July 2025
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I'm a huge fan of both Dorico and Sibelius. See more here. Dorico has become my first choice, but I still love Sibelilus and continue to use it. This is my look at the pros and cons of both. Before you read that below, check out this hilarious post by Paul Day. This nails it on the difference, once you know, you know! Link to the screen shot or a cleaned up version I made.
- Snappier performance. Dorico can feel sluggish and bloated when selecting notes or measures, zooming, changing views, applying preference settings, etc. The (brilliant and amazing) guys at Dorico address that by saying Dorico is doing more therefore calculating more therefore not as snappy. Valid, but it does give Sibelius an advantage to consider. I’m guessing eventually Dorico commits more resources to optimizing but for now it is an issue. To give an example, I have a 2019 Intel Xeon Mac Pro with 16 cores and 96 GB RAM. That should be a beast and powerhouse. Dorico is so sluggish on that machine it isn’t really very usable. I have a 2021 M1 Max with 64 GB of RAM. Dorico is much more usable on that machine, but the sluggishness is there and distracting. I have a brand new M4 Max with 128 GB of RAM, Dorico definitely runs better on that but again, Sibelius gets the win here. I have compared the two on my Windows machines as well all they way from a Lenovo X13 machine up to a high end multi-core Intel. Similar results. Dorico actually works better on Windows Intel than on my super beefy Mac Intel. But, overall, Sibelius just feels more responsive and efficient by a notable amount.
- Sibelius feels a lot more “WYSIWYG” and intuitive when dragging around layouts, staves, etc. Dorico does it all, but since Dorico is philosophically driven by settings and templates and “keeping you in the rails” so to speak, you have to dig through more settings and menus and submenus to get what you want or even understand what you are doing. When in Dorico I miss the fluidity of Sibelius just grabbing something and moving it. There is a huge and valid counter-argument that says this is actually an advantage to Dorico in the end. I’ve heard people say it is much easier to get to a finished layout in Dorico (once you know what you are doing) and there is less to break and have to fix since you are kind of locked into the rails a bit more. I think it depends on your situation. Sometimes one environment makes more sense than the other. I’m sure true experts on either side can pretty much get what they want either way.
- Sibelius feels like in general there are fewer layers of buttons and menus to dig through. Once you really learn Dorico this is not an issue, but it matters in the learning curve. I feel that Sibelius in general just had a quicker learning curve although still long and arduous.
- Sibelius has a really cool plugin ecosystem and community. Bob Zawalich is kind of a saint in that world and many others contribute too. Dorico has some great stuff built in that does a lot of what those plugins do. But, having people like Bob out there solving weird issues is awesome and doesn’t exist with Dorico.
- Little details on Sibelius just “feel” better. I like selecting measures better in Sibelius because it highlights blue the measure instead of just the notes, just easier to see what you have. And, you can feel the “sluggishness” thing mentioned above when doing a lot of selecting. It just “feels” faster, snappier, and easier moving and clicking around in Sibelius.
- One other “little” thing I like about Sibelius is that you can turn “live start position” on and off at a per note level as well as other live data. With Dorico, you can delete that by resetting playback overrides but you can’t go back and turn that back on, the data is gone. You can also turn “Live Playback” on and off at will to hear stuff right on the grid versus nuanced MIDI. If you are importing MIDI data with nuances timing, stuff like this matters. I wish Dorico had this and maybe someday will.
- There are certain things I like about live recording better in Sibelius, but there are certain things that Dorico just does it better. Both do a commendable and usable job light years beyond Hyperscribe which never worked for me, not in 1992, not in 2020. Some people don’t care about this. For me, it matters as a very efficient and creative way to get music into the system.
- One MASSIVE advantage for Sibelius at least for me is fairly new. Copy and Paste back and forth between Pro Tools and Sibelius. This is HUGE. While I am aware of the advantages of Cubase and Logic Pro over Pro Tools for MIDI, Pro Tools is still my main DAW by a long shot certainly for audio and working in a multiroom multitrack studio (which I have). And, the MIDI side of the house is not as bad as people say it is once you figure out the work arounds. So, if you are deep on Pro Tools like me, this copy paste back and forth to Sibelius is something to think about as awesome for Sibelius. If you are another DAW, it doesn’t matter. And, if you are Cubase, you swing hard to Dorico. They recently started in on some really good Dorico/Cubase back and forth integration that got me really tempted to really learn Cubase. If that is your thing, read up on that. Very cool stuff and points to big things in the future.
So, when using Dorico, all that is stuff I’m learning to live without or work around. And, Sibelius has many more advantages than that. Just suffice to say, there is not a “black and white” Sibelius versus Dorico is better thing, just pros and cons. Here are some (but certainly not all) Dorico advantages:
- For years I have longed for that magical merging of DAW and Notation where you don’t have to do this wonky back and forth MIDI/MusicXML dance. Dorico sets out to do that and has chipped away at it. It is still a LONG way away from really nailing it. But, great start, far beyond Sibelius. Where this shines at this stage is a few things. Notes aren’t tied to specific bars. This really helps to move things around easier including over different meters. The biggest is the DAW style piano roll key editor. This makes editing notes, rhythms, and durations really easy when needed. You can switch to a “Played Durations” mode to finesses the played details while keeping on the grid for the notated details. You also get great control over other MIDI CC data if needed. None of this feels anywhere near as fluid as Cubase, Logic, or Pro Tools. But, it is really good for a notation program and an absolute game changer. This alone is enough to swing a decision to Dorico. Sibelius does have the Graphical MIDI Tools plugin which is awesome and gets you much of the same functionality just implemented as a third party plugin layer. So, if you decide on Sibelius, I think that (GMT) is an absolute must.
