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Dorico
21

Sorry again… Mr. Roland, you say you are not a Steinberg/Dorico SW developer, but you keep talking about features “we” have or that “we” need to improve, etc. Do you, or do you not, work for Steinberg? Maybe you should be working for them. Your explanations of how some things work are fairly good. Why don’t they hire you to write their user manuals? I’m not joking.
As I said in a different thread: features that are not documented might as well not even exist. If I’m going to pay hundreds of $$ for these features, Steinberg has to let me know about them, and not force me to search thru manuals for other products such as Cubase elements or Halion this or that. As I’ve said, I’m not that interested in using Dorico and its plugins to make a final production recording. I have my own way of doing things. And for users who DO want to use all these fine things that are included, it’s even more important to explain how they work.

I’ll tell you one last thing: here’s how a DAW product that was several years ahead of its time got killed. I worked for five years with Avid Technology in the early 1990’s. I was on a small team of software engineers creating a product called AudioVision. AudioVision was the first high-quality multi-track DAW with integrated picture capabilities. The basic idea was to make a tooI for audio engineers who neded to edit to picture. It was a companion to Media Composer and Film Composer, and was very advanced for its time. The problem with it was, it was rushed into release prematurely, with inadequate testing and very poor manuals, and a bunch of marketing people puffing up all these features that it “will have real soon now,” and so on. Many people liked it, but not enough of them, and we were always scrambling to put in features that users had paid for already. Result: Avid simply swallowed up Digidesign and acquired ProTools; then they killed AudioVision, assigned some of the team to add video features to PT, and too bad for the rest of the team. This was a very distinguished bunch of developers; 1 or 2 went on to Apple where they helped develop the Core Audio engine for Mac OS. Another one created a very prominent sequencer/DAW product that still exists and is doing very well in the marker. I won’t name any names.

Lesson: somebody’s visions of the future are not what people are going to buy, however wonderful that supposed future may be, or how fantastic the engineers are.

I was a software engineer and then a technical writer for over 30 years, and I also know what a compressor is, by the way. I was working with analog technologies such as ARP, Moog, Oberheim, E-mu, etc. when that was “the future.” Then I worked with MIDI technologies, and now I work with DAWs. I’ve seen a lot of visionaries come and go. In the 1970’s, electronic musicians dreamed of the day when they could somehow have a machine that would let them create a score and then play it. Maybe Dorico will fulfill that dream. Maybe not. It’s off to a good start, but excuses about what “we will do” sometime won’t take it there.
Good day - JD

22

The only people here that work for Steinberg are people with non-blue usernames - most of them are red; there’s the odd yellow one.

Until late December there was NO manual whatsoever. We (the users) generally did just fine, for a year, with
a) instruction videos
b) <1000 words of online help (which has recently been massively fleshed out)
c) self initiative; trial and error
d) polite forum discussion

If there had been a manual it would have been out of date four times in a year (that’s how many significant software updates there were).

The vast majority of users here have managed just fine, and actually published a fair amount of music engraved in Dorico.

23

It’s true that I say ‘we have’ or ‘we need/want’ as a user of Dorico. I sent in my money (knowing full well it is a version 1 product, short on a lot of show stopping features at the time) and use the product pretty often, so in a way I’m a producer. I’m an early adopter of a product I knew full well would have a lot of catching up to do to be competitive in the marketplace.

I can’t speak for Steinberg, or for ‘the developing team’, but I can speak as one of the users. In this sense, it is a collective ‘we’. In that sense, we’re all part of the team. Without us users, there is probably not going to be a product.

No, I do not, nor have I ever worked for Steinberg aside from participating as a volunteer in some beta programs on various products since the 1990s. At my level of participation I never asked for nor received any material or monetary perks for participating in any beta programs for any software company. I’ve never sought to earn a cent doing commercial reviews or product sales. I just love this stuff (and love purely acoustical instruments as well).

