I use Dorico 2 and now 3 on a Mac Pro quad core from 2010 with 16Gb of Ram.
I find that Dorico needs a moment often to execute tasks.
Add a player 2-3 sec.
Add instrument 2-3 sec
Select all dynamics and delete 1-2 sec
Switching to one of the views (setup, write, engrave, play, print) 2-3 sec.
I could name more. Some steps just need a lot of thinking it seems.
Is this an average behavior for Dorico on a Mac of my age or is it possible that Something is wrong with my system?
It really depends on the size of the project. Dorico can be substantially quicker than that in small projects, as long as you donât have loads of tabs/windows open at once. Setup mode actions require a lot of calculations behind the scenes, so theyâre always a bit slow.
The first three of your four examples involve reformatting the complete score (deleting dynamics is likely to change the vertical spacing between staves).
When you switch to a different view, Dorico formats the score in that view. It doesnât continually update the formatting of every possible view after every edit, otherwise the response would be slow! For example, all the piano roll displays etc have to be generated with you switch to Play mode, they are not kept up to date while you are working in other modes.
Hi Marc, have you seen some of the performance optimization tips mentioned in other threads? For instance, deleting all part layouts whilst composing or engraving can make a noticeable difference on orchestral scores. You can then generate the part layouts once everything is finalized. It works quite well in my experience. There are other tips available in recent (or recently-contributed-to) threads. Some of them can help quite a bit!
My machine is slightly younger than yours, and I have two more cores than you do, but for a lot of the examples youâve listed, my machine is typically slower than yours. For example, switching modes takes me ~30 seconds on an orchestral project. (The one exception is Engrave mode, which switches over in a similar amount of time as you listed, possibly because I always work in page view with fixed systems/casting off per page, so there isnât much, if any, to format when switching to Engrave.)
(EDIT to remove some mistaken thoughts about RAM. By accident, found an old thread where the team said 8GB total should work well, so this likely isnât an issue in your case.)
If your internal HD is spinning platter by any chance, you might see improvement in Dorico by upgrading to an SSD. But Iâm not particularly tech savvy, so take this all with a grain of salt and certainly donât spend any money based on my passing thoughts!
Do check out some of the other threads if you havenât already; they are probably worth your time. (EDIT: Theyâre not always easy to find, hereâs one with a very comprehensive list, but I think I remember there being others worth tracking down as well: Dorico slowing down on big sessions - #6 by dspreadbury - Dorico - Steinberg Forums)
I have a 2018 Mac Mini, 6-core 3GHz i5 with 32Gb RAM. Yes, changing to Play or Print mode takes 1-2 seconds; Adding a player takes 2-3 seconds or so.
But generally, moving around the document and working is absolutely fine. If I do delete something, then yes, there will be a redraw âmomentâ. Changing Engraving Options can take 10 seconds to apply. I suspect that certain kinds of score elements, like Cues, divisi, condensing, maybe percussion? are slower to process than others.
However, I know that the team are looking at ways to improve performance. All-in-all, completing a score in Dorico is still faster than what Iâd been using previously.
I have a Mac Pro 6 core Xeon with 64GB RAM and would characterize the performance of Dorico to be generally sluggish, even on small projects, compared to other software, including any of the DAWs I have used. Admittedly, there is a lot going on in this app, but for all the claims of improved performance, it is by far the least responsive application I have used in recent years.
I still prefer it to other notation software for a variety of reasons, but it does require patience.
Thank you for the info. Indeed I hadnât checked out performance tips.
I should have and will now.
Kind of reassuring to hear that many of you have about the same performance as I do, despite newer machines.
So I might not have to upgrade my Mac, yetâŚ
Yes, it requires patience sometimes, especially when you are working in a flow (not meaning the Dorico-flow
Its understandable that calculations might slow-down the process, but I am working very often in DAWâs with seem to have to calculate a lot all the time, and I never experience that kind of sluggishness in performance. Which keeps me wondering, why are most notation software suffering from that?
Finale 25 was so dreadfully slow that either had to kill myself, of ditch Finale and switch to Dorico.
