It is not ever going to be fixed. Development has ceased.
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I’m very aware of that but something could change down the road (as someone at MM has recently intimated) as MM still owns the code. Nothing is absolute. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I’m only into this for 48 hours, but I’m impressed and think it is a good thing. I’ve been a Finale user since the late 90s. The past few releases have had minimal improvements and introduced new bugs. (I’ve found a few that I’ve found to be really odd and beyond comprehension that they were never fixed.). Dorico seems do what Finale does and the workflow seems to be easier. A script to convert Finale files to XML and import them to Dorico would be wonderful. I’ve got a big learning curve, but I think it will be worth it.
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Windows PC for me, so no Logic, but I have never suffered any unresolvable issues with Steinberg software breaking any versions of Finale, Sibelius, or any other host.
I’m not excited that HALion, Sonic, and Groove Agent no longer work with my VST2 only hosts without some third party hacks, and that it’s no longer an effective solution to maintain a working copy of Sonic SE 3.5.10 along side Sonic 7, but other than this, no issues. Third party bridges exist to get the VST3i plugins going in most VST2 only hosts, but it really would be nice if Steinberg would supply their own VST2 shell with HALion/Sonic/Groove Agent/etc. Quite a few nice hosts out there still haven’t made the transition to supporting VST3 (and despite considerable efforts, are still having trouble doing so).
I run Plogue engine stuff (like bidule, Finale, and Sibelius) at the same time, and on the same system as Cubase and Dorico all the time. I even have them sharing MIDI/Audio streams and locking to a variety of time-code sources without issue. Been doing it since the days of Cubase 7 (Dorico did not exist yet). Never been a problem that I couldn’t find a solution for.
I have had some problems with Steinberg software over the years. I’m not even going to try to pretend every single session has been a trouble-free walk in the park. Thing is, I’ve had problems with every major piece of software ever installed on any of my Systems (Many different platforms and OSes). The more you do with a computer, the odds ever increase that ‘something is going to go wrong’ at some point. It happens…
My personal experience with Steinberg has been far and large positive. Representatives, and sometimes even the leads on Development teams have reached out to me about my reported issues, and PERSONALLY found a solution for my problem. Sometimes it has been a temporary ‘work around’, but they’ve always filed the issue in the Jiri thing, assigned it to someone to fix, and for the ‘show stopping bugs’ I’ve found over the years, it’s always been addressed within a release or two. The smaller bugs that they’ve had to ‘table’ for another day…I’ve always gotten a nice letter explaining that it could be a while, along with some suggestions for possible work arounds, or third-party solutions for my problem.
A few times Steinberg people have gone above board and treated me well, despite me showing my ‘frustrated ass’ to them. They stayed ‘professional and fair’ when I lost my cool.
I was (and maybe still am) a bit nervous of Steinberg possibly dropping VST2 support (and some other things) too soon; but, so far Steinberg has proven that my paranoia is unfounded.
Sometimes Steinberg’s offerings aren’t best for my needs, and I move on to other options, or do without. That’s life. The notion that they produce ‘bad software’, or practice unethical/uncaring policies? I find them ridiculous. Steinberg runs a pretty tight ship, the employees there put a lot of PERSONAL pride and attention into producing and servicing quality products with usability and reasonable pricing pretty high on the priority list.
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At present there are very few plugins not yet available in VST3 form thankfully. In my case everything I use is VST3 except one plugin I use very infrequently.
Very few that you use 
I have a few staples that I’m not ready to let go of yet. They might NEVER get a proper VST3 version.
Garritan’s VST3 version ARIA for windows is all but useless, but many of the libraries are still a staple for me. Sforzando is an option, kind of, but to channel bounce and stuff, I’m forced to use yet another ‘host in host’ utility to get that done (bidule).
I still have a few things that do come in VST3, but it doesn’t work as well.
I’ve had plenty of cases where the VST3 version was missing 2/3rds or more of the feature set when compared to the VST2 version. Cases where the host didn’t supply nearly as much information to the plugin as VST2 (or did so improperly) and the list goes on.
Resolve all of those issues, and I could not care less about VST2 anymore. Truth is, they haven’t all been resolved. It’s even a bit worse in non Steinberg hosts that are rushing to fully support VST3 as it should be (and some still debate how to interpret and implement all of those ‘should bes’).
The good news? Steinberg hosts still support VST2 (at least they do in Windows world). Other hosts still support VST2 (even on Macs with Apple Silicon, without ‘Rosetta’).
So, we’re covered 
Which ones are those?
You can’t use VST2 on Mac with Apple Silicon without Rosetta. All VST hosts will have to run in Rosetta mode to use VST2.
