Garritan Libraries come with their own 16 channel player by Plogue called ARIA.  You can also run them in a single channel variant of Plogue's free sforzando player.  Inside most of your favorite DAW or scoring packages, you can open as many instances as you require for either of these players.  Both are very lean on system resources.

The instruments are created using the sfz standard which instructs the engine on when/what/how samples or oscillators are to be used, but ARIA or sforzando is required for Garritan Libraries because the raw samples are done in a slightly encrypted RAW format that other sfz players cannot properly decode. 

ARIA supports SFZ versions 1.0 and 2.0. (You can edit existing, or make your own instruments for it.)

ARIA also provides some effect units, and a variety of ARIA specific sfz codecs.
ARIA also supports the scala tuning system if you need alternate tuning tables.

ARIA and sforzando come in 32 and 64bit VST, RTAS, and AU (Audio Units) versions.  It also comes in a stand alone version that includes a MIDI File player.

Garritan Samples are stored in a RAW data format.  You can view them with a RAW sample editor (I.E. Audacity), but they ARE slightly encrypted.  What happens is, samples are coded with various errors that get fixed in real time by the ARIA player if the library is properly registered.  It can be simple things like fixing the proper root-pitch, or correcting the left and right phasing in a stereo sample, or even some irregular artifacts and such.  So...no, it's NOT really practical at all to attempt to load (or convert) the samples directly into an alternative sampler.  You can however re-sample bits as needed to make your own 'personal instruments', provided you stay in the user terms for the library.


No, you can't easily load Garritan Libraries into alternative players.  While you can examine and get enough information from the raw samples to edit or build your own SFZ codecs for playback in ARIA (thus still requires a proper license key for the library), you cannot directly access the samples using other players.  If you attempt to simply convert the samples into some standard format such as wav or aiff, you'll notice phasing, tuning, and other issues (which ARIA corrects in real time if you've got a key card for the library).  So, if you intend to roll your own sounds for alternative players (I.E.  Kontakt or Halion) using the Garritan Samples, your only choice is to 're-sample' the bits you need and then pull that into your alternative players.  Re-sampling for your own personal use and completed musical projects are within the terms of fair use and are royalty free; however, you cannot re-sample any portion of the library with the intent to distribute or sell it as any part of a competing 'musical instrument'.  So, re-sampling to make your own PERSONAL cello that works in Kontakt would be OK, but sharing/distributing or selling that cello you just created is NOT OK without permission from MakeMusic/Garritan.


If you intend to package and resell 'loops' based on the Libraries, I personally would contact MakeMusic with some examples and explanations and get a green light before marketing any such loops.  It can be a pretty grey area depending on how the loops are packaged and intended to be played back...so ask first if you intend to build and market sample loops.


Personally, I just use Garrtian Libraries in ARIA 99% of the time.  I do make or tweak my own sounds from time to time (simple sfz text files) that use properly registered Garritan Samples and play everything back through ARIA.  It's pretty rare that I really need to re-sample things and pull them into something like HALion or Groove Agent....and when I do it's for a pretty far-out sound-scaped texture I can't get by simply triggering samples anyway, so re-sampling the bits I need for these cases isn't much of a problem.

 Thanks for the tour de force Brian. I certainly have no commercial interest in dealing with resampling or raw data.  I am interested in possibly buying them to use in playing back scores. But it seems clear that the proprietary interests are well grounded in some player features. Well and good. My focus will shift to using the player as a stand-a-lone to play back musicxml files. Thanks very much for the information.

Jim,

Are you hoping to use Garritan Libraries with MuseScore?

It's possible, but NOT particularly easy....there are some issues to consider.

1.  You'll need to mess with something called Jack.

This interface attempts to re-route the MIDI output of MuseScore to where-ever you like.  It works, but it's not very easy to set up, and things aren't labeled very well, so it can take a lot of poking around to eventually get good connections to the proper ports.

Using this, you could redirect MuseScore's output into a stand alone instance of ARIA.

2.  Along with Jack, you'll probably need some sort of virtual MIDI port drivers.  I.E.  loopMIDI for the PC.  Macs have virtual MIDI routing built in.

3.  You'll be limited to 16 channels with MuseScore to ARIA, unless you've got something like Bidule or Vienna Ensemble Pro (possibly a more typical tracking DAW could host plugins as well) to host several instances of plugins.

4.  GPO4 and GPO5 strings and winds make extensive use of CC1 or CC11 to control dynamics (instead of key velocity).  MuseScore, as far as I know can't make use of this...so dynamic play-back can be pretty limited with nicer Orchestral Libraries.

So....if you're hoping to get your money's worth out of any orchestra library (Garritan or otherwise), you'll probably want to move your Mock-Up phase (Export as MIDI) from MuseScore to something like a Tracking DAW where you can get a handle on the many CC parameters afforded by nicer libraries.

If you're using Finale or Sibelius, then those are perfectly capable of hosting ARIA natively and making pretty robust use of the many supported continuous controllers in nice sample libraries.  Dorico can host ARIA as well, but at this time Dorico is so new that you'll have to build expression maps as you go for anything Garritan.  As for products like Notion, Encore, etc...I don't have any experience with those....sorry.

P.S.

If you'd like to do a free trial of some things Garritan, you can get the free sforzando player and some Garritan Trial Libraries to see if it's going to be practical for your needs.  Note that ARIA gives you 16 channels of multi-timberal playback per instance, where sforzando just gives one channel per instance.

Here is where you can grab the free stuff:
https://www.plogue.com/products/sforzando/

Much appreciation for the time spent here.I downloaded the free player and will study parameters and so forth. Yes, I have  six or seven pieces in musicxml and both finale and musescore.  They are limited for longer  note durations  (and for other reasons) I have thought about exporting WAV parts and bookmarking and adjusting some dynamics. But I am hoping to enlarge the pallette of sounds too.I am also aware that some notation culture frowns on the audio side. I am trying to strike a balance (with my wallet as well) I guess the idea is to make it attractive enough to get somebody else to play it. Thanks again!