Hi
Doing a lot of musical scores. Here I often have 30 flows in a project. But I experience serious lagging during almost all operations.
An example is creating a new instrument is about 15 sec to open the instrument selection box!
Does anybody knows if this will be taking care of in the coming updates?
ps. I have a MacPro 6.1 6core with 64 gigs and all SSD, so it’s hardly the hardware.
Just wondering if you have the setting enabled to have flows start new pages or not (not sure exactly what the setting is called).
I experience the same performance issues as the OP. Fortunately I don’t work with more than a half dozen flows most of the time.
It’s certainly an issue that is well-known.
Musicmind, it would be helpful if you could attach your big project. Each big project that a user reports as being slow normally exhibits a different combination of factors that exposes something we can then work on. So please attach your project here, or email it to me at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de, and include in your email specific details of the things you find to be slow, including which flow, layout, instrument, and bar you are trying the operation on.
Hi Daniel
I sent you a project some time ago, where I experienced lagging in inputting lyrics. I will send the current one also.
Regards Stig
Regarding lyrics, as we’ve said before, including in your other almost identical thread, the issue with some characters going missing during lyrics input is going to be fixed in the forthcoming update. The other issues you describe, like adding and removing players, are unfortunately by their nature slow at the moment. But are you really spending the majority of your time working in Dorico adding and removing players? We do have plans to improve the performance of operations in Setup mode in the future, but you should not expect any significant changes in this area in the forthcoming update.
For many of us - I presume - Dorico is a revelation, with new focus on lay out options and the possibility to assemble several “songs/number/movements” into one whole project in a single file. Well I think this is THE most significant difference comparing Dorico to Sibelius and Finale.
For those of us using Dorico every day on a professional basis - making a living - it’s tempting to re transcribe some of our older projects in Dorico, and that’s my situation right now.
Over the next 2 years I will re transcribe more than 15 musicals hopefully using Dorico, many of them origins from Sibelius or Finale.
That’s why I’m so much up front with the way Dorico behaves when several flows are in use. Being one of Dorico’s significant selling points I think it’s okay that I do that, right?
So my issues are NOT alone with inputting lyrics, transposing percussion instruments in a drum staff and so on. It’s almost every aspect of the program that reacts very slow when more than a handful of flows are involved.
I send you (John Barron) a mail the 18th of September regarding the problem with the lyrics input, and he replied that he would send it to the team. Since then I have received the information, that turning of System Track will help. Short after there was a smaller update, but it didn’t solved the problem. So I didn’t get any information like: “In the next update we have solved the problem.”
Regarding the problem with creating/deleting players,it occurs when importing XML from Sibelius. Although I have tried to streamline the process, I have 2-5 new players every time I import a XML file. So then I have to copy the music to the right players, delete the superfluous players and lay outs.
I volunteered to be a tester of Dorico, before it was launched. I have been working with this stuff for about 30 years, I have been teaching Finale and I wrote a book about Finale too. I work as a Music Director and arranger full time, have extensive experience with DAWS and computers so I thought I would qualify, well I didn’t. Some of the “funny” decisions in Dorico: chords symbols displayed in staffs where the player don’t play (!), staffs that doesn’t transpose when you add G clef vb8, maybe would have been caught.
Finally, I have been advocating for Dorico quite intense here in Denmark, so I’m a supporter!! But I also make a living doing this, so I think it’s appropriate to have an opinion, and a hope that the team behind Dorico will listen.
You can be sure that we are listening, to you and to all of our thousands of users. I have also been doing this for a sufficient number of years that it can be counted in decades, and so have my colleagues in the development team. I think we have demonstrated over the last two years that we are both listening to our users and working very hard to deliver excellent software. It is inevitable that more or less every user with specific needs will find something either missing or a design decision to disagree about when examining complex software that covers an equally complex domain.
I know that me offering you assurances that we know that operations like adding and deleting players are slow and that we will improve them in future doesn’t actually make the software any faster today. If it were simple to do, it would already have been done. The team has plenty of ideas about how to do it, but we have to try to achieve a balance in everything we’re working on, being sure not to let technical debt accrue while still delivering new functionality as quickly as we can. Hopefully you can at least appreciate that I will not promise something we cannot deliver, and that you can have a direct conversation with the people who are designing and building the software. Again, I know none of this actually makes your work any faster on a day-to-day basis, but hopefully you will at least appreciate that we are listening and we understand the things you are saying.
Musicmind, as a workaround you might try importing each MusicXML into a new project, then exporting the flow from there, then importing that flow into your main project. It might cost you more clicks but it’ll save you time if, by the time you import into your main project, you’ve already persuaded Dorico not to create new instruments.
I do appreciate your respond, it’s an example to be followed.
What I need is you specific addressing the issues that I have brought up. Will there be an improvement in the way Dorico handles projects with more than a handful of flows?
Right now it’s a balance between the time spend to try to impose the new standard developed in Dorico, that I have created for my client to older projects created in Sibelius or Finale compared to try to make Sibelius look like Dorico, it can be done.
So I think that you might be in the same position that I often find my self in, the value of my product isn’t necessary a value point that my client focuses on.
