Inside the app, there is a file named: MS Basic.sf3 (soundfont file), not sure how or if Dorico can load and playback soundfont. Well, I think if we have a VST that can load soundfonts like sf3 (Aria, Sforzando… ???), then we can use those sounds… but I might be wrong. Will give it a try.
That’s the ‘basic’ sounds, not the new goodness.
ah! ok.
I once read an interesting story. Apparently, there was a period in the 1990s when the e-licenser was cracked, and Cubase was thought to have become the most downloaded DAW in Europe, ME and Asia. By accident or by design, it was also around this time that Steinberg launched the VST protocol, which became the industry standard almost overnight - there was a large ready-made market for developers who took a chance on it. From what I understand Steinberg always had sales and later converted a large amount of those users.
In my opinion, scale is a really big deal, perhaps even the critical one, because scale is almost always reinforced by multiple additional layers, many of which can be monetized - workflow familiarity (Cubase), low cost (Reaper, MuseScore), inertia (Finale, Sibelius), or the number of add-ons (plugins) or perhaps even versions of popular sound libraries scripted for Dorico.
These can be extended and incorporated into the model that’s currently in vogue: for example, a free “composition/sketching” app with MuseScore level functionality, plus the paid add-on features for professional users (like engraving, etc) and all the rest that form an ecosystem around it.
So far, Dorico hasn’t even touched any one of these areas. They are all a potential source of scale (and revenue). But if it’s true that MuseScore already captured the education segment, then it does look like time is running out.
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Folks have been predicting the demise of Finale for at least a decade, yet it persists; so although I’m sure the Dorico Team is attending to the changes in MuseScore, I suspect Dorico has sufficient time to adapt to any market threats from that quarter.
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In those days I only ever produced orchestral demos using piano sounds. Scorch always insisted on some sort of payback of the score so that’s all I could do. NP changed all that. I’m very interested in the playback opportunities MS 4 has to offer but @adrien’s comments are a little off-putting. In any case my Dorico XML exports make MS 4 crash. And I would always compose into Dorico - no other software can cope with what I do. So, it’s still NP for me. Great demo I thought, though.
Heck, even Encore is still out there. I assume Finale has a very small staff now, probably just a handful involved in development and support of Finale proper. Maybe I’m way off on that estimate. When they were acquired by the current company, it seemed clear that the real interest was in SmartMusic, which has now been rebranded as “MakeMusic Cloud”, as this fit the products/mission of the acquiring company (software to coach performance.)
That still seems their main focus, and that does give them a good connection with schools, especially high school level. Nonetheless, they do seem to have a continuing interest to do at least a little more with Finale than milk a cash cow.
It sounds right, but it hasn’t been true in practice.
There’s Red Hat, Suse, and too many to mention who build upon a free version and put the most critical new features in a paid version, or fork, or… different strategies.
Not that I hate O/S or anything, and I appreciate open standards to drive cross vendor compatibility. But in my experience the more complex the product is, the more it requires to maintain.
EDIT: re-reading, you make a fair point. I reacted to “will always be free”.
Dorico has free desktop and and iPad apps, so they certainly have made overtures, even if they aren’t marketed as widely as the natively free alternatives.
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A new version of Encore is scheduled for release in “Late Fall 2022”. Its advertised features are multiple Undo, 64-bit, and support for large monitors.
It seems to have excited existing/former users, at least; which may be enough to keep it viable, given the small number of people working on it.
I see a possible development for Dorico, as an answer to the MuseScore Pro ecosystem: a high-quality, filtered score exchange system.
If I’m not wrong, MuseScore Pro allows everybody to publish something. As a result, quality varies a lot. Dorico could, on the contrary, only allow publishers that have passed a test, with some scores that have been considered by a committee of professional quality.
This would create a reserved space for exchange of high-quality scores. It would be a precious space for self-publishing authors and small publishers. Only containing materials that can be used by any professional soloist, orchestra or choir.
Yamaha has a long tradition in music education. This could be an evolution in a modern space.
