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Dorico or Sibelius

Posted by ObiRonKenobi on 2/14/2025, 10:44 am

I’m at TMEA investigating both. I’ve been to booths and clinics. Which do you recommend?

Re: Dorico or Sibelius

Posted by Other Dude on 3/6/2025, 2:29 pm, in reply to "Dorico or Sibelius"

I've been using Musescore happily for years. I pay the subscription and am able to give my students some interesting stand tunes!

Re: Dorico or Sibelius

Posted by Mithrandir on 2/18/2025, 3:19 pm, in reply to "Dorico or Sibelius"

If your moving from Finale probably can't go wrong with either. There is going to be a learning curve with both. Sibelius is a subscription model just be aware. At the same time ask yourself if the cost (both time and money) is worth it. Musescore has made a lot of progress is it pretty good.
I've been a Sibelius person for decades now, so that's what I've stuck with. For what it's worth Avid does seem to be paying more attention to Sibelius in the past year or so, with updates and useful changes.

Re: Dorico or Sibelius

Posted by cw75 on 2/19/2025, 12:15 pm, in reply to "Re: Dorico or Sibelius"

It is still possible to buy a perpetual license for Sibelius, but you have to buy it from a third party vendor like sweetwater.com or some other vendor as Avid doesn't seem to offer the perpetual license for sale from their website directly.

With this perpetual version Avid provides updates for only 1 year and if you opt to not renew and pay the yearly subscription, your Sibelius installation will remain where it's at with whatever version you have right before the subscription runs out.

As was mentioned in another post here, the Avid Application Manager can cause a multitude of frustrations and headaches. There is a way to eliminate the problem which I've been using since 2018 and it's been fine for me on a Mac, but I don't know what the solution would be for a Sibelius installation on a Windows computer. For anyone who has Sibelius on an Apple computer who finds Avid's Application Manager app to be annoying and problematic, here is the fix I used:

Follow these steps:

• Go to Mac HD/Library/LaunchAgents
• Then right click on the file called com.avid.ApplicationManager.plist file and open it with Text Edit
• Change the RunAtLoad key to false
• Then use Save As and place it on your Desktop, it may add the word 'copy' to the end of the name.
• Click on the name to edit it and change the name so that the entry is called com.avid.ApplicationManager. plist file it may prompt you and ask you if you wish to add the plist extension, if it does then say yes.
• Now drag the updated file back into Mac HD/Library/LaunchAgents where it came from, it will ask if you want to replace or keep both, say replace then you will be prompted for your password.
• Enter you password to complete the copy process.

That's it - now Avid Application Manager will not launch on you Mac unless you want it to. You'll find it in the Applications folder and if you wish you can make another shortcut to the dock.

Re: Dorico or Sibelius

Posted by Dorico Bro on 2/18/2025, 10:07 am, in reply to "Dorico or Sibelius"

I jumped on the Dorico train several years ago after I got tired of dealing with AVID's licensing mess.

That being said, the main drawback to Sibelius is the licensing app they use. It's constantly plagued with issues and can shut you out of work until its resolved. It is possible they've fixed this, but it was a rather major issue in the past. Besides that, it's very intuitive and easy to use, however getting clean part formats takes time.

Dorico isn't without its issues. It's not extremely intuitive, but what they've done as far as key layout and note input makes sense once you learn it. There is a lot going on in the program itself, and setting it up for your needs can take a lot of time. That being said, once you master the Engraving mode and how to set everything how you want it formatted, it turns out the cleanest parts I've seen. Percussion writing is the biggest complaint I have, but it -can- be done, it just takes quite a bit more work than it should.

As far as sounds, if that matters, spend $130 and get Noteperformer no matter which way you go. It's worth every penny.

Re: Dorico or Sibelius

Posted by Mr. Dude on 2/17/2025, 8:07 am, in reply to "Dorico or Sibelius"

I've never used Dorico, but I've been very happy with Sibelius for the last 10 years. I think once you learn the short cuts, you can get pretty quick with it.

Re: Dorico or Sibelius

Posted by fumw on 2/17/2025, 3:41 am, in reply to "Dorico or Sibelius"

Also a Finale user from Finale 3, and switched to Dorico. While it is not as intuitive, after working through a couple of their tutorial examples and a couple of projects I have gotten pretty good with it. In some things it is faster and easier than Finale. I disagree with the other poster about parts - I found that once I got the hang of it they actually came out cleaner and faster than with Finale (other than titles/subtitles/etc - that is a pain).

Never used Sibelius so can't compare. Biggest takeaway is that Finale and Dorico obviously came from two different bases. Finale was notation based since the beginning, while Dorico (Steinberg) came from the sound production world.

Re: Dorico or Sibelius

Posted by Happily Retired on 2/14/2025, 9:19 pm, in reply to "Dorico or Sibelius"

I bought Dorico, but the free version of Musescore is what I am using now. It's easy to learn.

Re: Dorico or Sibelius

Posted by BDSO on 2/14/2025, 8:23 pm, in reply to "Dorico or Sibelius"

I was a Finale user from the very beginning. In fact, I was a beta tester for new versions for years. When Finale died, I made the switch to Dorico. There is a learning curve, but I've gotten better at it over the few months. It is tougher to do some things compared to Finale. Formating parts is a pain compared to Finale and getting the sounds correct (especially the percussion maps) is beyond frustrating. The biggest issue for me was inputting notes. There is nothing like "Speedy Entry" in Dorico. There is a method that is close, but it isn't as easy to do. Getting the Stream Desk XL made a HUGE difference (look it up, it's fantastic). It still takes me longer to do everything on Dorico. I've never worked with Sibelius but I know those that have didn't like it. Dorico does have a full feature demo you can use before purchase. Give it a try.

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