Dorico Vs Sibelius (Differences Between Dorico And Sibelius)

 

 

For anyone unfamiliar with the world of music notation software, let me quickly point out that these two examples are leaders in the market. In this article, I’m going to make a light comparison between the two to measure the merits and wheedle out the weaknesses.

Dorico Vs Sibelius

Let’s begin with a brief look at the origins of each of these pieces of software. Dorico, in comparison to Sibelius, is a relatively new offering in the world of notation software. Developed by Microsoft and Steinberg, Dorico was first available on Windows and Mac OS in late October 2016. What is of particular note is that Dorico was, for the most part, a project designed by some of the key developers of Sibelius software.

Sibelius was taken over by Avid Technologies but they closed their London offices in 2012 leaving Steinberg the ideal opportunity to headhunt some of the top software developers for their new project: Dorico. Incidentally, if you are curious about the name, it was chosen to recognise the skills and contributions of the 16^th Century Italian music engraver Valerio Dorico (1500-1565).

Sibelius was founded by two Cambridge Music students in 1993, who had found that writing out music by hand was an overly laborious task. The brothers Finn, Ben, and Jonathan, cleverly set about designing not only an outstanding notation programme that not only produced professional-looking scores but could playback the notation.

The very early versions of Sibelius ran on Acorn computers with as little as 4Mb RAM. I remember this only too well, as this is exactly what I used at the time. Acorn computers did at first limit the uptake of Sibelius, but this did not endure. Composers like George Benjamin and John Rutter were two of the early composers to adopt and rubber stamp Sibelius. Publishing houses like Faber Music also chose Sibelius software that made a significant impact on the sales of the product.

Sibelius took off quickly as it was not only an intuitive programme to work with, but it had been designed by two people who understood what a composer, or publisher, needs to make the workflow go smoothly. By 2005, the company had offices across the world and in 2006 was acquired by Avid Technologies. As you will have gathered from the name of the software, Sibelius is so-called as Sibelius was a favourite composer of Ben and Jonathan Finn.

What you receive with either of these pieces of software is a comprehensively constructed package capable of delivering almost anything you can imagine to you, the composer. Dorico, like Sibelius, offers different ‘levels’ of product from the free ‘SE’ version to the professional one. As you would expect, functionality is reduced with the less expensive options to the point where with Dorico SE you can only have two players in the project.

At the professional end of the scale, Dorico is now available in version 3.5 will set you back £480, or as a student, lecturer, or teacher, £291. In comparison, Sibelius is offered through Avid as a subscription in three tiers. For the professional (Sibelius Ultimate), it comes in at $19.99 per month, and for the standard Sibelius only $9.99 per month. The advantage of the Avid subscription is you are guaranteed to always have up-to-date software without any nasty, unexpected price rises for updates.

Dorico 3.5 offers an exhilarating array of functionality. There’s ‘Automatic Engraving’, giving you a professional-looking score every time; ‘Automatic Layout of Parts’, ‘Condensed Scores’, ‘Drum Notation’, that’s accurate and legible, ‘Easy Note Input’ via keyboard, DAW, mouse, and ‘Integrated MIDI editors. This last function is particularly unique and useful. What Dorico provides with this feature is a cross-over between the world of Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase, Reason, and other MIDI-based software.

You have a fully editable ‘Piano Roll’ window where you alter all the elements you would usually do in your other programmes. Dorico’s VST playback is also impressive with the complete HAlion Symphonic Orchestra Library together with Olympus Choir Micro from Soundiron. The Cubase audio engine is included with Dorico Pro (3.5), using a 64-bit floating-point at a 193kHz sample rate. There are also ‘import/export’ functions allowing easy transfer to other software. Dorico can export in MIDI and MusicXML formats.

In a similar way to Dorico’s ‘automatic engraving’ facility, Sibelius incorporates a ‘magnetic layout’ feature that enables the composer to keep even the most complex scores beautifully laid out avoiding clashing staves and other publishing 101’s. This function also creates your score as you play in using your MIDI keyboard or other Sibelius writing software. There is even a ‘flexible metronome’ that adapts to your playing, aiming to accurately capture every subtle nuance.

Sibelius has a 32Gb sound library that covers a broad range of instruments, enough to suit most scores, making playback quite credible. You can also publish your scores through ‘Cloud Publishing’ and offers export functionality almost exactly the same as Dorico.

In terms of system requirements, Dorico 3.5 needs Windows 10, or the more recent Mac OS together with Intel i5 or faster and 8Gb RAM. 12 Gb or HD space is also required. For Sibelius Ultimate, recommends Windows 10/Mac OS 10.12-11.0; at least 1Gb of RAM and up to 36Gb of HD space if using the sound libraries. An internet connection is required for software activation via your Avid account.

Having worked with Sibelius for such a long time, I think I would find the learning curve to swap to Dorico quite steep. Certainly, the intuitive way in which the Sibelius interface works seems to me, to be very user-friendly. Dorico is equally appealing in this respect and it presents itself in a way that shows many of the hallmarks of the old Sibelius software, but few of the keyboard shortcuts cross over from one programme to the other.

Playback functions and note input is great using either piece of software and I particularly like the MIDI editing capabilities of Dorico. The good news is that both companies offer trials where you can test the software out for a given period. If you’re new to these pieces of software, I would encourage you to try both and see what fits best for you. If I were starting from scratch, I would probably on balance, opt for Dorico.