That is not necessarily true.We know from various discussions on this forum that the Dorico design (at least at the philosophical level if not the code level as of today) includes:
- the concept of players and parts that can map directly to Cubase tracks
- adoption of Steinberg code (presumably derived from Cubase) as the playback engine
- a playback GUI (eventually if not in the first release) that is Cubase-like
- the intention to support VSTis and VST effects in a more or less open manner, although they will not support all the older VST protocol levels
- the ability to operate on the MIDI separately from the notation to alter note lengths etc
This is a very good starting point. The part that would not necessarily come easily would be to compose in the “DAW view” and have the MIDI end up seamlessly as Dorico notation. That would be “the” big advance. I don’t mean to trivialize that. It would be a significant development task. But given the other foundations enumerated above, it just doesn’t sound that overwhelming to me.
And nothing says that all of these things must be in a single product. I could easily see the basic Dorico shipping with a “Cubase ultralight”, but also having the option to hook Dorico to full (purchased) Cubase. And likewise, Cubase has its own limited notation, so there could be an optional product that would enable Cubase users to operate seamlessly with Dorico.
I am mainly a SONAR user and also have StudioOne. I have never bought Cubase, but would do so in a heartbeat if there were good integration between Dorico and Cubase. And I bet there are loads of current Cubase users who would be happy to buy Dorico if that meant there was an easy way for their Cubase-based compositions to be notated in Dorico.
Clearly the things I’m discussing are not (and should not be) the priority for the first release or two. But it also shouldn’t be a 3-year project to add these capabilities.