Which I obviously did. (thankfully) and I love all the intuitive-ness of Dorico, but it could most definitely (and should) respond faster.
I was actually hoping that a faster machine would solve this, but helaasâŚ
Could it be a graphic card thing? Would a faster GPU make a (significant) difference?
You are totally right. DAWâs who it seems, are doing larger amounts of calculations in real time, even providing latency compensation on multi-track audio playback with plug-in-processing while recording plenty of audio at the same time!
It is puzzling to me why (all) notation software (Finale and SIbelius are a nightmare) are taking so long to execute (apparently) simple adjustments.
Why does changing from a part layout to a full score-layout in a orchestral piece takes 8-9 seconds in Dorico?
Generating the print-preview of the same orchestral condensed score takes 20 seconds. (I first thought the program crashed.)
When you press cmd-5 instead of cmd-4 by accident (going to print instead of play) and Dorico makes you wait for 20sec before you can go back to play (another 4-5 sec wait), I mean. Wow! That is a serious lag.
Why does the fader on the mixer lag behind the mouse movement and stutter? Isnât that mixer based on Cubase code? Shouldnât that move as smooth as the Cubase, Logic or Pro tools faders?
Just wondering here.
Faster performance is my number one wishlist for future updates. Anything else is totally secondary, when working for long hours on a large project with deadlines coming up.
I must agree with you.
Iâm doing whole shows alle the time - around 30 to 40 flows - and I will join in the wish for a faster experience.
Could it be done by restricting the calculation of layout to only flows just previous/after the flow that are being edited?
And keeping the overall/final calculating to be manual invoked.
As I understand it, Doricoâs basically designed to calculate entire layouts on the fly. Switch from Galley View to Page View? Thatâs a recalculation. Switch from anywhere to Print mode? Thatâs a recalculation (because your paper size in print mode may be different to your page size in Layout Options). Switch to Play mode? Thatâs a recalculation.
Itâs all very well having 32 processors but if Dorico has to calculate a layout from left to right, it canât process in parallel. It doesnât know whatâs on page two until itâs sorted out page one.
Dorico evidently does process in parallel, or there wouldnât be such a huge difference between the way my dual-core and quad-core computers handle Dorico projects.
If you have particularly laggy projects, it might be worth sending them in so that the development team can add them to their bank of test files. Without real-world test files, the bottlenecks wonât necessarily be discovered.
Dorico is not a DAW, and the performance characteristics are completely different. In a DAW, edits are usually instantaneous because all youâre doing is making changes to effectively a list of MIDI events. A DAW doesnât need to do much to keep the GUI up to date because thereâs not much calculation involved in showing a list of MIDI events.
Dorico doesnât store MIDI data. It doesnât store bars, staves or pages either. It has a low level representation of all the objects in a score and all the bars, staves, pages and MIDI notes are dynamically calculated from the source data. This is necessary so that can work out how to format each Layout for each combination of players, plus dynamically reformat for page view or galley view. Condensing wouldnât work without it. Every edit you make has to pass through many calculations to work out how it affects the overall layout. Changing the pitch of a single note can set in progress a chain of changes that may push a bar onto the next system, which may cause another bar to be pushed onto the next page, which changes the instrument change decision points. The Dorico notation engine has a number of short-circuits so that if it determines that an edit wonât affect things beyond a certain point then can stop processing. There are something like 100 separate processing phases that are required to turn low level events into a score.
We are constantly looking at improvements we can make, and we know of a number of specific things that are on our list that reduce the amount of (re)processing that has to be done. But the bottom line is that during the course of editing the score, it is necessarily doing a huge amount of work. You canât compare it to a DAW because they only do that processing during playback (and in any case, as soon as you play back then Dorico does do all that same work too). You also canât compare it to the speed of other notation applications because itâs doing an order of magnitude more work to ensure that things are well-spaced and collisions are minimised.
If ALL notation software finds layout a time-consuming operation, then perhaps itâs not as simple as you imagine it to be?
