That’s right. And the filter capabilities are amazing in Sibelius 2025.12 (but already in 2025.10).
These allow me to output separate parts in seconds in a score with condensed woodwind and brass parts (which works much better than Dorico’s condensation, which never gives fully satisfactory results and requires a lot of time to correct the software’s approximations. Oops, I feel like I’m going to get told off for daring to say that…) ![]()
Well, in the Dorico 6.1 release announcement, Daniel wrote
Despite some remaining limitations, we hope that these changes will make it much easier to get precisely the appearance you want to see in your condensed scores.
To me that’s a message the developers continue to enhance condensing functionality.
Thanks @TonH ; but unfortunately, I have D6.1, and nothing new under the sun.
In fact, I believe Dorico is the only software that thinks ‘backwards’ with it: you enter the separate parts and then condense them; however, when writing an orchestral score, you always write the woodwinds and brass condensed. The challenge therefore lies more in extracting separate parts than in an automatic process that is very difficult to manage without any error.
I don’t use Sibelius, but from what I’ve read, it comes at this from the opposite direction. In Dorico, you enter the parts separately and Dorico combines them in the score; in Sibelius, you enter things the way you want them in the score, and Sibelius separates them in the parts.
I think there are pros and cons to both approaches. Personally, I like being able to enter things in separate staves rather than having to make the decision at note entry time whether a certain passage is unison, or shared stems, or different voices. But I wish that condensing weren’t such a processor-intensive task; I suspect that separating the way that Sibelius does is more efficient.
The Dorico approach also makes it easy to have two score layouts, with and without condensing. Can that be done in Sibelius as well?
Not exactly true; as the blog post indicates, you can now adjust the position of condensed rests. This seems like a small item, but I think it has been a particular pain point over the years.
Yes. In parts management, with Score subsets.
But in full score, I do not believe that an orchestral score can benefit in any way from not condensing the woodwinds or brass. You would then come up against a monumental protest from conductors around the world. Han ha ! ![]()
But if you feel like it, yes, you can easily create two different full scores in Sibelius.
Fortunately, it was about time.
I think it depends a lot on the particular piece, but it’s also helpful for proofreading purposes to be able to print out a score without condensing.
Personally, I think of the score as a collection of the what the players are doing, which lines up with Dorico’s philosophy. The fact that those parts can be condensed in the score is a presentation detail, to save space. But I’m engraving, not composing – I could certainly see a composer preferring to think of the woodwind pairs as units and then extracting the parts from that.
I may be not be clear enough, I just wanted to emphasise the developers are aware there are remaining limitations with condensing, so I guess we may see improvements in the future.
So I think no one will blame you for daring to say that too ![]()
Another two:
- An option to be able to copy unnumbered tuplets without having to turn on Signposts.
- Cursor granularity to adjust to the zoom level so one can select individual items more easily, particularly the note nearest to a downward flag in a chord.
v7 or do we mean v6.2?
(that way, it’s free!)
Among the things that could be improved in Dorico 7, hiding empty staves is at the top of the list. Compared to other software, this optimisation operation is a real headache in Dorico.
It would be desirable to allow precise selection of the staves and bars to be optimised (as is the case in Sibelius, among others, making the operation simple, quick and efficient), either by direct selection or by adding a field to the current dialogue box where the range of bars affected by this optimisation could be entered.
Or, another way, to add a “Hide empty staves” in a menu or elsewhere, which would enable quick and easy local optimisation:
- select the staff (or staves) within a range of measures
- request “Hide empty staff” and you’re done.
This would make it easy to perform optimisations when you don’t want them to be applied to the entire score, and would be much more practical than what Staff visibility currently offers.
Regarding the way Dorico handles condensing compared to Sibelius, let me ask you this:
I have four horn parts. The score I am engraving has the following permutations:
Horns 3,2,4 (on one staff)
Horns 1,2 and 3,4 (on two staves)
Horns 1,3 and 2,4 (two staves)
Horns 1 and 2 and 3,4 (three staves)
Is there any way to do this in Sibelius and still be able to easily extract parts? I don’t think so.
A big one: The same functionality as on Windows or MacOS also available on the iPad, in particular the midi import functions.