I’m pretty active on MakeMusic, Avid, Plogue, etc. forums as well. They also have great products that I use pretty often. They also have great people working for them that have made massive contributions to the music industry, are super passionate about music and people, and work very hard for their living.

When other kids were obsessing about ball games, collecting comics, or deer hunting, I simply enjoyed burying my head in music performances and music technology trade rags. I grew up a few blocks from a Peavey speaker cabinet/assembly plant at a time when our state’s forestry products supply offered Peavey a slight advantage over global competitors who had to use things other than wood, or pay a premium to get it imported, so Pro Audio (and mass production of the stuff) has always been something of a personal interest.

Everything you say about documentation is true. It’s a constructivist Web 2.0 world these days. I’m personally not crazy about it and sense society might be losing some cognitive edge in the transformation, but that’s how it is, and this is how more and more companies do documentation (particularly for rapidly prototyping version 1 products that are in some way, a marriage between alot of pre-existing system components under the hood). Here’s how it works:

  1. Pick a search engine. These days you don’t even have to type it in. Just wake up Cortana, Sierrie, Alexa and ask it question with your own voice.
    It can often be a good idea to start with the product’s home website and use any local search engine that might be provided there.

  2. Type or speak in a question. I.E. “How do I make nested tuplets in Dorico?”

  3. If you don’t get a useful link right away, narrow the search by adding or changing keywords and try again.

  4. If you still do not get a useful hit, go to a user community and post your question. You can choose between popular mobile formatted social media outlets, or more desk-top centric forums like this one. Some people might be rude and far from helpful, but that’s OK, ignore them. At first you might ask questions that have already been answered, but that’s OK too, people will introduce you to tools to search the forum if it becomes clear you aren’t trying that first (some might be jerks, so what…it’s your forum too, others will simply try to help).

  5. If you still do not get useful information, file a support ticket.

So far I’ve only needed to ask a few technical questions about Dorico that searches could not resolve. I came here and asked, and someone from Steinberg promptly answered within a day every single time. They promptly stated ‘how to’ if it could be done, or they let me know right away if it cannot currently be done. Users also offered experiences, suggestions, or potential work arounds (users often come up with very creative solutions by genius, or even totally by accident).

It seems like the first question I asked here was something like, “Exactly what plugins are included with Dorico?” Within 10 minutes a Steinberg rep posted the complete list, and let me know where to find documentation for the plugins.

My next question was something like, “Exactly what HALion content packs are included with Dorico?”

Again, an official rep pasted the list within minutes of my query.

Many questions I asked had already been fielded, such as, “Is there a workaround to put a first and second ending in my score?” That was before it was officially supported by Dorico, but again, some user had provided a complete solution to add something suitable through the Engrave mode.

Sometimes the answer is a flat, “No, Dorico can’t do that yet.” Sometimes the answer is a "Maybe, if you use X, Y, or Z third party tool(s) to supplement Dorico it’s possible. This is where cloud user base documentation surpasses anything one can do with a user manual. Users can throw up possibilities that Steinberg reps probably never thought of (or might be against their immediate commercial interests to push).

So yeah…it’s dawg gone frustrating. My field of Public Education is nothing like it was when I started as a music teacher in the 1990s. The constructivst learning theory and Web 2.0 momentum drives me nuts sometimes, but sooner or later I have to make up my mind to accept some of the changes and roll with them, or they will simply get rid of me and ‘move on’ with the next generation.

I miss my big fat spiral bound manual with notes in the margin. I really do. I miss selling the plup wood from the family forests as well (these days it just falls on the ground and rots while 3 times the fuel is consumed trying to move trash around that would otherwise sit there and rot…cost more to harvest than it’s worth, oh well…at least we enjoyed selling pulp wood for a short time and it paid for my education…now it’s time for a family that moves/sells trash to get enough money to send their kids to college). None the less, I can still find the information I need, and all from the comfort of my own home.