Garritan ARIA is the major for me right now.
The VST3 version of that for Windows is TRASH. Might as well just use Sforzando.
To get multi-channel support with Sforzando, I need bidule…drop that in, and I might as well keep using the VST2 version of Garritan.
So “I” am covered personally by investing in bidule. Thing is, my ‘students’ don’t always have that. I’d rather not have to ‘require them’ to own it to get my courses working. So, I’m forced to rework entire courses in order to dodge problems.
On the ‘host side’, I still have plenty that can’t use VST3. A biggie for me is Band In A Box. Same story for Sibelius, Finale (which doesn’t matter quite as much now), and some other less common hosts.
Again, there was a time I used HALion to make a LOT of content for students to use. Waste of time. I have to do it all again, for Sforzando, or something…
HALion/Sonic and Groove Agent dropped VST2 support way too soon! They excluded a significant target audience access to HALion/Groove agent content.
A decade of content I built for HALion, that can no longer reach a good 70% of my initial target audience (that’ll shrink with recent Finale news, but still…Sibelius courses, I still have to adapt pretty heavily due to the loss of Sonic/Groove Agent VST2).
So, I’ve had (or chosen rather) to invest what HALion cost in Chicken Systems. Gradually trying to port the stuff over to SFZ (a few free players exist for this) or NKI (only works for the students who have full Kontakt). sigh
For a while I could still have them install SE 3.5.10, and that worked, it’d unlock libraries with the old eLicenser, and/or the newer dongle free thing, but now the database is different and stuff, libraries need to be for ‘the old or the new, mixing them can lead to serious issues’. So, that’s not really an option anymore. Especially with the old eLicenser servers slated to go offline in the not so distant future.
HALion and Groove Agent can be a pain to get working in those on Windows these days. It’s possible, but ‘expensive’ to do it well/stable.
Running them in stand alone, and involving virtual ports and all is a ‘possible low/no cost’ solution, but then the MIX from Sonic 7 is off the main audio matrix from the rest of the host, very confusing to students, and some audio interfaces can’t handle it well.
All this stuff is ‘frustrating’, but these problems are by no means exclusive to ‘Steinberg Software’.
I get similar problems with everything on my computer. Even the office suites, Adobe stuff, and so on. With time, problems pop up.
It’s life…
Yes sir good idea. Gonna put that in the bucket listnof stuff to do. Nope, no NP yet. Im seriously considering bbcso core as my next purchase, but one step at a time for me
Right, but that has a VST3 version. I’m talking about ones that won’t get any VST3 version and will remain VST2 only.
Hosts of course are a different story - there are still some older hosts that can only host VST2 (Sibelius comes to mind). But generally whether Dorico removes VST2 support doesn’t have any bearing on this because hosts don’t have to use other hosts.
Not on Windows…they have a download that says it’s VST3, but it’s TRASH. It doesn’t work beyond the first instrument slot, and quite poorly at that.
To compound matters, the Mac and PC versions won’t exchange fxb settings (or whatever it uses), so Dorico scores are not very portable between Mac and PC users 
If I swap Dorico scores with a Mac Garritan user and either or both of us have VST3 ARIA, we both lose all the ARIA VSTi template stuff in the exchange. Frustrating…
If we both use the VST2 versions, we can exchange projects all day long, and retain our playback templates.
It does have bearing. See my comment above about a collaborator on PC and a Collaborator on Mac attempting to exchange projects involving Garritan…in a case where ‘preserving the playback qualities’ is important to retain throughout the exchanges.
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My thoughts exactly. Its not like finale was totally bug free. Even with a cursory few days on dorico, my first dorico orchestral project sounds way better in playback mode. So, same as you, im gonna finish up a last project in finale, then use dorico for all new compositions
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With Steinberg stuff this is true. With quite a few other hosts/plugins/etc, it’s not a problem at all. They fixed their hosts and plugins to run VST2 on Apple Silicon just fine.
I might be mistaken, but I think bidule can bridge a VST2 plugin into Dorico without needing Rosetta now?
Better option might be to just have bidule bring in the AU versions though? On a Mac it can bridge AU/CLAP and others in as well.
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But you can’t fix the hosts to run VST2 on Apple Silicon. At least it doesn’t make any sense given what I know of the formats. The VST2 plugin file only includes Intel CPU code. VST3 is basically a zip file (or folder structure) that has separate binaries for Intel and ARM (Silicon M1) included. So when the VST2 plugin’s binary code is Intel only, I don’t see how it could possibly run on any Apple Silicon host without Rosetta. Unless there is some miraculous way of running Intel compiled binaries on Apple Silicon without Rosetta.
