Hey fellow Doriconians,
this is indeed meant as another speculative thread about future possibilities (aka things that we or some of us dream of), but let me point this out first: I do not want this to turn into another flame war about “Why hasn’t this been implemented yet, when [insert arbitrary competitor software here] can do this since [insert arbitrary time frame]?” and so on. If it does turn out to move in this direction, I will ask the mods to close or delete this thread, although it will of course be up to their judgement alone if they do so. Let’s not let it come this far in the first place. So please refrain from questioning another poster’s motives why a particular functionality may be desired and from pointing out what your estimate on the market demands is, and things like that.
Furthermore, while the discussion that I have in mind can be read as another list of feature requests, I do not intend it to act as such, which is one of the reasons I did neither include any specific future version number in the title nor tag anyone from Steinberg. The devs already have a backlog that is probably so huge that none of us can even fathom how huge. This is purely out of curiosity on my behalf and also a desire for inspiration what ways you already found to achieve your respective goals.
With this disclaimer out of the way:
What functionality normally found in DAW software would you like to see inside Dorico or consider making use of?
There have already been frequent requests that importing an audio track into Dorico be implemented. Daniel Spreadbury has already stated that this will require more of Cubase’s inner workings to be integrated and thus, members of the latter’s development team will probably have to be assigned to Dorico development temporarily. None of us has a clear image of the inner workings inside Steinberg’s management of development resources, so let’s settle for the trust that they are doing their best and leave it at that.
However, the prospect of functionality inherited from Cubase being implemented into Dorico does inspire some speculation of what might actually be possible beyond audio import. To put this straight first: Dorico’s Play mode is already extremely powerful and can be regarded as a sequencer in its own right. And I do not want Dorico to turn into a full-fledged DAW.
But the way it looks to me is that there are fundamental differences in the approaches to creating music between those that primarily use a DAW and those who first open a scorewriter to write their ideas. I assume that in this particular forum the latter are the vast majority among those that post regularly. As for myself, when I am making music, I think in discrete scales, keys, note values and time signatures - and I cannot switch that off.
DAWs on the other hand have a very different approach and for users used to think in notation, their multitude of possibilities can be quite overwhelming. In fact, during one of the recent sales I purchased a license for Cubase Pro 13, because the discount made it look reasonable for me to pay this amount to be able to work with VariAudio. But opening Cubase and having to adjust to and understanding its logic of routing and device setup and overall interface almost had me in desperation. Disclaimer: This is not meant to be a criticism of Cubase, which is probably completely fine for the prime target group the way it is, it is just to illustrate the obstacles one has to face when someone used to a scorewriter or a quite different DAW opens another DAW solely for a certain functionality not found elsewhere.
So, long story short:
(Or TLDR, I fully understand anyone not willing to read through the complete post apart from the two initial paragraphs and the main subject.)
What DAW-like functions would you like to see inside Dorico? What are you currently using an additional DAW or audio editor for that cannot be accomplished within Dorico? Again: I am asking out of curiosity, I pondered starting this discussion for a few months now.
Thank y’all in advance for a fruitful and inspiring discussion!
Sebastian
(P.S. I will post my own possible thoughts and use cases in a separate post as well.)