I’m a Dorico user and long-time Logic Pro user, and I bought Cubase last spring in the eventuality that the two (Cubase and Dorico) have more integration (and also because I saw Ludwig Göransson uses Cubase and I am a big fan).
I’m using Cubase for some things and Logic for other things, strictly for DAW stuff; they both have strengths and weaknesses. The sale price is excellent - I’d say if you’re curious, go for it.
I’d love to hear you elaborate if you’re willing to take the time.
Sure! I have years of Logic Pro experience so some of this may be off base. But one thing I like about Cubase is that you can draw fadein/fadeouts directly onto a waveform in the main window, you don’t need to open the automation lane (typing A in Logic) for that.
Getting Cubase to input/output sound seems to be trickier, there is a Studio menu with entries for Audio Connections… and Studio Setup… and these are a relative pain for me so far. It’s working for me if I use built-in audio, but I think I have to dig more deeply to get it to work with external displays, my Kyma hardware, etc.
Cubase doesn’t have global microtonal options like Logic does, but apparently (from another Dorico forum post) HALion has excellent microtonal capabilities which I haven’t tried yet. Details like these are what I’ve noticed so far. I think I’ll keep using both for awhile.
Thanks, @Stephen_Taylor!
I have Logic Pro, and confess I don’t use it much given the work I’m doing these days, so I’m trying to be careful to keep the completionism urge from meeting up with the but-it’s-on-sale fallacy (official moniker for that, yes?) unless I have compelling reason(s).
If you want ultimate fine control over how everything ‘sounds’, Cubase Pro is a great tool for the job. You get excellent tools for precision control over all things ‘audio engineering’.
Cubase can help you get really involved in VSTi plugin management (as well as external instruments/effects), and manipulate how they are played down to the micro-second. You can even hone in on very specific frequencies on a single sample and manipulate the data, and thus the ‘output’.
In contrast, Dorico just does his best to give you a ‘general interpretation’ of what a score says to play. It’s quick and easy to punch in a composition, and get some kind of fairly instant audio feedback.
Cubase is inherently DUMB. It can do almost anything to the sound of your project with amazing precision. It’s packed with tools to monitor and manipulate details. It has a pretty powerful ‘logical editor’ system that makes it fairly easy to ‘batch process’ otherwise monotonous and repetitive tasks in one simple blow.
The catch is…you have to ‘specifically’ tell it EXACTLY what you want it to do. You often must leave ‘musician mode’ and put your mind in ‘audio engineer’ gear. It’s extremely powerful, but Cubase can’t ‘think for you’. To get much use out of it, you have to be the BRAINS, analyze all of the possibilities, and ‘construct’ your own work flows, problems, and solutions.
While the Score editing aspects of Cubase do provide some ‘translation rules/logic’ capability, they are a bit different from those in Dorico. In several ways, Dorico’s ‘automatic score translating’ abilities are a little more ‘advanced/powerful’, with a great deal of thought in having it ‘just work’ without as much ‘direct user input’. The Cubase Score Editor hasn’t had much love/attention/development done to it in years. It still works, and is quite ‘flexible’, but in many ways Dorico has far surpassed it now.
Teaching Cubase to ‘translate’ traditional notation is more of an ‘open frame’ process. Cubase doesn’t ship with many ready made templates to get you started, so you have to invest time in crafting them yourself as you go. I.E. What do you want Cubase to do if it comes across a note with a dot over it? What should it do for a hair-pin drawn on the score? What should it do for an accent (>) over a note? You’ll get a nice ‘empty frame’ to provide the instructions, but YOU will have to fill it in. This can sometimes be the case for Dorico as well (through similar expression maps), but Dorico tends to come with a few more ‘ready made’ options available to just ‘plug and play’.
If you need to work with pure audio (recording/tracking) obviously Cubase is more than handy to have in your tool box. At present Dorcio can’t even host a simple stereo audio track without ‘hacking’ it in as a video attachment of some sort.