EDIT: After searching, I guess some vendors did find a way to recompile ARM64 binaries for their VST2 plugins, allowing them to work on Silicon in general. Weird - I don’t see why you would bother doing that instead of just going to VST3.
I found someone else’s reddit post that clarifies in the case of Ableton Live: “VSTs that are not native to Apple Silicon will simply not show up in Live at all unless you run the whole app in Rosetta.”
So instead it is that some hosts support VST2 native silicon but not with all plugins - only in the case of vendors who happened to decide to compile VST2 native silicon versions in addition to the VST2 Intel versions.
I’m guessing, but I suspect they might check for ARM compatibility first, and if that test fails, sandbox it some way in a ‘bridge’ that might well use Rosetta.
Hence, the main host itself might NOT be configured to use the intel compatibility stuff, but when needed, the plugin goes into a special bridge/shell that does access Rossetta (or something similar)?
At any rate, for Mac Users, it’s not nearly as much of an issue. Sibelius and such can use the ‘AU’ versions of HALion/Sonic/Groove Agent/etc on the Apple platforms.
Windows users are still in a pickle on some things.
In time it’ll sort itself out, and things we be what they will be.
My point was that this is one of the very few ‘issues’ I’ve had with Steinberg products despite several decades of using the stuff…going back to ATARI ST days.
The decisions were not easy for Steinberg, they had very good reasons for making the moves they made, when they made them. I do ‘understand’. It was time to detach themselves from the old ‘dongle’ and get things working on newer system architectures ASAP. They probably also got ‘marching orders’ from the likes of Apple and Microsoft, as well as whatever 'developer tools/compilers/etc. they use that influenced their decisions as well.
People with issues like mine are enough of a minority that the ‘damage’ to the overall community is a relatively small price to pay in this particular case.
I should have known better than to use a proprietary sound design tool like HALion for my courses in the first place. Lesson learned. Stick with sfz or soundfonts, etc. I thought HALion would save me time and increase quality, and for a short time it did. Long term, it turned out to be a mistake. I won’t make it again.
Plus, to date, I can still ‘get things working’ for ‘me’. It’s just no longer ‘ideal’, and requires some third-party assistance. The main reason it’s more of a big deal for me, is because I don’t want to require students to invest in strange hacks and fudges to use my courses. I have to start over and replace a bunch of stuff.
It sucks, but it can also be approached as an ‘opportunity’ to rethink and improve things I probably should be doing anyway.
Having said all that, the ‘people’ at Steinberg have also been very helpful in doing what they reasonably can in assisting me in engineering ‘solutions’ to my problems.
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That’s possible, but I don’t know that a solution similar to jBridge (one of the bit-bridge solutions back in the 32-bit to 64-bit days) would work for that - probably whatever allows the VST2 instruments to work in Rosetta would have to run as a completely separate process and then communicate somehow with the main process, similar to what Vienna Ensemble Pro does.
Anyway this is probably getting this thread too off topic now.
Exactly. Test for ARM capability, if it’s not there, into an intel code compatible sandbox it goes. The ‘sandbox’ might use Rosetta, or it might even have custom compatibility layers translating the low level processor instructions. I dunno, I don’t have a Mac of any flavor right now…I’m just guessing, but I think there have been some ‘engineering solutions’ out there.
You can batch convert XML using the Translate Folder to XML command under File > Export in Finale. There are XML Preferences in the same submenu, which contain a checkbox for including subfolders.
There is a FinaleScript built-in to Finale for batch processing to PDF.
I’d also recommend viewing my video on importing XML to Dorico, and the kind of work you have to do.
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My experience with Finale is identical in time (25 years). I switched to Dorico 2 years ago. It was hard, but many factors of optimizing the work process were already essential for me and tipped the balance in favor of Dorico, although the archive of scores and published works is huge. Watching today’s avalanche of emigrants from Finale, I want to encourage and inspire you all - don’t give up, in a short time (depending on your cognitive and other abilities) you will definitely master Dorico and enjoy the logic and talent of the architects and developers of this software product. Once again, I take this moment to take my hat off to the Dorico Steinberg employees - Thank you for doing everything with heart, love and respect for your users. Friendliness and missionary spirit (in this field) inspire and give all of us a wave of good emotions and inspire to live and create. May all be happy with creativity!!! Moving forward!
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Thank you, if you do decide to implement something of the kind it would be a most welcome addition. It’s really just that one area of note entry from the computer keyboard that noticeably slows me down; otherwise I’m very impressed by Dorico.