Yeah, speaking of this - was literally thinking recently what if a software could detect the first attack transient of the sounds and align them to the grid automatically via track delay, as you say, and secondly if you could offset/randomly offset it forward or backwards a few milliseconds (~1-14 milliseconds) to give a more human feel ‘around the beat’, as sometimes having the sound be just before or afterwards is more ‘human’ than exacting precision right on top of the beat (aka ‘robotic feel’).
If Paul Walmsey could develop something like that then so much for the problem of having to detect how much to t.delay your sample libraries!
Concerning using modern sample libraries and Track Delays:
Most modern sound samples have ~10-80 milliseconds before the onset of the note’s attack peak and they do this for more realism in the sample libraries in the envelope of the sound, whereas old libraries started right from the peak of the attack transient so the sound sample was always on the “grid”. These longer attack transients of modern libraries are one thing that contributes to the hyper realism of some modern sample libraries in addition to sample velocity layers, transitional samples, and round robins (I am not sure where the Halion’s library stands on this?). So it is almost essential in a mix to have this feature if you are looking to actually get a mix to be rhythmically coherent.
A lot of piano players who record live into Cubase are so talented they can compensate for the attack of the sound and live record rhythms on the grid no problem - but if you are programming in notes and you can not adjust the start times one sound may be +80ms out in front of the beat, whereas another is +34ms and yet another is +59ms, etc. so when you program in the sounds a lot of musicians are left wondering why it doesn’t sound right. I do think a workaround could be some sort of plug in on the tracks in Dorico that could do a ms track delay in the plug in even if it is not in built in Dorico yet (I can not think of one audio plug in off the top of my head - but I’m sure there is - maybe you can do this track delay in Vienna Ensemble Pro now that I think about it, and then essentially load instruments into Dorico from Vienna Ensemble Pro template w/the track delay already set in Vienna Ensemble Pro itself) - that is one solution, was just thinking it would be convenient if they eventually added it in Dorico itself - yet, this is definitely a issue with clear workarounds and not the end of the world unless your using Dorico for your final mixdown/master. You all probably know exactly what I am saying, but maybe some people do not, so mind as well spell it out for them, because it is not only super interesting, but very important musically speaking, in particular if you’re actually bouncing out your songs - it is fundamentally your rhythm at stake.
Ultimately I am sure you all would agree it is very important to make sure each instrument from the sample libraries are all working together/in sync around the click rhythmically/musically speaking because if the rhythms are all off - even by several milliseconds - it can really throw everything out. Another solution to this, if you are not looking for a final mixdown in Dorico, and only to compose and hear essentially what your songs will sound like before mixing them in a Daw… then you can do all the delay compensation after exporting the midi to Cubase or whatever DAW you may use. But yeah I think the potential and even already where Dorico is headed is really exciting (mind, they have already accomplished ALOT) because it is sort of merging the history of music together - the classical idea of notating and the modern invention of digital audio workstations/computer music/ and now even scoring to video. One final interesting point is the idea of recording latency/plug in latency, essentially any of this is in addition to the sound sample delay of the attack, but if you use your ear you can manually compensate for this in the same way as you would with plug in track delay - just play a click and adjust the sounds until they are playing with the click in the musical fashion you desire - I found it really helpful personally when I realized how important it is and how easy it is to set your tracks in the right spot with a simple track delay for any kind of delay compensation problem aka rhythmic problem, because that is what we are talking about here.