Hi,
I could not agree more with bkshepard. I have been having a long and sometimes unpleasant discussion in this subject here: DORICO 4, its MIXER and PLAY mode
The crucial idea is put by bkshepard in this phrase “And I especially don’t like having to go back and fix what Dorico “fixed” because it thinks I don’t know what I’m doing, I do.”. In my case it was a fight to get Dorico play staccato by dotted quaver and quaver. While for dotted quaver Dorico activated staccato samples, the quaver was turned into tied semiquavers and despite having staccato articulation played natural of 75% length. In a ton of exchanges I was explained “why it is as should be” and that every time something like that happens I should use forced duration. And it seemed that using a common sense like having forced duration on/off in preferences was close to sacrilege. Ex users of Sibelius know that such notation is not a problem, but purist users of Dorico called it “Sibelius allows for bad notation”, etc. Similarly to bkshepard I do not want Dorico to treat me like I do not know what I do and correct me like a schoolteacher. So YES, I would love to have forced duration as an option in preferences, not an action button I have to use whenever I fancy to go against Dorico’s “wisdom”.
Witold