In my opinion GPO5 is a fine library for this price range.  It is quite complete in making sure you have a decent and robust pallet of sounds to work with.

It's a great library for modest hardware setups.  You don't need the latest high end computer to get a lot of staves/tracks out of it.  You don't need special dongles to activate and use.

Is it perfect?  No....there are some minor quirks, and a bit of a learning curve, but most of those can be fixed and tweaked to suit your needs and tastes.

Can it sound great?  With practice...Absolutely.

In my opinion, in the sub $200 price range, or for any modestly powered computer, it's hard to beat.  I've most certainly gotten my money's worth over the years (Ultimate Collection User). 

As for using the harmonic string sounds in Finale, one can use channel bouncing techniques for any instruments that are not part of a key switching setup.

Thanks! So, I gather there is a harmonics “Patch” that can be loaded in a separate layer or something.

GPO5 has at least two for tutti section or full strings.  I can't remember if it has them for solo strings.

There might also be ways to kind of create your own harmonic-like instruments as well. 

As Brian stated, GPO is your best value and has the best compatibility with Finale.

But there are other libraries available which IMO, sound better out of the box. Here's a few in case you're curious.

VSL - https://www.vsl.co.at/en

Spitfire Chamber Strings - https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/instruments/orchestra/spitfire-chamber-strings/

Orchestra Tools Berlin Strings - http://www.orchestraltools.com/libraries/berlin_strings.php

VSL would work best with Finale out of this group, but all work best within a DAW.

As Jeffery mentions some very fine libraries:

Why I personally still highly recommend Garritian as anyone's first library, and worth while to keep around as a resource even for someone doing full scale professional mock-ups or other 'all in digital' projects...

VSL Starts at  $319 USD for their most basic comprehensive orchestral library.  Only one of each 'player' for most sections.  No choirs or organs.  27gb drive space.  GPO5 has a little more in terms of the number of unique instruments to work with, and it is far more flexible in terms of the different types of Mixes you can work it into (GPO5 uses totally dry samples, you build the kind of room ambiance and seating arrangements you need with included, or third party tools: Symphonic, Pop, Big Band, whatever you need, you can set the instruments in context).

Garritan gives you some quick and simple tutti sections to work with for the brass and strings, but you can also layer and build your own sections with the ARIA Player.  They give you enough different takes of different musicians on each sample that you've got a good bit of head-room when creating your own sections (avoiding phasing issues).  I.E.  For solo violins, you get sampling of something like 5 different instruments (unique violins/bows used during the sample session), and those divy the samples up in a variety of ways so you can layer them up to make tutti sections of your own when you need that much control.

Spitfire Chamber Strings starts at $689 USD.  Strings only...81gb drive space.

Berlin Strings starts at $1134.76 USD.  Again it's just strings.  129gb of drive space.

You won't be using any of those mentioned options (other than Garritan) on your old Core Duo with < 4gb of RAM, and even on a lot of the more modern mid-range hardware you aren't going to get more than a dozen or so staves out of them without dialing things way back to where they don't sound much better than Garritan.

GPO5 < $150.00 USD.  Less than 20gb.  A rather complete and comprehensive list of instruments.  Decent Organs and Pianos.  Includes some choirs.  And, some of the best Harps for any library (including much more expensive ones).

The piracy protection scheme is also worthy of consideration.  Quite a few of the upper end libraries have all sorts of hoops to jump through to activate and use on multiple systems.  Garritan is quite generous in this regard, and all it takes to activate it on your system(s) is dragging an image onto the ARIA Player right after installation.  So running it on your main desk-top at home and back at the office, and a portable device or two is not a problem........

For $150 USD....well, it dominates this price bracket and even holds its own against some products that cost twice as much and grind to a halt on anything less than a Sandy I5 quad with well more than 8gb of RAM.  It's something like a Swiss Army knife....there is useful stuff in there even if you gradually invest in some nicer libraries on down the road.

