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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