One of Finale's selling points is that it includes a high-quality sample sound source, Garritan Instruments for Finale (GIFF), but using third-party sound sources allows you to further customize the playback to your liking.
This time, in addition to GIFF, I compared the playback using following sound sources.
・"Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 (GPO5)" which can be said to be the origin of GIFF.
・"NotePerformer 4" can be used with Sibelius and Dorico as well and has both high quality and ease of use.
・"BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover" is free but has high quality.
First of all, please check out this video.
【table of contents】
00:06 Garritan Instruments for Finale (GIFF; included with Finale)
01:02 Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 (GPO5; ¥24,673)
02:02 NotePerformer 4 (¥21,230)
03:10 BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover (free)
05:27 Listen and compare in every 2 measures (You can see this chapter only, if you don't have time to go through all. )
(Prices as of in Oct 17th, 2023)
In terms of quality, price, and ease of use, GPO5 and NotePerformer can be said to be equivalent, and you can choose according to your preference.
GPO5 is currently a product developed by MakeMusic, just like Finale, and is also the source of GIFF. Therefore it's highly compatible with Finale and you can get support information integrated with Finale.
When using a third-party sound source in Finale, you basically need to manually set the tones. But in the case of NotePerformer, it is noteworthy that it is particularly easy to use among third-party sound sources. Just like GIFF and GPO5, the tones are automatically set for all instruments in only two steps: (1) set it to the highest priority in "Sound Map Priority"dialog box, (2) Do “Reassign Playback Sounds”.
BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover is a free version, so the number of instruments and articulation range is limited, and all tone settings in Finale must be done manually.
However, it is free to use, the download size of the library is only 200MB, and the tones that inherit the quality of high-end sound sources are wonderful, so if you are playing a string ensemble like the one in this video, you would just feel “Good enough!”. '
If you are new to third-party sound sources, it might be a good idea to try using this first to learn the basics of sound settings in Finale. The installer can be downloaded for free from SONICWIRE's website, so if you have no experience with third-party sound sources, we recommend that you give it a try.
The specifications of each sound source are briefly summarized below.
・Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 (released in March 2016, ¥24,673, DL size approximately 4.6GB)
・NotePerformer 4 (released in June 2018, ¥21,230, DL size approximately 704MB)
・BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover (released in May 2020, free, DL size approximately 200MB)
なお、BBC Symphony Orchestraの有料版はこちらです。
・BBC Symphony Orchestra Core (released in May 2020, ¥67,166, DL size approximately 23GB)
・BBC Symphony Orchestra Professional (August 2019, ¥149,446, DL size approximately 630GB)
Although this article was written mainly for Finale, I hope that those who use Sibelius or Dorico will also try out these sound sources, which are different from those installed in these products.