Dorico 5 Now Available

[husker]

Steinberg released Version 5 today:

https://www.steinberg.net/dorico/

 

$29.99 Upgrade from Elements

$99.99 Upgrade from Pro

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

Interesting for them to now include Groove Agent SE on the paid versions. That won't be much of a change for me as I have Cubase LE and that comes with it.

Only thing which improved since version 4 SE based solely on looking at specs:

- You can now have 8 players. You were limited to 2 in version 4.

Things which still make no sense and remain:

- You can only adjust vertical spacing in the paid versions. This is a slight improvement over version 4, as you could only do that in the Pro version.
- Most of the engrave features are still hidden behind the paid versions. I don't see what's so awesome about a separate mode you use to adjust the layout of your scores that's so precious you can't have it for free, especially considering this is how the program is structured to begin with.
- You have to pay in order to have Explode, Reduce and the ability to Paste to a different voice.
- Score condensing, cueing and divisi for string sections are hidden behind the paid versions.

Even with all these, it still is a more attractive scoring alternative than the free version of Sibelius, which limits you in other ways, like bar numbers and other things. What remains to see if Steinberg fixed things like performance, as Dorico is extremely laggy and unresponsive. Depending on your specs, each command you do may take a few seconds to happen or for you to see a change. They also dedicated a part to introduce the ability to import and export MusicXML which is sad that it took them 4 versions to add the ability to import and export a file format that's the standard for moving scores across notation software.

 

Edited May 25, 2023 by Bruno de Souza Lino

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

At the present moment, Dorico 5 might simply not run on Windows because of reasons unknown. The only thing it might give you are cryptic messages like "audio engine process died." or similar. It seems Steinberb shipped this one sooner than it should've been.

[satya]

How is Dorico 5 SE

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

They just released an update which hopefully fixed the VST Audio Engine issues in the first version, which would cause Dorico to fail to initialize its audio engine and never launch.

As per using it, they're getting there. There are some quirks and the software sticks very close to the strict limitations of MIDI and in some cases feels more like you're not writing a score.

It's hard to gauge how using the program is as it's different from Sibelius, Finale, Notion and MuseScore in many ways.

But, it's important to note you're not gonna get a DAW experience from it. It is a scoring program.