Finale Forum

MikeHalloran wrote:

However, for my needs, Finale still wins, hands down. ... I have productivity that blows Dorico out of the water. The output is generally on par with Dorico, for the type of music I engrave ...

I still love Finale for creating audio files. With Finale and the new (free) version of Cakewalk by BandLab, I can create great audio files fast.

I just tried Dorico ... again. And again it is not ready for prime time, IMHO, of course.

I haven't had enough time to get to know Dorico thoroughly but I'm just curious how it doesn't yet fit the bill for you.

Me too.

I ran into an impasse trying to do complex piano fingering. And I couldn't use my own G-clef glyph and piano brace. In general, it didn't seem flexible enough to be able to handle things unknown to or unforeseen by the designers. It takes years to tame Finale, but almost anything is possible with it. I didn't have that feeling with Dorico, but will try again soon.

For some of the repertoire that I do -- choral works with keyboard, arias, small instrumental ensembles -- it seems entirely ready.

In my first attempt to recreate a piece that I had previous done in Finale, I had to manually adjust about 8 things. (OK, lots of futzing around with settings and fonts, but I can keep those as defaults.) Compare that with all the measure locking, system spacing, staff respacing, lyric baseline moving, dynamics aligning, plus all the note collisions that still need sorting out in Finale. I was instantly convinced that I'm wasting my time using Finale.

Yes, there are still features missing that prevent me from doing some of the bigger works for choir and orchestra. But: they have a dev team that are responsive on their own forum, who tell you which features are high on their priority list. In 18 months, they've had 7 updates to the original release, each adding new features, and a major new version. When the features I need are implemented (and I have confidence that they will be), I'll be able to hit the ground running.

Furthermore, according to MM's own system requirements (and discussion with their Success Operatives), my hardware is still "not recommended" for Finale. Along with every Retina MacBook Pro, Retina iMac (or earlier 27"), and any Mac with a decent size external monitor.

Unless some timely update to Finale can confront a significant number of its many weaknesses:
[*] compatibility with contemporary hardware and systems;
[*] performance, stability and data integrity;
[*] UI clunkiness;
[*] ALL the layout placement, alignment and avoidance that ought to be automatic;
[*] more intelligent handling of notation elements;
[*] plus all the long-standing notation bugs, broken features, and omissions

... then MM is, at best, treading water, while the competition moves on.

Vaughan wrote:... I'm just curious how it doesn't yet fit the bill for you.

Well if all you do is general music , which is all I ever really do, it would work OK. But so would Musescore or Noteworthy ! It seems to me that Doricio wants you to use a keyboard for easy note entry but perhaps that is just my familiarity or un-familiarity with it. I like Speed Entry a lot.

I'll try it more later but not for now. Just like I try Sib every so often.

I ONLY use Speedy Entry with a MIDI keyboard.
So how's Dorico with that?
From the videos I watched it looked really menu-intensive.

As I've bragged before, I've got a custom MIDI setup where I can hold down a MIDI key to specify a rhythm and enter a bunch of pitches, or hold down a pitch key and enter a bunch of rhythms (with MIDI keys). I told Mr. Spreadbury about this a while ago. If they implement this I'll be tempted. Since I deal with large pieces I need note entry to be as efficient as possible.

Michel R E wrote:I ONLY use Speedy Entry with a MIDI keyboard.
So how's Dorico with that?

It's pretty much the same as Simple Entry: select duration; play pitch, either with MIDI or QWERTY keyboard. Annoyingly, the numbers aren't the same (half note is 7, not 6), which takes a bit of fresh brain. Though you can reconfigure all the shortcuts.

I'll agree that Finale's note entry is one of its strong points. (Forgetting HyperScribe.) But any time saving there is more than countered by the slowness of getting those notes into a finished page.

BuonTempi wrote:

Michel R E wrote:I ONLY use Speedy Entry with a MIDI keyboard.
So how's Dorico with that?

It's pretty much the same as Simple Entry: select duration; play pitch, either with MIDI or QWERTY keyboard. Annoyingly, the numbers aren't the same (half note is 7, not 6), which takes a bit of fresh brain. Though you can reconfigure all the shortcuts.

I'll agree that Finale's note entry is one of its strong points. (Forgetting HyperScribe.) But any time saving there is more than countered by the slowness of getting those notes into a finished page.

Says you.

The constant evangelism for a product that flat out isn’t ready is getting old. The workflow is terrible. It doesn’t matter that they’re still working on it—I can’t use it. It’s in the second round of beta as far as I’m concerned and that they charged an upgrade price for this reinforces my decision not to have purchased. Wake me up when it’s ready.

Wake me up when it’s ready.

Me too. That's why I say it isn't ready for prime time yet. Any notation software will do general basic music stuff. Nothing to brag about!

I’be downloaded the Dorico Lite (PrintMusic equivalent?) and one of these days, just for fun, I’ll give it a whirl. For my present purposes, Finale does fine, warts and all. And since my major recipient (Barbershop Harmony Society) wants Finale files, I doubt that I’ll be switching.

But I do wish that they were more responsive to bug reports and fixes. Maybe having Dorico breathing down their necks will turn out to be a good thing.

miker wrote:... Maybe having Dorico breathing down their necks will turn out to be a good thing.

No argument there.

come on, let's quit making excuses for them. Version 25 included ZERO new features for me. The *ONLY* reason i upgraded is because they promised that the 64 bit and refactoring would make for frequent updates and bug fixes, which rarely come.

Extremely disappointed. Gotta believe they have re-org'd themselves to the point where they can no longer do updates.

version 25 completely stopped the random crashes I was having.
My machine works MUCH better with it in 64 bit mode.

So what doesn't work for one works for another.

MikeHalloran wrote:The [Dorico] workflow is terrible... Wake me up when it’s ready.

I don't think the workflow is going to drastically change in the future, as the philosophy behind it formed the basis for the entire interface. It may be that you just don't care for it, which is fine.

I agree some features are not yet ready. Others are light-years beyond Finale already. Regarding workflow: to each his own. I say that as a long-time Finale user and recent Dorico convert, albeit gradually.

News about Finale v26 on the Finale blog today:
https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/

Time will tell...

Pretty short on tangible information!

Even less than short. The article says nothing, really. To whom does that kind of announcement appeal?

Zuill

It certainly didn't appeal to me. I thought it was pitiful...the kind of thing that makes one want to run screaming over to the D side.

#foolmeonce

Sounds like useless new features and long-standing bugs not fixed. Yup. That's Finale. I hope MM proves me terribly wrong this time.

> To whom does that kind of announcement appeal?

At least it implies that there are people still working there, which I was beginning to doubt...

At least it implies that there are people still working there, which I was beginning to doubt...

Me too Bill. What has it been, two years or so? I do hope we will be able to tell they did something. Always the optimist.