I have been working with Finale since 1991 and I’m trying to get a hang on Dorico 5. So far what I’n not happy about is the HALion Sonic sounds, I’m used to ARIA Player and want to keep using those. My problem is that all new instruments I assign to Setup is automatically set in HALion VST instruments in Player when I want them in Aria. Is there a way to set the default assignation for all new instruments from HALion to Aria? Or a quick way to bulk-move them to Aria?
I’m in the same position as you. I’d like to know how to make ARIA player sounds the default
You’ll need to create a playback template, and then set that playback template to be the default for new projects on the Play page of Preferences. That sounds simple, but there’s quite a bit to it.
The first question: which sounds do you want to use? The Garittan Instruments For Finale? GPO5? Something else?
You’ll then need to create a project that contains the instruments whose sounds you want to change, manually assign the ARIA Player and load the appropriate sounds for each one, then specify an appropriate expression map if one is needed (at the least you might need to choose between using velocity or a MIDI controller for dynamics).
Once you’ve done that for each instrument, you save an endpoint configuration that saves the mapping between the instruments in your score, the ARIA Player configuration, and the expression maps to use.
One or more endpoint configurations can then be combined into a playback template, so that Dorico knows how to load up the presets you’ve saved when you add instruments, and knows how to drive your ARIA sounds.
This is reasonably advanced stuff, and my advice would be to take a bit of time to get used to the overall Dorico experience before you invest a lot of time in creating playback templates. It’s not generally something I would recommend for somebody in their first week or two of using the software!
Welcome, Martin.
I’d second Daniel’s comments about getting to Dorico as a whole first of all, as creating a playback template is a bit complex.
This video is an in-depth look at creating playback templates. Although it uses the BBCSO library, and is a couple of years old, the concepts remain the same.
I’d look through this thread, which does include Playback templates, Expression Maps, documentation and other info for using Garritan sounds in Dorico.
Later posts contain updated versions, of course. Sadly, because of a mismatch between the version numbers of ARIA on Windows and Mac, the latest template only works on Mac. (Windows reports that the version number is too high.)
So, I’ve set up particular Dorico instruments to use particular ARIA instrument patches, and you may prefer different ones. In which case, you’ll need to modify the setup, and save your own Endpoints.
OK! Thank you! I’ll add this to the list of things to do. I have given myself 5 years to get the hang of this program…
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My experience is about two weeks to start to ‘get it’; two months to gain a general familiarity with the whole thing, and then in two years, you’ll be an expert, giving advice to people on this forum!
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I really like your philosophy on this!!! 
And after two decades, @benwiggy…?
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I’ve been using Finale to create music for YouTube videos. The sound of HALion is so far inferior to ARIA/Garritan as to make Dorico near worthless. Even using HALion it is much more difficult to substitute one instrument for another. I can give a player several instruments, each with its own stave and have have him switch instruments but I can’t have a stave and switch instruments. I must make a new player, give him the new instrument, copy the music from the first stave to the second, and delete the first player. This makes it very difficult to switch instruments to see which sounds best with the other parts.
There are some issues on the MakeMusic side (specifically with ARIA player) that make it more awkward than it needs to be to get Playback Templates made for Dorico. I posted this request recently on the MakeMusic community forums with the hope that whoever still works on the Garritan stuff might see it and do something:
MakeMusic is still in a position to do something about this because they are continuing to sell the Garritan libraries. The current state of their VST3 plugin is the big issue.
Welcome.
I have absolutely no idea what you are complaining about. Aria v Halion or Finale v Dorico?
Welcome to the forum. Can you explain what you’re trying to do here a bit more?
You can Change the Instrument that a Player holds very easily, by clicking on the three dots and selecting “Change Instrument”
You can still use ARIA with Dorico – or any other libraries for that matter.
Thanks for the advice! In my humble opinion, it really should not be so involved as to need to make a whole new template every time (for various instrumental combinations). I just went through trying to do a piece with 50 lines of score and I started to see dead relatives long before I even got to listen… There MUST be an easier/better way.
If the developers are seriously working to try and remedy this, the playback settings (pizz. arco, et) should have the same characteristics as they did in Finale as well. I’d been with Finale for over 30 years before taking the plue a month ago. Dorico makes so many things so much more efficient, and I am finding it quite user friendly, and the more time I spend using it, the more I am enjoying it.
I do realize that there are so many issues to tackle with this, and I am sure that they will all be attended to in due time. Getting Garritan to work easily and properly seems like it could warrant becoming a priority. Perhaps a pull down menu in the setup screen?
I have made Playback templates for GPO5 – the link is above – though the latest ones only work on Mac, because the version numbers of ARIA on Windows and Mac are different. (MM have been asked to fix this.)
The real problem that there are so many instruments to choose from, that what I want in a template might not be what you want.
However, once a template is made and running on your computer, then (as the name ‘template’ suggests), it will automatically apply to any new document without any effort!
Dorico is a Steinberg product. A comprehensive collection of Steinberg sounds is bundled with it, complete with the necessary Playback Templates to make playback simple. It also provides the tools to enable you to work with any sound library you choose.
Many people consider Garritan to be obsolete today as so many more modern sound libraries are available, not least because of the totally inconsistent way it is set up.
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After tinkering a bit with the program and the sounds I’m getting the hang of it in a small way and I think I’m getting to prefer the Halion sounds. Now I just need to find out how to make the dynamic differences a little more finetuned. I feel that the difference between ppp and f is not that big… However this should probably be another thread.