24

I understand how to use search engines; I’ve been in this game at least as long as you have. I also know what it is to be a beta tester, more or less completely on my own - I’ve done that. I know how to figure out how to use and get results from software that is completely undocumented, by trial and error - I’ve done that. I know what excellent software documentation is - I’ve written reams of it (hated that job, but…) I know how to put together both simple and complicated test cases demonstrating a problem - I’ve already done that right here in the Dorico forum! See my other thread re. a pesky MIDI file.

The Dorico engs. looked at the problem, found a bug, and fixed it. I LIKED THAT! They didn’t doubt my word, make any excuses, or give me any arguments, or preach about the future - they gave me a reasonable explanation of Dorico’s behavior and a workaround for it; they also mentioned that a manual of many hundreds of pages was in the works. I would have done the same, in my engineering days.

Bug discovery at this level is what Alpha and Beta testers do. I signed up for a 30-day trial of some expensive software that has a lot of good buzz surrounding it; I didn’t sign up to be an unpaid Alpha tester. I don’t accept that I should have to use Siri or some other bug-infested speech utility or search engine to find out what I need to know about a product. A lot of potential Dorico users (if the product succeeds) will be working on deadline-driven projects and will not have time (as I do) to spend 1.5 days trying to figure out why a simple thing like MIDIFile import blows up in my face, or wondering what some dialog box is for, or trying to find somebody talking about the subject somewhere inside a 45-minute instructional video. They (and I) need a thorough, accurate, well-indexed manual in which they can instantly find answers. There’s just no excuse for not providing good documentation.

I will give you & S-Berg props for this: by Googling your precise query: “How do I make nested tuplets in Dorico?” I was led easily to a relevant, if skimpy, topic within Dorico Help. I’m too scared to try inputting an early Stockhausen Klavierstucke, though… :wink:

25

Dorico has lots of users and a small development team. Users have lots of different needs and different priorities for what they want the software to be able to do.

If you take a few minutes to wade through a small proportion of then 6000 threads on this forum you’ll realise that you are one of a great many voices here.

If you want something fixed, one day, ask nicely.
If you want every bug fixed yesterday, and full documentation, then buy a different product (though I haven’t the foggiest idea which one). Nobody is forcing you to spend your money on Dorico, and it really sounds to me as though you don’t like what you see.

26

I’ve been busily working away on some percussion stuff over the last couple of days and haven’t seen this thread until now. Thanks to everybody for taking the time to provide helpful feedback to jduesenb.

All I would like to add is that we are keenly aware that there is no documentation of Play mode in the Dorico Operation Manual at the moment: it is the highest priority for our author to work on, and we will be publishing further updates soon. We will also be publishing a series of short, concise tutorial videos on Play mode in the next little while.

27

I hear ya, and and I agree that quite a few things about the Dorico launch have been unconventional and somewhat thrown together. The thing is, there is a backstory on all this. Some of the most talented folks in the business lost their jobs due to cut backs and company reorganizations. One company felt like they could make more money without the high paid developers. Their idea of innovation was firing the architects and coders and turning the company over to subscription selling engineers that have found a way to squeeze $40 per month out of users to witness investments in Scorch slowly stop working and the rest of the system only get a few minor updates over a 3 year period (ooh, ahh, I can finally do broken slurs…totally worth a +$100 upgrade fee: NOT!). When the cloud stuff finally makes a comeback in Sibelius…well, it’s an argument for another time and place, but there’s no question who the changes are going to favor most (not always the individual users).

Another leading company was purchased by a physical education and sporting goods firm. I like the company, but music software is like nothing they’ve ever tried to manage before! They’ve had their work cut out just pasting things together in a way that’ll continue to work on 64bit OSes. To compensate for that, they’ve really gone down on their prices (through promos and other deals).

Along comes Yamaha/Steinberg who says, "OK, we’ll give you a job. Here are some existing resources you can use, and here is a deadline for a product launch, good luck! We got what we got…the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s an impressive bed of work in a very short amount of time!

