Hi, first off I have written my first proper piece at the age of 59 and very new to this. I write cinematic orchestral music only using Dorico 6 elements and I have Cubase 14 elements. As I only write orchestral music, I am wondering if to mix it is it worth transferring it to Cubase, which to be honest I struggle with understanding Cubase. As I am very much a newbie, I wonder for my type of music if I should just stay in Dorico 6 and learn the key editor function or am I missing a trick by not moving to Cubase? I just want a good sounding Audio file to release, to anyone really. Library wise I have Hans Zimmer strings and whilst I have written in BBCSO Discover I am purchasing BBCSO Pro. Your thoughts please?
Welcome to the forum!
My take has always been: If I don’t need to scroll or do anything fancy (routing, busses groups etc.) in Dorico’s mixer, I keep it in Dorico. Otherwise, I’ll export the MIDI to Logic and load it into a project template that 100% mirrors Dorico’s playback setup.
I hardly ever use Cubase for mixing – to me the Dorico key editor can do just about everything I need, together with Expression Maps of course. There are reasons some prefer a DAW like Cubase – particularly if you have a track as opposed to score based approach where you can mix and match articulations from different libraries with complete freedom or you need to include audio etc – but Dorico is in most respects very capable and the actual audio engine is similar to Cubase so you likely wouldn’t hear any difference in sound. I myself use the BBCSO Core, though my favourite library has become the Spitfire Symphony Orchestra by the same vendor.
You can achieve a considerable amount within Dorico using the Key Editor to draw in CC values, if you want, and to modify note velocities and dynamics, etc. Cubase will be “all that, and much more”; so if you are unfamiliar with either, I’d start with Dorico and then see if you need greater flexibility.
TBH, Noteperformer will give you a passable orchestral result with zero effort; and what it occasionally lacks in realism of sound, it makes up for in realistic phrasing and balance. Half the trick with a DAW is getting all those lovely individual samples to “play nicely together”.
The intended result might be the best driver of your decision. You can, as @benwiggy observes, create a passable proof directly in Dorico. If realism is the goal, my own policy is to move to Cubase (or equivalent) so that none of my phrasing and articulation details disturb a nicely formatted score, which is my actual product. This also lets me experience the score the way a musician does, as I end up playing the parts in Cubase.
Thanks everyone and your comments have been very helpful and noted. I think I will be using this forum more often. As I said Im new to this and my thoughs where around keeping it in Dorico and learn the key editor, which I have just spent the afternoon doing so and have made some real progress. I think my plan is to finish the mixing in Dorico, but save a copy that I can import into Cubase and see what happens. It’s nice to know that people are here and that I’m not on my own. Thanks everyone
Dorico will get you a decent sound on it’s own, but if you want a release ready sound I would use Cubase for recording and then my personal preference is Wavelab for mastering. If you want to release on CD or for streaming(Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc.) you’ll want a professional grade release…don’t get scared, I just mean it should sound fairly close to other professional releases. You can do it all yourself, just takes an open mind and perseverance 
worth mentioning – I tend to put in articulations which are essential for the playback of the specific library used but sometimes make less sense if the score priority is for live musicians. If you want only one version then some sort of compromise will usually be required, though the problems shouldn’t be overstated.