When is Steinberg going to make the Cubase/Dorico integration?

Cubase
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This YouTube link that I posted below is from a PreSonus presentation 6 years ago…
I personally used the DAW and notation software. I have to say it’s good, but i have been using Cubase for so long that it’s like changing instruments for me. But if you see the level of integration between these 2 softwares Studio One (DAW) and Notion (Notation software) and you’re starting out with Cubase or Dorico, you’d definitely go for for the PreSonus.
This feature request should also be considered as a point of interest for Steinberg. As we committed Steinberg users choose to stick with something that works, others are going for innovation.
Please check the video below, and imagine Cubase and Dorico working side by side in this manner and imagine the fluidity and transparency in working like that. (And that was 6 years ago).
Hope this puts things into perspective to both Steinberg and Steinberg users, old and new.

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Happy New Year all.!

For those who don’t follow the Dorico forum closely, this is the response from the product marketing manager to this same post over there:-

As for S1/Notion integration, its clear over recent releases of S1 Presonus have gradually been bringing more of Notion’s functionality directly inside of S1… I can only see that continuing going forward - i.e. less and less need/reliance for separate (desktop) apps anyway.

Perhaps importantly, this is all at Notion 6’s level of capability from some years ago - owners haven’t seen any new significant update to that program since, raising general questions about its future development. That’s another thread entirely.

Regards future Cubase/Dorico workflow, the message for users is clear from the post quoted above. Folk have spoken, Steinberg have listened and ideas for progress are discussed and in hand. More time/patience needed…

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Yes, probably another thread. Somewhere along this happy trail of bringing S1 and Notion together, Presonus decided it needed to merge with (or be acquired by) Fender. What kind of priority do you think Fender places on music notation?

That’s the big problem here. We can dream of the perfect vision of the future, but ultimately these products are seen as properties to move around on the corporate playing table. And in a perverse way, some of the corporate types probably view integration as being the opposite of the property game they would prefer to play.

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From that Steinberg developer

“We have limited resources (i.e. a fixed number of developers, and the same 24 hours in every day as everybody else) so we can only work on a certain number of things at the same time. We have to balance the work we are doing carefully in order to try to deliver functionality that satisfies the needs of our very diverse user base, whose needs are much broader than any single functional area.”

Many of us have feature requests and bug fix requests. As long as Steinberg maintains this update-based pricing policy, then we’re not going to see rapid development any time soon. If we want to see more and faster development, we got to pay more. I personally wish I could pay monthly in order to get these awesome features, faster.

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Nobody cares about the future of PreSonus, what we’re talking about here is that when are we going to get that level of integration that other softwares embraced a long time ago.

And what’s funny is that other Cubase users actually like to fool themselves and say that Cubase starts something new and other softwares follow. That might have been true 20 years ago, but 20 years is a long time. Now clearly most of it’s developers went to the other softwares companies it even they started their own company. So if you think about it, if you need to follow the innovation, you need to follow the developers.

Take Dorico as an example. Those developers that worked on Sibelius for so long went and created software that, in my and most people’s opinions is The most fluid notation software.

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I agree with you, but then again you have to look at the market. Most other softwares you pay much less and don’t post for updates. And if we started paying 25ish Euros a month, how can we accept that being paid more that 700 Euros so far.

They definitely need a new business strategy because it’s not looking too good for them.

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If not for Yamaha owning the whole works, Steinberg would be on the corporate trading block, just like everybody else in the music tech industry. So I think the real question is, does Yamaha have any strategy here?

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Those are good points. Steinberg is an extremely important company but things have changed a lot since 15+ years ago. From my experience with them, over only 2-3 years, I can’t tell what their strategy is partly because it seems like they’ve done nearly everything already.

They’ve created a massive product with a huge assortment of features that have defined expectations of what a DAW should be. When I look at their product now I ask myself, “Are they overburdened?” Maybe this product is too big and to complicated to make the dynamic improvements some of us may want.

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Guys, Steinberg is working on it. No need to speculate or worry about the doom of their business plan. They have had the same business plan more or less since Yamaha acquired them. That is, they are a conservative developer with an established, fairly predictable pattern. Look to their past to see their future. It’s the same. Slow, strategic, iterative, incremental, occasionally brilliant, occasionally bug-ridden, occasionally delightful, occasionally infuriating, but generally consistent development, with consistent patterns of release complexity and bug fixing cycles. This business model pays the bills and keeps the lights on at Steinberg HQ so that Yamaha doesn’t have to step in. It works. It may not be what you want or hope for, but it works. If you want a DAW that will be around for decades, that is what Steinberg is building.

Re: Cubase/Dorico coming together in some way, they’re working on it. It takes time. People don’t seem to understand how long things like this take. How hugely different the programs are, from approach, legacy code, frameworks, features, data structures/functions, time, engine, midi, etc. It takes time, but keep in mind Dorico was brought into the Steinberg family, in part, for the very important purpose of the legacy of Cubase. So it will happen, eventually. They have a roadmap. It’s just slower than you might like.

In the meantime, if it doesn’t work well for you, and you are in a rush for certain features, there is competition out there. And Steinberg knows that. They are keenly aware of ALL the competition. But if there is a better solution for you today, and you need it NOW, just use it. Don’t sit around waiting for the magic Dorico/Cubase combination any time soon. No one is locking you into Steinberg. I use a bunch of DAWs for various reasons, including when I need features that other DAWs possess that Cubase doesn’t have.

