clear to me what you mean by that. You can’t expect to take anything you’ve learned from Sibelius and apply it to Dorico, either Elements or Pro. You pretty much have to forget everything and start from scratch. If that’s ‘cumbersome,’ then Pro will not improve it!
Having said that, I made the switch back at Dorico 1.4, and I have never regretted it.
Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions about how and why I made the switch.
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I used Sibelius from its very first days on Acorn.
Until Dorico was conceived and developed.
Then - like many users - I happily switched; and, even more happily, never looked back: Dorico is vastly superior in every way.
As other posters say and imply, when you say ‘cumbersome’ you may be experiencing nothing more than unfamiliarity with Dorico. Good luck!
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I apologize — I got a little mixed up. I actually meant to talk about Finale, not Sibelius.
The truth is that I only used Finale for a short time because I eventually realized that I was using an illegal version. I also read somewhere that Finale is no longer actively supported, so I decided to switch to Dorico Elements 5.
Finale is quite different from Dorico. Finale had been very flexible for many years, especially when it came to editing scores — I could freely move notes, text, chords, and graphics around the page. I could literally drag elements wherever I wanted. Finale also didn’t correct my mistakes or force me to follow rhythmic rules.
I also found the playback in Finale to be more responsive.
Dorico, on the other hand, is a much more “intelligent” piece of software: it won’t allow me to create “incorrect” measures (for example, it won’t let me have five quarter notes in a 4/4 bar without addressing it). I’m more used to a freer way of working, like I could in Finale.
I have a guitar equipped with a MIDI pickup, and I was hoping to record my compositions directly into notation. However, life isn’t that simple. The problem is that human performance is always a bit imprecise. Even though Dorico plays back my recordings correctly, the resulting score looks quite chaotic and is hard to read — lots of slurs, unnatural rhythms, and awkward groupings.
So I’m struggling a bit with this, but I hope that over time, and with the help of the good people on this forum, I’ll manage to figure it out.
Thanks again for your reply, and warm greetings!
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Hi @palmer1, and welcome to Dorico. For this specific usage (lining up freely played music with no metronome for example), I would suggest to use Dorico in conjunction with Cubase 14: Cubase has the warp tool functionality, that is exactly what you may need for such cases, and then you can export your file directly as Dorico project: very neat 
Maybe this posts/thread are interesting for you (click to expand):
If you have any questions about polishing MIDI recordings directly into Dorico, please ask and post examples, and we will gladly help.
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You can drag things around in Dorico. In Write mode you can drag things to specific locations in the time line, or notes to different pitches. In Engrave mode you can drag objects to different places (without affecting how they would playback)
Dorico certainly will allow “incorrect” measures… You can place and delete barlines wherever you want without Dorico objecting.
Personally, I’m not sure I’d list this as a positive. Putting 5 beats in a notionally 4/4 bar is just going to confuse anyone that reads it, and the computer may not understand it, if you want playback, etc.
Dorico is designed to help you – particularly to do all the tedious things like moving stuff around the page to avoid collisions, which you had to do in Finale. If you tell it what you want, it will follow those instructions. (All the Engraving, Notation and Layout Options.) If you find yourself ‘fighting’ Dorico, check whether there is an option to ‘instruct’ it, instead.
Have you tried Dorico’s quantisation?
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