I’m disappointed there aren’t any bug fixes or improvements to the playback engine. At least that’s what I read in the announcement on the Steinberg website and from watching the video. Am I wrong, have there been no bug fixes or features added to playback (the cycle thing isn’t all that impressive, is only a minor feature)?
It follows the update pattern - they tend to focus on playback one year, notation the next.
There are many features that do not look impressive but that will make a huge difference in the workflow.
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Is there a certain improvement in playback that you’re looking for?
Honestly, I’m pretty happy they decided to focus on notation and not playback for this one. D4’s big feature was a completely new Play mode and MIDI editor, D5 focused on Stage Templates, Space Templates, Ionica, Pitch Contour, etc. I’m definitely happy that notation got the nod this time around. Plus the “cycle thing” gets requested almost weekly on the forum so it probably is pretty impressive for those who have a use for it.
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I believe the Audio engine is a newer version. There are 3 bug fixes relating to playback and one with the audio engine, listed in the Version History. Dorico also waits to ensure that the audio engine quits before quitting itself, thus avoiding any race conditions there.
Is there a particular bug you’re looking for?
There are also some playback features relating to humanization.
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Audio Engine changed indeed to v. 6.1.0.13 in D6 from 5.6.42.5 in D5.
Regarding playback in Dorico 6: I was hoping that playback could be fixed for ties that cross over to 2nd endings.
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silver_mica, these ties over second endings don’t exist in Dorico yet.
You can notate them with workarounds (like laissez vibrez ties or hidden notes) but of course the playback follows the workaround in these cases…
I think the inimitable @johnkprice came up with a fix for playback in these situations recently.
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I wasn’t aware the versions are focused on only certain areas of the program (rather than broadly a little bit of every area). I would love to see UI and other enhancements to the mixer (color coding, organizing, easier system of labelling, grouping, quick add and copy of insert effects etc), VSTs, expression maps, automation lanes, percussion, and much more I won’t belabor into a lengthy post. I hope we could see some improvements on the play side as V6 matures and not wait until V7. As a Cubase user I think the mix console and automation system is fantastic, so it would be nice to see some UI features for playback cross over.
It’s not that certain versions are only focused on certain areas of the program, but some users complained about most of the main headliner features in Dorico 4 and 5 being very playback focused, even though there were plenty of engraving features added in those versions too. There is a vocal minority of users who have expressed that any time spent on playback is useless, sometimes going so far as to suggest that you don’t need any playback at all in a notation program, and that any time spent on that is wasted time that would be better spent on engraving features. Probably most users disagree with this and want some playback. Some users in fact feel the exact opposite, that Steinberg should be focusing on playback and that engraving is secondary. That is a lot of different camps to try to satisfy.
It went beyond Dorico users too - I would ask people who worked in other notation programs what they heard about Dorico. They hadn’t used it before themselves, but the #1 thing I would hear from them is something along the lines of “it seems to be really playback focused and they don’t seem to care about engraving very much.” I’m not really hearing this as much anymore since Finale was discontinued and Dorico pushed as the solution to migrate to, but I’m sure this is still in some peoples minds.
The headliner features the last two times were mostly playback related. Especially given the people coming from Finale, the focus probably needed to shift a bit to the engraving side for this release - both for their sake, and to appease those who were already Dorico users who were frustrated at the heavy playback focus in v4 and v5, or users of other programs whose opinions were coloured by the playback focus in the last few releases.
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It’s also true that the team is very small, so if someone is working on one thing, they can’t also be working on something else.
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@johnkprice - came up with very clever fix.
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Shout-out to @Derrek and @johnkprice for this:
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Everything you said makes sense, I appreciate the thoughtful response.
It’s funny because I guess it depends on the crowd. I notice on VI Control (which as you know is a more mock-up oriented community focused on, well, VIs) and even around here sometimes, that outsiders or those with less experience in the app will levy an accusation that Dorico is too engraving-focused.. As someone who has used it quite a lot for mockup purposes and built an extensive VEP template (and rarely dives into the engrave tab), I know this couldn’t be further from the truth and that the playback system, in spite of the flaws I could request attention be paid to, is still really fantastic and allows me to do a lot of things without even having to go into Cubase. Granted I came on board around V4 so I don’t really have prior experience with the app before it had these more playback-focused features. But I do find it funny when people say they think it’s too focused on engraving…
I guess it all goes to show that you really can’t please everyone! I’m grateful to the team and look forward to where they take it in the future.
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Retuning to your original question though - I found some improvements that I think will significantly affect your playback workflow. A few of my favorites of those in no particular order:
I like the ability to assign shortcuts directly to playing techniques. I didn’t previously know that square brackets would make those PT hidden. But taken together you can quickly drop playback tweaks into the score without clutter (if you make them for common midi tweaks that you use, alt samples, etc.) and you can add/edit/move/try them out while using the new looping feature (cycling). The newly updated position line display will help you place them more precisely where you need them.
The generally supercharged update to the way popovers work, and the new ability to not just find but also change all manner of Dorico options directly in the jump bar itself (without going to the associated dialog box, menu or option page) - I don’t think there is ANY activity in Dorico that won’t benefit from that. Judging from the forum questions, we all vaguely “remember there is a way to” but we waste time trying to figure out exactly where.. There are other ways in which D6 makes features more accessible (like instruments with different time signatures) such that I’ll make more use them.
I echo the general comments about it being polished - better handling of long lists for example, faster instrument renaming, chord copying/ selecting…
Having the time code and duration of any selected items in the status bar is huge for me with video, and indirectly useful for getting some of my settings right. I haven’t tried the humanize end enhancement for playback yet but it’s on my list…
I think cutaway scores will be interesting to explore, Yah it’s not anything to do with playback. And yet - I get constrained sometimes in my own brain; like I’m trying too hard to make the players happy. Just looking at it, from a composing perspective I already feel more free to put just that one measure of an instrument or layer in there, if that makes any sense. Condensing multiple instruments held by the same player is similar in regard to my willingness / ease to work with bigger templates.
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