- Integrating VST plugins both instruments and FX is vastly better in Dorico. The implementation takes some head banging to understand (endpoints and weird new concepts like that) but works nice once you get it. You can do that stuff in Sibelius but it is really hard to figure out and really unstable/buggy. I pretty much gave up on it in Sibelius. I can load up a Playback Template for any flavor of BBC Spitfire, Iconica Sketch, or VSL Prime, and it works quite well in Dorico, latency or stability not a problem. So, that is going to come in handy especially now that NotePerformer won’t be doing their library integration anymore. I tried to get all that working in Sibelius and it just made my head spin and made Sibelius crash. Having said that, whether it is Dorico or Sibelius, most of what I do is just rely on NotePerformer stock sounds (not library NPPE) for sounds in which case both are equally awesome, stable, game changer, and easy to use. I’ll say it again, no matter what you do, you need NotePerformer.
- The mixer in Dorico is NOT blow your mind amazing like a DAW, but it is vastly better than Sibelius which is kind of a mess. This ties into the last point about integrating VST FX, etc.
- There seems to be a lot more resources to learn Dorico from scratch. Steinberg has a ton of videos. There are a bunch of guys out there doing some good videos (Ernesto Aguirre is really good, buy his Learning Dorico course, Music Chef, CJ Rhen, David Larsen, Guy Michelmore, and UDEMY Luke Carlson). Sibelius has some great resources too. But, because Dorico is “the new guy on the block” there seems to be a huge push for learning content.
- As far just the daily grind of note entry, the true bread and butter of this question, when Sibelius finally started to “click” for me I was beyond elated how much easier it was to enter and move around notes (and articulations, slurs, dynamics, all that) than Finale. Clouds parted and angels sang. For a long time during my Dorico learning curve (which I’m still deep in the throws of) that Dorico was also a revelation compared to Finale, but just not as fluid as Sibelius. Over the past month I’ve been turning the corner with Dorico and am now feeling that while Sibelius is still fantastic for this, there are a bunch of nuances and details that make it easier to just get stuff out of your head and into notes on Dorico. So, after a shift on my part, I’m giving the edge to Dorico here.
- Along those lines, one “little” thing in Dorico that is better than Sibelius is on a piano part moving notes between staves is super piece of cake. Sibelius has a plugin but you can only do one note at a time and it breaks a lot. Dorico is super solid on this if you are doing a lot of piano part tweaking and arranging.
- Dorcico allows you to select multiple staves in note entry mode to voice chords across multiple parts. This and several other “arranging” features in Dorico are and advantage. Again, you can do all that in Sibelius especially with all the plugin resources. It is just a little more fluid in Dorico.
- Dorico is new, fresh, not tied to legacy code, better path to be the platform on the future. If you don’t know the origin story of how Avid bought Sibelius, after a while fired all the talent (one of many dumb things Avid has done, that coming from a guy who lives Avid every day), then Steinberg hire that team and thus was Dorico born. You can really feel how Dorico is the fresh start redo, that same group of genius getting that rare “second chance” at a software platform keeping all the methodology that was good the first time and reworking all the stuff that over time backed Sibelius into a corner. We just saw Finale flame out over not evolving its code base and feature set, very much nature of the beast with software. I don’t think Sibelius is at risk of that. But, Dorico is better positioned from a software architecture perspective and a corporate culture perspective to be the innovator as opposed to being stuck with and older platform.
So yeah….Dorico is now becoming my first choice but I’ll still be using Sibelius a lot. Sibelius has some very clear advantages. Both have a massive learning curve. Dorico’s is much steeper and more painful, but worth it if you can endure it. The sluggishness on Dorico is an issue. But, the playback on Dorico is so much better and really note entry and manipulation (the thing that matters most) is really taking the edge for me in Dorico although by no means the clear cut best option. This is clearly not a “choose this or that” answer. Just a string of considerations based on your needs and workflow. I still have a long way to go on both platforms. But this is what I’m seeing right now in that process.
Finale was the industry standard for nearly four decades for a reason. It was really good for its time, true game changer. I remember how much I loved the liberating feeling in the early 90's of being able to make my own publisher quality scores. So all kudos and gratitude for what it was all those years. I also remember all the cumbersome quirks (always being boxed into to Speedy Entry and overfilling measures) and wishing so many functions worked more fluidly. Things like Hyperscribe never really worked, something I REALLY need to work. Sibelius and Dorico both have that aspect working great with real time recording (Dorico more so I think). Getting notes in and moving them around, manipulating articulations, dynamics, etc., all just so much more cumbersome in Finale. So massive relief when I got first into Sibelius then into Dorico. It would be painful to have to go back to Finale. Over the past year I've seen a huge number of Finale die-hards now forced to migrate basically saying the same thing after biting the bullet and making the move. So, thanks to Finale for what it was and how it set the stage for where we are today. And, grateful to have great stuff to move on to.
List Compiled by Jason Barney
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