You can launch Activity Monitor and see whether Dorico is maxing out your GPU or CPU. (I doubt it is.)
The problem with âsaving calculations until laterâ is that invariably people will make edits on what they see, not remembering that theyâve got some more changes pending. Finaleâs âAutomatic Update Layoutâ switch is the cause of much user aggravation, and that stems from a time of 16-bit CPUs.
Paul and Leo have both given excellent insights into the problem: Iâm confident that things will improve. At the very least, the problem may be reduced as future hardware gets more powerful.
Just an idea, would it be possible to speed up processing by allowing more localized calculations when enabling the âX number of bars per systemâ property? (in conjunction with X number of systems per page). That way its easy to figure out that if there are only 4 bars per page, and youâre in bar 9, youâre defacto on page 3 and you only need to recalculate page 3 (bars 9-12)? (if youâre working on an orchestral score, for example) Perhaps this type of focused processing could allow for faster interaction, and then full recalcs would only be necessary when turning the feature off or changing the setting.
I have tried that pianoleo, I didnât received any info if the developpers had found something special in my project that could tell why it was so slow performing.
I would assume that calculation of layout often is done on the remaining part of a score, and that would imply that the last flow in a collection would be faster to recalculate, but I havnât seen that.
I find it a difficult subject to discuss, because Iâm just a musician, so how do I know?
But I must say that among all the apps that I use daily in my studio Dorico is the slowest horse in the stable. And I wish it was faster - much faster.
I was one the first composers in Denmark to use computer - Atari - to create a score for The Danish Radio Orchestra back in 1985. I remember that going from the key of F major to Ab major in a full score could take as long as making the coffee - and drinking it. To day itâs much faster of course, but I REALLY wish you could make some improvements.
Thanks!
In answer to your previous post, Stig, I didnât say âsend in projects so that the developers can write you a nice message back explaining why your projectâs slowâ, and I certainly didnât mean it! I meant send in your project so that it gets added to a bank of test files, so that optimisations may be made based on patterns noticed in a whole group of projects.
As to your most recent message, your video is a perfect demonstration of why the OPâs question âHow slow/fast does Dorico 3 perform on your Macâ is such a difficult question. If there was a control - one project - sent out to many people, and a standardised list of questions asked - then some meaningful data could be gleaned. Without seeing your video, I couldnât possibly know that every page from page 4 onwards in that layout has some sort of page override. Every override slows down Dorico.
Iâve occasionally wondered something similar, as 4 bars per page is exactly how I work 99% of the time. (Basically, if youâve ever seen anything in Herb Spencerâs hand, thatâs the approach that makes sense to me, whether Iâm on pen & paper or Dorico. Iâve tried other approaches and they just drive me crazy for some reason.)
I know nothing of programming software, etc., but my hunch is that, even if people who work like me werenât a insignificant minority, the performance gains would be fairly minimal, perhaps not even noticeable, thus the pain:gain ratio wouldnât be worth it.
Again, Iâm no expert, but Iâve wondered this myself and I sort of doubt it would make a difference in Dorico. I have almost the same configuration as wonner has (though s/he may have a higher-end GPU; I went for the lowest-spec option) ⌠every model of that machine comes with dual-GPUs, and Iâve never seen anything worse than ~40% and 15% utilization of the pair (processor; memory usage (cache?) was something like 75% and 10%). (Iâve heard some nightmare stories of GPU code degrading realtime audio processing, and some people (usually on Windows from what I can tell) saw an improvement when changing to lower-specâd GPUs that had different code which didnât steal from the DAW. But unless someone from the team chimes in to say otherwise, Iâd really doubt GPU would make any difference in Dorico note-input/engraving.)
Marc, one thing you havenât mentioned which may or may not be relevant: are you running any virtual instrument plugins or are you working in silence? If youâre running virtual instruments, hosting them outside Dorico results in performance gains for a lot of people. If relevant to your workflow, some hosts offer free 30-day demos you could evaluate. If you ended up purchasing, it could cost quite a bit less than upgrading hardware.