Paolo
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This has come up before, and Daniel has said that’s not something they’re getting into.
There’s Scorico.net, which is a work in progress. I’m hoping to expand it significantly in the new year.
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Have you seen the Scorico website at
https://scorico.net/
It is managed by @dan_kreider and, if I understand you correctly, seems to pretty much match what you would like to see.
Edit: I see Dan already answered moments before me.
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Steinberg have explicitly and flatly refused to do that. Hence the creation, completely separate and distinct, of Scorico for Dorico score exchange. Do a search on this forum for extensive discussion about it. [and now I see two posts pointing out the same above.]
I checked https://scorico.net/ a couple of weeks ago, and can confirm that @dan_kreider does good efforts to filter the submitted works, and get it to high professional standards. Congratulations!
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I’ve been a bit out of the world, lately, and I missed it. But I see that you planned it to be even more rigorous than what I had in mind, with a quality check on each uploaded score. Looks really fine!
Paolo
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I am somewhat concerned.
When talking to university students, all of them are highly interested in Dorico. Asking for the pricing options, basically everyone says that Dorico SE is useless to them, because it only allows for two players. So they all shrug their shoulders and say „I guess I’ll keep on using Musescore/some cracked version of some competitor“
With Musescore 4, this incentive has been strengthened. If I am asked now by my students, my answer would be: if you can get Dorico, you should, if you can’t afford it, Musescore is great.
Steinberg needs to respond to this. The free version needs to cover real use cases.
They don’t need a lot of things, so throw out much of Elements and Pro.
What they need is beautiful notation, easy to do parts and ensembles up to 12 players. And they need it for free.
Only if they are able to use Dorico in the beginning of their careers will they be using the pro version once they make a living.
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I agree, Sascha, that Dorico SE needs to be more generous in terms of the number of players it allows, and this is something that we are actively considering for the future. We also want to make it more affordable for students to buy Dorico Pro. We are in the unique position of providing a complete family of products that can work across iPad and desktop and from beginning student to top professional, so we want to make sure that we can get young musicians onto the first rung of our ladder as easily as possible.
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It’s true that ‘free’ is a big deal. I’ll certainly grant you that. But I also know that in days of yore, Finale or Sibelius used to be de rigeur and we all found ways to get our hands on copies as necessary, as students. I only had the medium tier of finale for a long time, because thats what I could afford at the time, but having notation software was required for school, and we found a way to make it work, just as we did for text books and other things. I would imagine that some composition departments have broadened their horizons to requiring one of the “big three” for wont of a better term. (4 if you include Lilypond, but that takes a peculiar type of student).
If I were a composition professor, I would require my students to own one of the big three, just as they would have to bring their flute, or whatever other instrument they needed. I know that one notable contributor around here is a composition professor and he does not have such a requirement, allowing musescore, which is rather generous of him.
But the moral of the story is, while cost barriers ARE REAL (I promise, I’m not denying it! … I do play the most expensive instrument after all!) the fact of the matter remains that we also prioritize what is actually important to us, and we find a way. I know a bassonist who could barely afford groceries, but had a 30k basson acquired via a bank loan. So if students are serious about producing professional-quality scores, they will become serious about acquiring Dorico and progressing beyond musescore.
I think the greater question is just one of initial acquisition of customers, to turn them into paying clients. Perhaps that does mean that the free tier of Dorico needs to be opened up a bit more, now that the market is shifting. I don’t know the metrics. All I do know, is I’ve only ever ONCE seen a professionally sold book of psalms produced in musescore and I was absolutely gobsmacked that the composer managed to get it to look so good. I also have very little doubt that she had to spend a lot of time—going well out of her way—to do so, and to accomplish things that Dorico would handle automagically. Her scores were the exception that proved the rule.
And just like you can often spot finale and lilypond scores a mile away, I am starting to notice Dorico scores out in the wild too, and I’m almost always happy with the quality that I find. (I cannot say the same for the finale scores, unfortunately).
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Well, this just came out today:
It’s not only MuseScore and Staffpad anymore. A second collaboration for Bitwig now.