Finale set-up wizard is too limited, IMO

[MichaelTrumpetPlayer]

I have Finale 2007c. It came with the watered down Garritan orchestra so I purchased the full Garritan Personal Orchestra in an attempt to get MIDI sounds upgraded to the late 20th century. Installing this complete Garrian in a way that actually communicates with Finale is a real hit and miss game. I finally stumbled upon something that works but I've probably got lots of lines crossed.

The Finale set-up lizard is very limited. It expects one to use ONLY the very limited Garritan provided with Finale. The full strength Garritan Personal Orchesta has many more instrument choices and sounds but the set-up wizard limits how I can use them.

The situation is much worse with a far better instrument library from EWQLSO. I installed it effectively and it can speak to Finale but again the extremely limited Finale set-up wizard makes taking full advantage of the fantastic EWQLSO library difficult.

Example - I'm arranging some renaissance music for fun and to learn how this stuff works. I need a bass drum, so I selected "percussion" with the set-up thing. I can't find how to get the EWQLSO bass drum to connect with Finale.

And with my apparently stone age PC with only 2GB RAM Finale crashes every time I blink.

[Warren Barnett]

Yes, the setup wizard only works correctly with the Finale supplied sounds. There are a myriad of VST sounds that will work with Finale, so you can understand how it would be impossible for Finale to be able to supply entries for the Setup Wizard for every single VST product on the market. You can always choose the Setup Wizard for some basic setup of staves, and then proceed to alter the staves and VST sounds as you wish. Or just start from scratch. Just save your setup as a template, so that you can use it again without all the work to set it up. Unfortunately, that is what is necessary. Don't forget, you are using a different product from a different manufacturer. You would need to pressure the manufacturer of the non-Finale product to provide the appropriate files to make their product compatible with Finale, instead of blaming Finale for not working with someone else's product. That is akin to blaming GM because a Chrysler exhaust sytem doesn't automatically fit on your Buick.

Warren

[MichaelTrumpetPlayer]

Hmmm. Good point.

I thought it might be possible for Finale to expand the set-up wizard to include additional voices - things like saxophone, etc. There doesn't have to be a connection to the packaged library but a simple place holder or way to get the instrument included in the score template for altrenate instruments would be great.

Also the Instrument list found through the "Studio" view doesn't even include basic Western percussion and that IS included in the library packaged with Finale.

[Warren Barnett]

You can pick and choose whatever instruments you want from whatever preprogrammed set that you want and save it as your own.

Warren