I just finished working on an orchestral project, using Dorico for the first time after having worked in Sibelius for many years (and Finale way way back).
I feel I have to congratulate the team because the experience I had working in Dorico was truly miles ahead of anything I experienced in the past. Specifically, I felt your tagline “more time for music” was really a rare instance of truth in advertising!
Firstly, the concept of separating Write from Engrave, coupled with a truly superior engraving engine, lets me focus on the actual act of music creation in a way that I just couldn’t with Sibelius. I am one of those unlucky people who can’t just leave a hairpin slightly misplaced and must correct it NOW. So when default engraving isn’t good, like in Sibelius, I usually end up totally distracted and drift into graphical designer mode instead of concentrating on the music.
Secondly, the editing possibilities afforded by insert mode, the different durational edits with or without chord mode enabled, and the ability to freely move things backwards/forwards in time and freely change meter on existing music without having to deal with weird 1024th 17:11 tuplets and 15 new ties per note as a consequence (%%$#@!@$), makes Dorico the first notation program that I feel I can flow with during the actual composition phase . With Sibelius I always felt like it would be best if I start inputting the score into the application after I’ve done most of the form composition offline (pen+paper, or DAW).
I could go on and on, but this is the gist of it. I feel like I can just make music, and the wonderful engraving just soothes my ADHD + slightly OCD brain and mostly lets me forget about “engraving”. I’ve been waiting for this for years! Thanks