I think your lay out is marvellous, and looks means a lot to me, but I need to know if the issues that I - and some others I think - have will be taken care of. Will they?
Here’s a list:
I’m sure there are more. But regardless how much I’m looking forward to all the improvements you are preparing for us in the next update I need to know if these issues will be taken care of.
Regarding the suggestion that I could divide the project in to several “sub projects”, I have tried that, so I have prepared the 2. act of the show separately. Importing those flows back in the main project, caused Dorico to create 3 new players, because the drum map used in the 2. act wasn’t precisely the same as in the first. Same problems with the guitar player, that plays one song in the 2nd act on acc. guitar, so Dorico will create a new player to accommodate that. And the Bass needs to be 5 string in some songs in 2. act.
So it wasn’t that successful.
I appreciate that you have a specific list of issues that you want to see addressed, Stig. Let me try to give you the briefest possible answers to your seven points raised above, referring you where possible to places where you can read more discussion:
Hi Daniel
Thank you for your answer.
It seems that I can’t get an answer to my questions. You refer to threads that are similar, where we discuss the same issues. For most of the discussions your respond is that you might consider to improve the app.
Just to be precise:
When you invite me to send you my projects so you can try to solve the problems, I think I might have the right to receive a straight answer from you or your staff. Sorry for being a pain in the a… 
What on earth do you mean that you’ve not received a single response from us? I have been talking to you here in all of your threads. Do I have to also email you as well?! I’m becoming rather exasperated. I hope you will forgive me for pointing out that you don’t have a right to a reply from me or from anybody. I am doing my best to provide answers to your questions. Your questions and concerns are not unique. You are one of thousands of Dorico users. I do my best to listen to the concerns and questions of all of them, but nobody has a right to an answer from me. Now you are also criticising the fact that other members of the commnuity are trying to help you because they are not Steinberg staff.
I daresay that if we met in person we would get on just fine, and obviously I know that despite your English being excellent (and infinitely better than my Danish, of course), it is not your first language, so I’m trying to be respectful of that, but there is a tone of entitlement in your posts that does rather rub me up the wrong way. I would ask you to consider moderating your tone, and remember that despite your frustrations, we are actual human beings as well as being the rather dehumanised term “Steinberg staff”, and we both appreciate courtesy, and try to offer it in return.
Allow me to be even more direct:
In what universe is this not an answer?
As has been explained many times (8vb treble clef playback - Dorico - Steinberg Forums and Treble clef 8va below - Dorico - Steinberg Forums for example) the clef system is the way it is because some people use 8vb clefs and some people don’t bother. No tenor singer is going to read a treble clef at pitch, whether it’s got an 8 under it or not. No guitarist is going to play treble clef at pitch whether it has an 8 under it or not. No bass player is going to play bass clef at pitch, whether it’s got an 8 under it or not. You can compensate for the transposition (or lack thereof) for playback purposes already.
Surely this is a direct answer, and a very good one indeed.
For a senior representative of the development team to respond routinely to customer queries, provide helpful guidance, offer detailed insight into the philosophy and future plans of the program’s development, and even offer to do personal work such as reviewing scores, editing files, adapting templates and so on… these add up to a far higher level of customer service than I have ever encountered from any other software company. (Try making a similar request to, say, Adobe or Google and see what kind of response you get.)
To me, the fact that the team also engages directly with feature requests, often by saying “Thank you, you have a good point, and we will consider improving this behaviour in the future” is frankly amazing.
Of course it can be a bit disappointing to receive a response like that about something that you consider important. On occasion, it might seem that not only are OUR priorities FAR more obvious and important than everyone else’s, but that we also deserve to KNOW FOR SURE exactly WHEN and HOW those priorities will be addressed. But I think it’s also pretty clear how unfair that judgement is.
If I were you, I would give a friendly apology to Daniel for pissing him off, accept his kind and detailed responses as the end of the matter, and then either (a) enthusiastically await future improvements to the software, or (b) stop using the software, as you see fit.
I appreciate other members of the community leaping to my/our defence, but let’s please not pile on Stig/Musicmind. Thanks.
It is my observation, following many threads here, that one may not express one’s disappointment about software that is marketed and sold as “Pro” while some features are still half-baked. Let’s be honest, Dorico is not yet ready for an overall daily and professional use, or at least in a small area where it performs satisfactory. I know that followers of the Dorico tribe, will jump on me, as they did on Musicmind like a pack of wolves. He has the right to express his disappointment and they even go this far to lecture him into an apology? Wow, are we in kindergarten here? Don’t think so.
What I appreciate about this forum is the generally professional interaction between posters, even when there is sharp disagreement.
You’ve made repeatedly clear to everyone how much you dislike Dorico. But I’m sure any constructive contributions you could offer (to this discussion or any other) would be welcomed by the community here.
My view is that people are certainly very welcome to express disappointment, just as others are welcome to express satisfaction. Disagreements in this forum about Dorico’s performance are evidence of that. I am on record here on both sides of the fence 
As for my comments above, and suggested apology, that was nothing to do with the quality of the software at all, or to complaints about it. I was responding to the implication that Daniel and the other Steinberg employees here were not providing good customer service in their interactions with us. I do feel quite strongly that we get excellent service.