I suggest reading the other threads on this subject.

Hi Mike and thanks for taking the time to react.

Ars longa vita brevis. Have just bleeded $ 149 to get a copy of Dorico Pro 5. The results (of importing a music XML file are appaling (and are shown somewhere else on this stream). It is already obvious that Musescore 4.(3.2) is a more intuitive, easier to use product. Comparing PDF outputs (Finale:Dorico:Musescore) yields an obvious winner - and it's not Dorico.

Three weeks on and after getting up to speed with essentials of Dorico Pro 5: The D5 PDF outputs easily match those of Finale. Some commands appear a bit contra-intuitive. But then show me a software that is free of idiosyncrasies!

At the moment, I would say MuseStudio is high ease of use, Dorico is a professional typography application (with all the complexity that entails, something we well know from learning Finale, the prototype of the desktop kind). I know one of the Finale evangelists here thinks MuseStudio 5 may well get there, but it will be a long haul. The private equity group that owns Muse also owns the world's largest sheet-music publisher so they have a powerful incentive.

Most of my music will stay in Finale - I am using a slightly older Mac in standalone mode (Finale and MacOS frozen in place) but I have a physical desktop toggle to switch between my computers using one mouse, keyboard, and monitor pair. Others here have implemented software solutions that do the same thing - a virtual machine or an APSF partition.

This gives me time to climb the Dorico hill, and I'm near the top. If your Finale files are complex - layer styles, cutaways, large time signture on first measure, you are absolutely right - XML import is tough sledding. I have to prepare any Finale file I plan to import. Many launder their xml through MuseScore, bringing the resulting MuseScore-generated xml into Dorico. (This suggestion can be found on the Dorico forum.)

Dorico workflow is particular, the order in which you do things can be very important. Finale is a blank canvas - start in the middle and work outwards, no problem. That's powerful creative lubricant, isn't it?

Neither Dorico nor MuseScore supports all of Finale’s features. MusicXML 4.0 does but until the other two catch up, there will be issues. No getting around that fact but there are ways to work around as you have read. What works best for you? We aren’t going to know this. I have to replace lyric and text fonts on .xml imported from MuseScore — fortunately, Finale has a plug-in that reduces this task to a few seconds of work.

That said, Finale is not dead. There’s another 11 1/2 months of tech support for starters. It works over Win 10/11 and macOS 10.14 Mojave to 15 Sequoia. (though not supported past OS 14 Sonoma). Every Mac built since 2012 can run it and every PC going back a number of years can, too.

How long will the $149 cross grade last? No one knows but it’s not a bad idea to take advantage of the Dorico offer. Steinberg has also has tech support. Having the license does not mean you have to do anything NOW! NOW! NOW! You have time. Daniel has announced that Dorico will get some of those features that will allow .musicxml import to be better. I am guessing that MuseScore will get them, too.

My point is that all of this end of the world talk we keep reading is nonsense. Next year, maybe but not now. I’ve had Dorico since 2018 and MuseScore even longer… and Notion and Overture… I bought them looking for a replacement for Encore which has been dead since 2014 and can’t run on a Mac made after 2018. Unlike so many Chicken Littles around here, I know this issue. The sky is not falling. Really, it isn’t.

I still work in Encore now and then—nothing else is as fast—and use Music-to-PDF Pro to convert it to MusicXML 3.0 that imports to Finale perfectly or Dorico not so well. Encore’s .xml output does not support lyrics, expressions and most text but the PDF files have all of this intact.