For some reason, Dorico’s default project comes with all tracks at-6.02db (Which is applied twice since both every instrument and the master output at at -6.02db) AND Halion Sonic global mixer at -4.2db.
That’s A LOT of volume reduction. Doesn’t help that Halion Sonic is already pretty quite compared to other popular third party plugins (I checked pianoteq).
For Dorico team - As a new user, that’s a MAJOR design flow which I think should be addressed in the next version. If you’re concerned with clipping with many instrument a default limiter at the master output / automatic reduction of volume for all instrument when many are added might be a better solution. This way or another there is no excuse for reducing the master output volume by default… to my understand it’s a bad practice to touch it anyway.