Yes! Cello and DB can now be condensed.
No!
The bass will be written an octave lower.
So I wrote the bass an octave higher which resulted in double stems, let along not sounding in the right octave.
So I wrote the bass an octave higher which resulted in double stems, let along not sounding in the right octave.
Dorico 3.5’s section player condensing features are not designed to handle cello and double bass written coll’ottava, but we may yet support this in a future version.
Thanks Daniel! I thought it was there already, but we’ve never been so close to this amazing feature.
Honestly, so I was. I didn’t try it when experimenting, and I didn’t have a job where I needed it, but I was in fact under the impression this was possible since 3.0…!
You can adjust the playback octave of the CB in the HALion player to sound an octave lower, if that will help with the playback pitch. Some other Players have that option as well, if you are not using HALion.
celloDbCondensed.zip (972 KB)
It was not, because section players could not condense before… this week! Now you can, but with an octave workaround… I’ll correct my files when the team implement it for good 
Well, if one would use solo instead of section players, you could approximate it!
That doesn’t solve the problem, because divisi are not possible for solo players, and you definitely may need divisi in the string sections…
I’m sure there are edge cases sitting by the side of the bell curve, but it seems to me the vast majority of music that condenses Celli and Basses would be pre-Romantic orchestral music, for which you, by and large, wouldn’t really require divisi. And we are, of course, talking of a workaround, a way we might’ve bent the feature, not the fully fleshed out implementation.
As an addendum to this: When I want double-basses in the Playback, but not explictly shown in the Score, I’ve used the new Staff Hiding feature to Hide the entire Doublebass instrument, but still have it play.
Pre-romantic almost always has the celli and basses play the same line except for when the celli are playing by themselves. In romantic and forward, you can have one page where they play the same line and on the next, playing separate. If in a certain piece, they always play the same line or always play a different line, it wouldn’t be a problem writing the score. Conductors don’t want to see 2 staves when 1 will do.
I agree with Babe8, and Dorico is not there only to edit perfect scores, but also to create the beautiful orchestral “material”, the instrumental parts. So if you achieve your perfect score through a workaround, chances are that you’ll have to create the perfect parts through another workaround. The beauty of Dorico also lies in the team’s will to limit the need of workarounds, at least for this kind or work. Because workaround are error-prone, and proper dynamic implementation is not. (not sure I’m understandable here, sorry for my English !)