Dorico 5.1.70 update released

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Dorico 5.1.70, a free update for existing users of Dorico Pro 5, Dorico Elements 5, Dorico SE 5, and Dorico for iPad. This update brings more than 40 bug fixes, and a handful of useful improvements. Read on for more details.

Note input

There are a couple of small but useful improvements to note input in Dorico 5.1.70. First, for those users who like to use the mouse to input notes, it's now possible to hold Shift while moving the shadow note over the staff to move between chromatic pitches, in a fashion analogous to how you can hold Shift when dragging music to change its pitch. We've also improved the consistency between the auditioned pitch and the input pitch if you have the Play shadow note pitch option activated: previously, the auditioned pitch would not always consider the key signature or notes earlier in the bar with accidentals.

Secondly, a new option When inputting written pitches onto octave transposing instruments has been added to the MIDI Input page of Note Input Options. This allows you to determine whether the octave transposition of the instrument should be considered when inputting via your MIDI keyboard when Write > Input Pitch is set to Written Pitch (the octave transposition is always applied when set to Sounding Pitch). This is especially useful when inputting into instruments like piccolo and double bass, as you can now play the written octave on your MIDI keyboard.

Finally, there's a tiny but useful tweak to the tuplets popover: because you very often want to create a simple triplet, when you hit ; to open the popover during note input, unless Dorico thinks that it should pre-populate a different tuplet ratio (e.g. based on the notes at the caret position), you will find it pre-populated with 3, so to create a simple triplet you can now simply press ; followed immediately by Return, saving a keystroke.

MusicXML import

As more and more Finale users are moving to Dorico, its MusicXML import features are getting a real workout. One long-standing problem that has been corrected in Dorico 5.1.70 concerns tuplets with mixed note values. For example, a triplet with ratio three eighths in the time of two but where some of the notes in the triplet are 16ths rather than eighths would trip Dorico up – it would end up interpreting this figure as a nested tuplet, which could create additional work to unpick. These kinds of tuplets now import correctly in Dorico 5.1.70, which should reduce the work involved in solving these kinds of issues.

Furthermore, we also encountered MusicXML files exported from Finale where system and page breaks were specified at inconsistent positions in different parts, resulting in additional breaks being created in Dorico, and some pages or systems ending up with only one or two beats' worth of music on them. Dorico 5.1.70 introduces some heuristics to try to work out which of the break positions are likely to be correct, and which should be ignored.

Other changes and improvements

Among the more than 40 bug fixes in this update, there are a few notable ones:

On Windows, when you reopen a project you have previously been working on, the initial view is now correctly restored, so you are taken directly to where you were last working.
If you specify a dynamic like f (sempre) in the Shift+D popover, when it appears in the score, the closing parenthesis is no longer unexpectedly removed.
When dragging and dropping MIDI data onto a custom percussion kit, the imported material is now correctly handled for all instruments in the kit.
A problem affecting time signatures and special barlines that could cause the following bars not to respond as expected to changes made in Notation Options has been fully resolved.

As always, you can read about all of the changes in this update in the Dorico 5.1.70 Version History PDF.

Installing the update

Dorico 5.1.70 is a free update for existing Dorico Pro 5, Dorico Elements 5 and Dorico SE 5 users. If you are currently running Dorico Pro 4 or Dorico Elements 4 or earlier, you can buy an update to Dorico Pro 5 or Dorico Elements 5 from the Steinberg online shop.

Assuming you already have Dorico 5 installed, you can update to Dorico 5.1.70 free of charge. First, quit Dorico and any other Steinberg application that you are running on your computer. We recommend that you run Steinberg Download Assistant, which will automatically update Steinberg Activation Manager to the latest version, along with any other elements of the Steinberg run-time environment (including eLicenser Control Center, Steinberg Library Manager, and MediaBay) that may be outdated on your computer.

Once Steinberg Download Manager has finished updating any required components, go to My Product Downloads in the left-hand list, where you will find Dorico Pro 5, Dorico Elements 5, or Dorico SE 5, depending on which product you have installed. Select this, and on the right-hand side you will see Dorico 5.1.70 Application Installer. Click the Install button immediately to the right. This will download and run the Dorico 5.1.70 installer.

If for any reason you cannot use Steinberg Download Assistant, you can find all the installers you require here.

If you already have Dorico for iPad installed, it will probably update automatically, but if you need to update it manually, you can do so following these steps provided by Apple.

Reminder: eLicenser service ends soon

Before we wrap up this post, a reminder to users who are still on Dorico 3.5 or earlier, which rely on the old eLicenser technology for licensing: the eLicenser servers will be shut down in early 2025. Once the eLicenser server is shut down, you will no longer be able to reactivate your Dorico license on a new computer, and nor will you be able to move your Dorico license from a Soft-eLicenser to a USB-eLicenser.

Furthermore, after the eLicenser server is shut down, you will no longer be able to simply buy an update to the latest version of Dorico in the Steinberg online shop, because the update process requires that the system checks your existing license.

We strongly recommend that you consider updating to the latest version of Dorico before the eLicenser service is shut down. For more information, please visit the Steinberg web site.

What’s next

This has been a banner year for Dorico, with no fewer than seven free updates for Dorico 5, bringing hundreds of improvements and fixes across macOS, Windows, and iPadOS, the introduction of the Dorico-powered Score Editor in Cubase 14, and, of course, the arrival of many thousands of new Dorico users following MakeMusic's announcement about the end of Finale. We never rest on our laurels, however: following today's release of Dorico 5.1.70, there will soon be a new Cubase 14 update, bringing some initial improvements to the new Score Editor. And, as always, we continue to work hard behind the scenes on the next major version of Dorico, which you can look forward to arriving in 2025.

In the meantime, we love to hear about what you're creating with Dorico. If you have been working on an interesting project that you'd like to share with readers around the world, please let us know about it!