extensive sound library expression maps vs. just using Note Performer (opinions sought!)

It’s still absolutely our goal that you should ultimately be able to produce a great-sounding mock-up in Dorico without needing to send the project to Cubase. But the two programs are starting in very different places, with Dorico having the added requirement that the notation must make sense, whereas in Cubase no such requirement exists, and if you want to have every single note being played back by a different plug-in assigned to a different track, you can do it. Notation software necessitates additional layers of abstraction between the music notation and the resulting MIDI, which I think is always going to be perceived by some users as awkwardness or lack of flexibility. But there is a lot more we can do to develop the software in this area, which we will do, but it cannot and will not come at the expense of balancing the development of features that address other use cases. Playback is just one facet of Dorico’s feature set. We cannot do everything at once. But you can expect every version of Dorico to take significant steps forward in the area of both automatic playback and providing more tools for you to shape playback as you wish – just as you can expect it also to include features to improve workflow, make the notation more beautiful, and make it more efficient to produce publication-quality graphical output.