Having been in this space for a long long time, I also know how small this market really is, how small the DAW developer community really is, and how limited DAW developer budgets are. The best DAW developers are not buying yachts or even fancy BMWs… Their pay scale is not very good compared to the fancy big money in cloud computing and AI right now. Budgets are small, margins are tight, no fame and fortune, no big Silicon Valley investment speculation money, just a small fringe software market of really cool stuff… they do it out of passion and love for the most part, not for the stock options.

It is a SLOW process. Don’t kid yourselves about vast resources out there and big corporate money. IMO, gathering bits of info over the years and having talked with a bunch of developers from different products at many companies, I’ve gotten a glimpse of how all this really works behind the scenes. Including from the development/framework issue, which is one of the biggest issues that developers deal with when writing cross-platform apps and plugins. There is a world of complexity that the Dorico and Cubase teams have to navigate, way more than you may realize. So I believe we’ll get some level of Dorico integration by about Cubase 15. Could be 16, which is a long time, I know, but I’m crossing fingers that by 15 they’ll have something outstanding for us. By 14 would be amazing, but I doubt it, it will likely be longer. If that’s too long for you, you know the alternatives. And having used the alternatives, just be aware, those developers have the same kinds of pressures on them too, so you’ll find other kinds of shortcomings there too… since this is all a race of turtles… smart turtles, indeed, but turtles nonetheless. There are no rabbits here sprinting, no big money, no secret army of genius DAW developers that will pull off miracles for you. The DAW chessboard is largely set and hasn’t changed that much in a while… it’s mostly consistent iteration, and occasional flashes of brilliance on the margins in specific apps that are not designed for a broad market (hats off to Bitwig for its brilliance, for example, but I’m not scoring a film with it any time soon.)

Good luck and cheers, and hope you make great music whatever DAW you use.

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Like how many different ways do we need to route tracks really?

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I’m not sure I want them integrated - unless Dorico added a sixth tab: Perform. I use a DAW to add performance interpretations of my own, as if I was the conductor - other conductors may have even a simple fermata conducted much differently than another conductor, never mind me. And they may want a tremolo or sul pont (or both) on that high violin part. My own performance interpretations I prefer to handle separately, Maybe someone will surprise me… Finale sure did.

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The surprising thing about the OPs post was that they praised a solution where the DAW does not have proper notation built-in, so that software has to build a bridge to another piece of software. At the same time Cubase has a powerful score editor built right in so that you don’t need to perform the endless sending of data everytime you make an edit, yet this is deemed inferior.
I dare say it is exactly the other way around as @NicolasJC put it.

The real question is: Is the Notion software that much better than Steinberg’s score editor that you would rather do the constant manual data exchange? And this is not addressed in this topic at all.
I like the title of the topic, but the discussion in the topic is, in my opinion, completely besides the point.

We shall see whether Steinberg keeps having a score editor inside of Cubase when they make the switch and how the data exchange with Dorico will be then.

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Hopefully soon…

In the meantime, does anyone already use Dorico as an alternative to Score Editor?
With what flow and with what results?

Thanks, I hope I’m not off OT

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This question was asked on Club Cubase. I believe they were talking about this for down the line.

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For the record, I never use the Score Editor in Cubase. I was using Finale and Sibelius before I ever discovered it and now use Dorico. The thing I LOVE! about Dorico is it handles the playback of dynamics. I can simply set dynamic levels, hairpins, accents, all that stuff in simple traditional ways and all the velocity and CC data is set accordingly. The score editor can’t do that (to my knowledge). You still have to create all that info manually for each MIDI track.

So my workflow for a film score is to set up the master structure in Cubase with any temp music MIDI, tempo changes and cues figured out and export the resulting MIDI and tempo track files. Cubase is really good for that stuff. Then I import those in to Dorico and start scoring away. Once the score is reasonably complete, I import the MIDI back to Cubase and finish with additional audio tracks and anything else that might be missing and then do the final mix. It’s a little cumbersome but works. Obviously, for my workflow, Dorico and Cubase integration would be a HUGE benefit!

Plus, I think the Cubase Score Editor looks completely ugly and it just turns me off like a light switch. Still has that early 2000’s SX look. Ugh. I know, I’m shallow. lol

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Thanks @Mackieguy for sharing your experience! For me it is fundamental to know and understand the interaction between Cubase and Dorico, since they are still two separate programs.

Yes, Score Editor is incredibly behind and has “dead” potential, and it is a great disappointment, even if with effort and a lot of time spent you can, only with Cubase, get to an ok mix and a (alas) almost ok notation.

What stops me from getting Dorico, despite the 70% discount, is that, basically, this import and export can be done with MuseScore Studio in the meantime that Score Editor is (super) updated or there is direct integration with Dorico.

Probably it is also the idea of ​​having to use two software instead of one, thinking that this lengthens the working times. But it is also true that, using Dorico as an alternative to Score Editor, perhaps the time is all gained. I don’t know, I should invest in Dorico and start using it, leave MuseScore and wait for the future of Score Editor and/or the famous integration.

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Go for Dorico with the 70% discount.

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I would personally go for the Dorico deal. The cost is really low for the program offered and I don’t think they will offer 70% off anytime soon.

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