If you enjoy playing instruments and/or singing in realtime, recording this, and later worrying about arranging this stuff into Scores…then you will probably LOVE working in Cubase. It also has quite a few ‘song writing’ tools…theory helpers, chording and arp systems, and so much more.
People who craft music by simply DOING IT (rather than through composing it first) tend to get a LOT out of a tracking DAW. It’s an immersive and interacted approach to crafting music…in real time.
You just pick up an instrument and/or a mic, hit record, and pour your heart out. Later you can go back and ‘refine’ things into the presentation or performance format(s) you desire. It can be a refreshing and inspiring way to make music. Crap on the page doesn’t matter. Rules don’t matter. Theory doesn’t matter (at least not in the moment). If you want to vary the tempo just do it, it doesn’t matter. If you want to play in slight variations of an otherwise boring baseline or ostinato passage over many bars, just DO IT without worrying about how it might look on a printed page. If you get a bit off the click track (or don’t want a click track at all…just play it like you feel it), forget it and ‘move on’…keep playing, you can always go back and fix mistakes. You can ‘punch in/out’ on recording and fix things by just playing it again over the ‘mistake space’, or you can use tools to ‘edit the existing take’. For the most part…you just feel it, and DO IT in real time, then ‘play it back, think about it, and maybe fix/change it’ later. You can get in some really ‘creative modes’ where things ‘loop’ and build another part/track on each ‘cycle’. Have fun with it, and just ‘play in’ the different harmony or counter point parts as the thing cycles.
It can be a LOT of fun!
Cubase has plenty of tools to take all those ‘real time performance snippets’, and ‘tame them’ into the proper constraints for making ‘written notation’. I.E. Force things to a fixed tempo and time signature so it makes sense in written notation. Get rid of the real time ‘groove’ so it might notate things in straight 8ths, instead of a crazy variety of doted and flagged notes with weird rests everywhere. Translate hard playing to show ‘accents/dots/etc’ over the notes. Etc…
It does take TIME and practice to learn what they are, and how to use them though.
So, if you wish to get into the realms of very high-quality performance mock-ups, then go for it.
If you enjoy improv composition. Playing and recording yourself, jam sessions with friends, or piecing together songs from huge collections of ‘licks/ideas’, then a DAW like Cubase will bring hours of joy, and meaningful finished projects.
If you want to deep edit pure audio, or do any kind of recording/tracking, then go for it.
If you arrange to film, video, or games…you’ll adore Cubase. It’ll allow you to set cue points, and automatically stretch/shink passages tempos so you hit a cue right on time. You’ll be able to do things like ‘adjust the beat grid’ so that Cubase ‘adjusts the grid and changes values in the tempo track’ accordingly. I.E. Play something in that gradually slows down and speeds up over time. Later adjust the ‘grid’ so things will line up with the beat properly in ‘written notation’.
If you think you might want to get into stuff like pod-casting and having a lot of powerful tools at hand to mix and make that kind of content, it’ll become a very valuable tool in your arsenal.
If you’d like the tools to better polish and master your Dorico audio renderings for distribution/sharing, again, it can come in handy (and you might even like WaveLab instead, or in combination with Cubase).
If you don’t play or sing much (enjoy real time performing), don’t need any of that ‘audio engineering’ capability, and don’t anticipate devoting much time to working on your ‘audio engineering’ or ‘real time composer/song-writing’ chops, I dunno. It just depends. It might come in handy since it would potentially open your world to more ‘collaborative’ opportunities (swapping files and ideas with other Cubase users). Then again, it might just end up wasting space on your system until you eventually uninstall it to ‘make room’ for something else.
70%… to buy Dorico.
I’m a long time Cubase user who composes mainly with Score Editor (yes, with all the flaws and almost zero progress)… once the project is finalized I can export an XML and finalize the score as best as possible in MuseScore 4.4.
How could Dorico be useful to improve and/or change the workflow in Cubase to get both notation and finalized audio?
70% now… and wait for this famous integration?
Thanks for your attention.
I suppose it all depends what you are trying to do. There are workflow methods of round-tripping between Dorico and Cubase (or any DAW). It’s all doable but requires a bit of elbow grease to find the workflow that suits you best.
