Realistic Playback Options

[Dr. Who]

This may be posted in the wrong forum, so please if it is I would appreciate direction to where I can get my questions answered best.

I am taking the piano accompaniment for a choral pieces and arranging it for a small chamber ensemble. However I do not have the actual players for the esnsemble so I would like to play it back as realistically as possible for accompanying a choral group. I am using Fianle 2004 to create the arrangement but I am not thrilled with the playback that I get with Fianle. What else is available that I can use for better performance playback? Or are there techniques that I can use to get Fianle to have a more realistic playback? And what about sounds? Can I get Fianle to playback in something better sounding that MIDI?

I use Finale quite a bit for entering music and such, however my skills are pretty limited when it comes to playback. Any help would be appreciated.

[vernmacuser]

I am also using Finale (2002 at the moment) on my G4 800 DP and am having some playback problems, but they are likely due to the fact that i need to send in my machine for brain surgery-there is something wrong with the processor unit. Anyway, Finale has told me to upgrade to 2005 (which I did buy, but my Mac won't install OS 10.3 which is required-another reason for the brain surgery), and if you go to the Finale site and listen to some of the playback samples of the 2005 upgrade, I think the upgrade should solve a lot of our dissatisfaction with playback. However, i am only going by what they're showing us, and until i get my mac problems sorted out, I won't be sure. Please keep in touch with me and we can update each other on the use of Finale this way-Everyone else I find seems to running other sequencing software and/or midi cards and/or outboard synths, and I would really like to know how to get the most out of Finale, since I like the product (am a copyist and have been using it for 10+ years). my direct email is: vgraham@dfpray.com and I am not midi literate. I just use my computer keyboard to compose & arrange and notate.