How does Dorico compare to Cubase in rendering music

Dorico
#1

Some Questions about the relation of Dorico and Cubase:

  1. Is Midi-Controler-Channel editing possible in Dorico as we know it from Cubase, and how does it compare to cubase?
  2. Is timecurve editing possible in Dorico and how does it compare to Cubase.
  3. If I understood right, than Dorico is able to use Expressionmaps. Presumably it would assing the Articulationinformation (as far there is some) from a Score to a certain midievent. But… if there is no explicit Articulationinformation in the score, or I would like to use in my render another Articulationtype than the one written in the score: Is it possible to assign Articulations manually to a certain midievent even if this is not “notated” in the score ?

(I know this might sound strange from the point of view of a Notationprogramm-user, but it seems to me not that unrealistic for those who works with good Orchestra-Samplelibraries, who on one hand not always will use Legato or staccato patches for Notes notated as Staccato or legato and on the other hand often do have much more variety of available legato-patches or staccato patches than you can “notate”.)

As another interesting Example:
The samplelibraries offer whole tone and half tone trills. As far I know in notationprograms there are no different articulationsigns for “whole tone-” or “half-tone-trills”. What is needed usually depends on the tonality only if a trill explicitly should differ from the tonality it would be notated (but still in relation to the tonality) How would Dorico react on notated trills?

In short:
Would I still need Cubase to seriously produce recordings with highend samplelibraries on large scores-projects when Dorico is available?

Or is there in respect to render midi-data with samplelibraries or VST-Plugins anything Cubase is able to do, what Dorico is not able to (and if so why?)

And if so are there any ways to connect the functionality of Cubase and Dorico wich goes beyond the ability of xml import and export?

Last question:
Why are there no crossgrade-Pricings for Cubaseusers ? Since many if not most of the things Cubase do (when it comes to render mididata) seem to me in future also possible with Dorico (which would be a great step forward for me :smiley: )

best
fahl5

#2

Firstly, I think it’s important to point out that the aim of including basic MIDI editing features in Dorico is not to do away with the need for Cubase. Dorico is first and foremost a scoring program, but we are trying to provide sufficient control over the routing of music to virtual instruments and over the nature of the MIDI data sent to those virtual instruments that you can get a lot closer to a workable virtual performance in your scoring program before you move over to Cubase. But Dorico lacks all of the detailed editor windows that Cubase has (e.g. it has no Channel Editor window, it has no Logical Editor, it has no List Editor, etc.), so you will be limited to simple note editing via the piano roll display (changing onset and offset etc.), and simple controller/automation editing via the controller lane display. All of this is to say that while we hope the MIDI editing features we are including in Dorico will be very useful, I don’t think Dorico will be doing away with Cubase any time soon!

In terms of creating events that would trigger an articulation via a VST Expression Map without causing anything to be printed in the score, this is certainly theoretically possible: these would normally be created by a playing technique event, and we want to allow these to be hidden rather than to appear as they normally do (e.g. as a slur or an articulation or other notated marking in the score).

We haven’t determined whether or not we will be able to offer a special offer price to existing Cubase users when Dorico is available. We will share any further information on this as it becomes available, nearer to Dorico’s launch.

#3

That’s a reasonable and realistic answer.

So please provide the most collaboration of both steinberg programms you can get. It would be great, if changes made in one Program, would be able to be update the projectdata also in the other (like it is possible in some Adobe-Programms).

Did I understood you right, that there willl be no “Timecurve” editing and Tempochanges in Dorico will be only programable as far as they are written in the score? How could that be with ritardandi and accelerandi which in the most times seem to me much to delicate to let them be done by standard values. (But this would probably be another reason why Dorico will not be able to replace Cubase.)

Steinberg should definitly think about reduced pricing for existing Cubase-Users. One of the most important things which could make Dorico interesting for me (beside Sibelius and Finale), is the fact that I am a Cubase User and the expectation, Dorico could better comunicate with Cubase than any other Notationsoftware.

#4

We hope to have the ability to edit tempos similar to automation. I’ve written the tempo event code so that tempo text and metronome marks affect the tempo map, but we can have additional tempo events that aren’t drawn in the score (it’s possible they may draw as ‘Signposts’, which we use for drawing annotations on the score that don’t get printed out). So this should give the ability to customise rit and accel behaviour.