This is where Dorico is today. It’s got a fresh new start. As someone who started with Sibelius at version 1.2 for a Windows PC…version 1 of slew of products for Atari ST/Falson, etc…I’m very impressed! None of those products had stellar documentation at version 1 either (and they couldn’t do 1/10th as much as Dorico). Most of those products were also built by very small teams, on shoe-string budgets. It took TIME to get where they are today.

It’s easy to look back at how products and companies were built 30 years ago and wag fingers, but face it…investors think differently in 2018. Money is raised differently. Capital resources come and go along different methodologies and currency streams. Personally, I feel pretty darn lucky to have Dorico in the scene and adding some much needed pressure to the industry to think about something other than trying to milk easy cash from consumers. The others are charging more than ever to just keep putting band-aids on 30 year old products. This team comes along, against all odds, in a nich market that’s been sewn up in a natural monopoly for a very long time…and to me they are Pop heroes.

USA and UK turned our backs on our own. We’ve treated our best people like trash. It’s a crying shame they have to go all the way to Germany and Japan to get investors and scrape out a ‘chance’ at doing something fresh and innovative for our industry, but that’s what’s happened.

28

As far as the economics of the SW industry and the way companies exploit their happy little genius-geeks, things were rotten 30 yrs. ago and they are rotten now. I can’t even count the number of times I got laid off 10,20,30… years ago. If all of these big audio SW giants were all-American star-spangled entities, their employees would not be one whit better off. Nor their users. I told you what happened to Avid AudioVision. I hope nothing like that happens to Dorico.
I do have a fair amount of respect for Yamaha and Steinberg. I use a Kronos (Korg/Yamaha) and WaveLab & Padshop. WaveLab actually has quite good online help, and I’ve almost never had to contact Steinberg with questions, and it seems to work reliably. It’s certainly possible that Dorico can get to the same quality level. Hope so.

29

That’s probably true, but somewhere along the line the passion of the creators gets over-ruled by the drive to make profits and the efforts to down-size. Hey, profits are important, but so are the consumers.

North American and British investors definitely stopped focusing on innovation for the consumer and started focusing on how to get the biggest pay-day for the least amount of effort and human liabilities to contend with. The methods by which companies were valued has changed a good deal as well. Sure, they’ve spent billions finding ways to re-bundle old stuff and auto-draft consumer bank accounts; however, they should have been doing BOTH (R&D, new and better products, etc. along side finding more ways to make profits).

I cannot agree that Avid would not be better off had the Management there done some things differently in terms of how they’ve handled Sibelius and its rock star developers. Since they sent half the team packing, and started the subscription hubub…the company went from being worth close to $60 a share down to where it is today at less than $6. We didn’t see big splits or anything to explain the tank on stock value. Until quite recently very little changed in terms of competition for the scoring software market.

Granted I’ve not dug really deep into the bottom line of how AVID has performed financially, nor have I compared it to other players in the industry, but I do well recall many of my peers in Academia being very put off by them. It became ever more difficult to do state business and such (Bulk Purchase Orders for Institutions for example). They began to get rid of the ‘useless people’ who traversed the continent helping Music Directors and Teachers figure out how to do a Purchase Order that’d fly in their states. They decided that the only sales they were interested in bothering with were credit card bound online auto-drafted stuff (Sorry, but your run of the mill school music program can’t use credit cards, if they have internet access at all it’s firewalled to the gills and requires a 200 page implementation plan to get ANYTHING unblocked, it throws a big ole monkey wrench in how grant monies can be requested and applied, and anything with the term ‘subscription’ gets tossed into the hands of a whole different set of budget makers). They began to undercut the mom and pop music companies that were out there pushing the stuff, and teaching people how to set it all up and use it. They stopped investing in serious product innovations, and put everything they had in ‘getting rid of human capital and liabilities’.



I can’t help it…but I find it embarrassing.

30

Sometimes people get laid off because they have a bad attitude. This thread seems to have strayed far from the original topic.