Is it wise to buy Dorico 2 now?

I was considering purchasing Dorico, but looking at last years release window for Dorico 2, Dorico 3 could potentially be just around the corner.

Has there ever been any sort of grace period for Dorico like there was with the Cubase releases? I don’t want to buy Dorico too early to miss an upgrade.

Dorico 3 is not just round the corner, regardless of last year’s release window. There has indeed been a grace period, but it’s probably not worth trying to second-guess it.

The question is: Is the use you will get out of Dorico 2.2 now (and for the next … some months) worth the price to you?

Don’t forget there are cross-grade deals from other packages.

I think it is too soon for Dorico to have an established version upgrade cycle. There was a grace period on the release of Dorico 2 and I suspect the same will be true of Dorico 3 - Steinberg have a policy of offering grace periods and I doubt this will change in the future. However, Daniel has made it clear recently that Dorico 3 is far from imminent, so waiting a few weeks before purchasing hoping that will put you into a grace period may well not work.

One possibility that I am sure was considered was releasing Dorico 3 before the new university year starts (in the UK, at least) in late September / beginning of October - but Daniel’s “not over the summer” comment (same post as Dan linked to) suggests they might have given up on this, unless they are thinking of that time of year as early autumn (fall)!

It makes more sense to my mind for the release of Dorico 3 to be driven primarily by features rather than date. If, as I expect, they are working on guitar notation for Dorico 3, that kind of big feature has to be complete, not rushed out to meet a date.


The upgrade from Dorico 1 to Dorico Pro 2 was about 20% of the original purchase price, which hopefully puts the likely cost into perspective. Dorico is not a cheap purchase, but hopefully several months of additional usage if you buy now helps justify the eventual upgrade cost. As Ben says, don’t forget the ability to crossgrade if you use a competing notation product.


There was recently a 30% off sale for Dorico as part of the Cubase 30th Anniversary sale. I’m not sure exactly who got the code - certainly you needed to be subscribed to the Steinberg Newsletter and I think you might have needed to be an existing Cubase 10 owner. Unfortunately the deal ended on 27 May. Steinberg Newsletter emails seem to be unreliable for many people, me included.

It also depends what you want to do.

The big feature that has been regularly trailed for Dorico 3 is tablature notation. The other thing that has been mentioned, but maybe not so definitely, is automatic working with separate instrumental parts and a condensed score.

On past form, it’s a fair bet there will be plenty of “minor” improvements and bug fixes as well, but if neither of the above are “must have” features for you, why wait?

There is no workround at all for the lack of tab of course, but the other functionality is no worse already in Dorico than what is in other mainstream notation software - which is not to say that making it better than the competition won’t be a huge step forward, whenever it arrives!

Thank you all for the advice. I have decided to pull the trigger as dorico does seem feature rich enough for my needs at the moment.

Buying now also gives you time to give yourself some experience using Dorico before the next version appears, which will make you more efficient when it does.

Not wanting to cramp Steinberg’s bottom line for quarter or anything, but you could also try the demo and see how convincing you find it. 30 days of full-featured functioning with the software.

If you think you will be on Dorico eventually, buy it now. It is relatively full-featured now. And even if you don’t think the product will be mature enough for you until the next major release, there is a considerable learning curve. You might as well start up that learning curve now. I would not focus on timing the purchase to save a few dollars. If you do much music, the value you get by moving up that learning curve will probably far outweigh any savings you realize by clever timing.

My guess is we are at least 4 months away from the next release, maybe 6 months. That’s a long time to postpone your learning process.

Why not do the 30 day free trial to extend the period before you buy? Daniel did say Dorico 3 would not come out in the first 6 months of 2019 but that brings us to July 1 so you never know (I say overly optimistically :slight_smile:). This way you could formally buy it around June 30 (just in case Dorico 3 IS released in the 7th month - July) - and still get the upgrade for free. My two cents.
D.D.

I asked the same question, and then went ahead and bought the program after a 30 day trial. If you haven’t used the program on a daily basis, start the trial. Your question will answer itself because you’ll realize that you want to get up to speed on this program as soon as possible, especially if you’re coming from Finale. Probably coming from other programs as well.

It’s that good.

Man, if 3 doesn’t land til northern winter I recon it will be a shockingly massive upgrade. The dev team don’t sit on their hands…

As others have said, if you can see yourself using Dorico in the future then jump in now, especially if you can crossgrade. (Unless it will break you financially)

To Dorico users,

Received the crossgrade and serial from Steinberg this morning so now a Dorico Pro 2.2.20 user as well.

Regards

Welcome!