…but he never replied after saying he’d explore it, so I assume he was unable to get traction with the others at Steinberg.
Introducing student pricing as distinct from our existing educator pricing is not something that we can “just do”. It requires planning, coordination, business modelling, etc. So just because something hasn’t happened in the course of a few weeks doesn’t mean that it won’t happen.
@dspreadbury I’m sure you are working on it. To my comment, I never heard back after you told me to “watch the space.” I didn’t expect solutions, but you did ask me to wait, so I assumed there’d be some communication, even if it just became a, “it’s being discussed” end-of-conversation. No intention to be aggressive, and hope you didn’t hear it that way. I’m always going to be a shameless advocate for my students and intend for you receive any feedback from that perspective.
Thanks for taking time to reply!
I hear you @dan_kreider.
I am a Dorico guy and very happily so. But I’m also a college professor working with students who I’d like to see get involved with this software, but they find more than enough with MuseScore. The student pricing model, which leads to upgrades down the road into the full software (this is how I originally adopted Finale, as did many of my peers) is a great way to get people involved but my students at least find $350 out of their reach. Not here to debate the value as we both know it’s worth it, but a budget minded or poorer student isn’t going to hear that.
I’m trying to evangelize for what I believe to be the best on the market, but it’s tough when a decent free option exists, and the student pricing is as high as it is.
And you can say no to the quality of MuseScore if you like, but there’s no disputing it’s massively improved from where it was, and has made several very good advancements. It also looks a lot better than it used to, which has been very enticing to my students.
What I wish Steinberg would do is to put their softwares on Splice for rent-to-own.
That’s how I acquired things like Serum or the RX strandard suite for instance and for people who can’t straight up spend hundreds it’s much more easier to spend a smaller monthly fee and then to own forever the license after 12-24 months.
I had to wait for the 40-50% discount before I was able to upgrade last year to Dorico Pro from Elements but it took me nearly 2 years because of the pricing, if there had been no discount I would still be working on elements because I belong to those people that have harder times saving money each month to buy something in 12 months rather than paying straight away.
With rent-to-own I’m 2000% sure Steinberg would get MANY more customers (at least those who don’t follow regularly the newsletters and don’t know yet that there are yearly discounts) and it would be a better compromise for the customers rather than being tempted to either crack softwares or go buy other competitors (hello Studio One at 17$/month for 24 months on Splice ! ; I already own Cubase and don’t want to switch but if I was new in the game that’s what I would do).
Agree 100%. I’m teaching a master’s course in analysis this spring, which is a really notation-heavy class involving score reductions and similar projects every week, but I can’t really justify forcing them to use Dorico when it’s $359 vs $99 for Finale or $0 for MuseScore. (The comments feature really is fantastic though for the few students I’ve had that do use Dorico, and makes it super easy to mark up their files with feedback.)
I don’t think this is a solution for the student adoption issue, but it’s truly an amazing option!! I’m using it now for a $1,999 piece of software that I would never consider even for 1 second otherwise.
So, does anyone know if it’s possible to use MuseSounds in the current version of Dorico Pro 4?
It’s not, presently.
there’s been such a flurry of activity about Musescore 4 here that I finally decided to install it as I was interested in the playback side of things, in other words Muse Sounds. Once I had set the buffer to the maximum possible-- the only way to get it to work at all on my system without endless clicks (strange as processor use was around 45% so some obvious audio engine issues there)-- I could give it a trial. It’s fascinating how beautiful it can sound in patches but there are also a huge number of issues – uneven dynamics, faster notes are often virtually inaudible and insufficiently articulated, there are some phasing and distortion issues and a number of other things.
It would all require more work than a conventional library set up with a competent Expression Map in Dorico as far as I can see. Give it a couple of years though and I might have another look. But I hardly imagine Dorico will have stood still in the meantime. I would imagine that it might put something like Overture to bed, though – not that there’s any sign it’s still being actively developed anyway…
sounds better than NotePerformer 
Haven’t played with it much, but I was not impressed by MuseSounds when having it play one of my string quartet arrangements. NotePerformer does a much better job.
although NotePerformer can sometimes work OK in faster quartet movements with crisp articulation, I’d never dream of using for a string quartet in general – the sound is far too crude. I also tried MuseSounds with one of my string quartets and, although variable and with a number of problems, it was certainly better than NP.
We’ll have to come back to this and do a new comparison in 2023, when NotePerformer4 comes out.
Who knows, maybe strings will be one of the major improvements.
That isn’t literally how open source works, although I think that is an accurate description of what Muse is doing TODAY – not necessarily forever. I believe it is accurate to say that, as of today, all the Pro and Pro+ features (requiring paid subscription ) relate to the website used for score sharing.
But it is quite normal for vendors to have offerings that are based on open source, but also include layers of their own proprietary code. (See Red Hat Enterprise Linux, e.g.) In those cases, they certainly can charge a price for their offering, regardless of the fact that it mostly consists of open source code. I have no knowledge that Muse intends to do that. I believe Muse have at least hinted they may have paid versions of Audacity in the future, or at least paid add-ons.
If, in the course of developing added value features, the vendor makes enhancements to the software in the open source layers, they must dedicate that to the open source community. As a practical matter, that can mean the code is freely available, but practically only used by a small set of people who have the skills and time to compile the open source parts themselves and provide self-support.
I’m not trying to be pedantic. I just want to point out that Muse could certainly have a long-term strategy to have paid versions of MuseScore proper.
could be! Do we know for sure that NP4 will come out in 2023? There’s already been quite a gap since v3.
supposed to come out first quarter of 2023.
I realize that users of this forum have suggested NP4 might be released in Q1 2023 but I’ve not seen any confirmation from Arne Wallander or his company. Instead, several months ago I read Arne’s response to this question in which he said it takes a long time to develop software focused on new concepts/technologies (interesting!) and there was as yet no imminent release date for NP4. I understood this to translate into a still significant wait but would love to hear more encouraging news if there is any.
I think you are right on this, Mike. I double checked and back in October Arne mentioned that NP4 was “taking longer than expected” hence he issued the apple silicon version of 3.3.2 to tide people over until NP4 was ready. He didn’t specify when the new version would be ready. (unless he has done so on another forum)
Yes, he did so on the VI Forum. I quoted his comments here:
Thanks James and Ben. I am happy to learn that 2023 Q1 really is when NP4 is expected to launch, and excited to read Arne’s words in Ben’s referenced posting:
I will be very interested to find out more about the “disruptive notation program technology” and also any optional supplementary content.