How does a scorewriter program like either MuseScore (or potentially Dorico) fit into your process? Are you intending to use it after creating mockups in Cubase, to adapt, arrange & engrave parts for live players? Or, are you intending to use it for the composition stage, and then take that into Cubase for refinement of playback?
I am asking because if you are comfortable composing in Cubase and happy with the sound you get from mockups, you may find you’ll have less control over playback and automation in a program like Dorico. I wouldn’t really advise anyone go in that direction (DAW–>Scorewriter) for the sake of improving playback of mockups.
Personally I go the opposite direction: I usually start my compositions in Dorico because I can write and orchestrate at a much faster pace than any DAW (seeing parts vertically), and then bring that into Cubase for mixing refinement.
There are methods of utilizing sync between the apps, as well as expression maps which can aid in a quick translation between the two.
there is a video on that:
Additionally, when it comes to Cubase & Dorico integration, I have found this channel’s videos to be very helpful:
If you write in a DAW, then your main goal is going to be converting MIDI data into score notes. That’s what Cubase’s Score Editor was supposed to do. Dorico’s starting point is notation and everything MIDI is an add-on, so they are coming at it from diametrically opposite directions.
AFAIK, the biggest issue with converting existing MIDI notes to score - especially when they are not hard on the grid - is quantizing how they would be displayed, while preserving the entirety of the recorded material. At the moment, Cubase’s own manual suggests making copies of the MIDI tracks and display-quantizing them.
I suppose this workflow means you can export your project as XML and do the actual display quantizing directly in Dorico. This could be preferable since Dorico is going to give you a VASTLY superior notation results with a lot less effort, but I have no idea how good quantizing function is in Dorico compared to Cubase as I’ve never tried it.
Let us not overlook the fact that Dorico has now the most convenient and powerful Humanisation features, far superior than what you can find in Logic Pro.
Dorico has the most natural and customisable midi playback of all existing Music Software… And if you spend the time and effort to have it pilot the best available software instruments… the sky is limit !!
It is clear that composing with Score Editor (+ Key Editor + Display Quantize) is slower and less pleasant to look at, but to the ear it is all ok and the work of notation + audio finalization is contemporary and in a single program.
Composing in a notation program like Dorico or MuseScore is certainly ideal, but I would not like to find myself doing the work twice (in reality it is already done with Cubase + MuseScore).
Ok, I saw the videos above and some “technical maneuvers” to collaborate between Dorico and Cubase and take the best of each of them are there, but a bit cumbersome and above all “you would work in separate moments”.
Waiting for a tight integration, the one necessary to not do the work twice, or to eliminate repetitive operations or those that slow down the workflow, I thank you for all your contributions!
I think I will join the offer as a future investment … let’s hope!
Many of us share that dream, and I’m sure the Steinberg teams understands how desirable that would be.
The problem is that, even within the world of notation (ignoring the DAW world) there are many ambiguities and contradictory traditions. We see this clearly with the various difficulties that result from different vendors trying to import and export using the MusicXML standard.
The differences between the various notation traditions and the DAW world are even greater because the DAW world does not really insist on the conformity to time. DAWs offer the structure of time signatures, measures and beats, but the musician doesn’t have to conform to that. Instead, the musician may take the approach of entering (and manipulating) the MIDI bits until they sound right to the ear, regardless of how that relates to the measures and beats, if beats are even used at all.
To fully unify this between the DAW and notation world would require some major assumptions and subjective interpretation in both directions. It is like self-driving cars. Getting a car to stay in the middle of the lane on a clear day with good visibility and freshly painted lines is relatively easy. But adding the glare of lights, fog, construction zones, funeral processions and all sorts of real-world stuff makes this next to impossible.
Having said that, while nobody really has self-driving technology today, there are many very helpful assists, and I hope we will see some of that to simplify the job of using DAW and notation together.
I love this analogy 
Add the need to respect those still driving Victorian horse-drawn carriages, or trains with a flag bearer in front, and those archaeologists reconstructing Roman chariots…