Out of the box GPO5 might not sound all that great, but if you read the manual, and learn how to seat your orchestra and put it into a proper room context, and possibly work out some of the minor bugs (simple sfz text file changes, people here can help you learn to sort them out when/if you find them) while tweaking it to score context and subjective personal preferences, it packs in a lot of nice content for the money.  You won't get 22 velocity or round robin layers and scads of articulation choices, but you will get solid fundamentals, and it'll run lean on modest hardware configurations.

Well, currently I need something that can do special effects rather easily.  I'm actually "renting" the East West Sounds Online deal.  Those are some nice sounds!  BUT, there are weird discrepancies!  Only the 11violins have harmonics.  The 18violins don't.  However, there is no pizz. with the 11 violins - you have to go to the 18 violins for that.  There is no option to have a string section do harmonics for the violas, cellos and basses.  The brass sound good, but they only have a standard mute option - no harmon mute, bucket, or anything else.  It took me a LONG time to figure out Human Playback with the EW Library, and I still have questions, but no-one seems to have any answers.

Whereas there they have "harmonics" as an option for the strings in the human playback preferences, there don't seem to be many string libraries that actually have a keyswitch for harmonics.

So, I'm looking online and one company that has all this stuff is "Wallander".  Sure enough they have a VI, "NotePerformer" where strings have TONS of effects (like harmonics, col legno, sul tasto, etc., etc.  The Brass have ALL the mutes plus tons of effects.  All this stuff just "works".  The demos sound great, and, guess what - it's ONLY available for Sibelius!?  What the heck??  It's also only $129.00!  So, I pay $149.00 and I get some of these things with Garritan, even though I have to create work-arounds for the harmonics, but in order to get the mutes I'm going to have to pay another $149.00 for the JABB Library.  The Sibelius people are only paying $129.00!  I LOVE Finale, but, what the heck??  Why isn't there a comparable solution?  This Wallender "NotePerformer" has been out there a few years, but I don't see anything nearly so comprehensive in the Finale/Garritan side.  

Can you not emulate the mutes with some creative filtering and EQ stuff applied to the standard instruments?  To be honest, that's how JABB handles the more expressive mutes (Like buckets, wahwahs, etc.)

Be aware of free third party plugins out there which you can use to break down sounds and bring out or filter various harmonic spectrum of a wave (I.E. Notch Filters/boosters, and advanced graphical or parametric EQs, various compression plugins, etc).

It is also possible to open up the ARIA hood, and edit key-switches into an ARIA sfz instrument.  It's all based on the open sfz standard in text files.  In my experience it's simpler to just channel bounce instead.  That method makes it easier to set up different variations using the various dials in the ARIA control panel as well (even for things like arco....I.E. set up different variations based on the arco instrument), but, Garritan Libraries do give you some power-user options that don't come across as being obvious.

From inside a scoring package, playback control is a bit sordid with any of the libraries.  Unfurling things into a tracking DAW can help get an organized visual perspective of 'expressive'  control and technique changes, along with a lot of math-centric power-editing tools to get fine control over the performance.

P.S.

I use Finale, and Sibelius, and Dorico, and more.....

None of them are any 'utopia' on playback interpretation, management, and control.  They all focus mostly on engraving quality and page layout.  They all have an assortment of advantages and disadvantages in terms of how they manage playback, and striking some balance between power, and ease of use.

Polished playback is a bit a of a challenge on them all............

Personally, I don't worry about playback much in the Scoring application.  Focus on the theory, arranging, and playability of the score (from a theoretical and scoring/part printing perspective).  Later I move it to a tracking DAW for polishing a mock-up, where I can get more direct access to all of the bells and whistles of any Library.

Sounds in computers and through loud-speakers don't work much like real world acoustics.  Psycho acoustics, and a constant series of compromise will always be a part of the equation, and what works for one piece or phrase of a given style and tempo can outright stink in another.  So there's no such thing as an install it, set it, and forget it product at this time.  When doing mock-ups with simulated musicians, there is always a series of decisions over what sounds good or pleasing to the ear in the mix, vs what a 'real musician would be doing in a real performance'.  A good 70% of the process is taking stuff out or turning it down, and instead 'fooling the listener' into thinking it is there (His mind subconsciously fills in the gaps with how it should be).

As for note-performer, I really do appreciate how easy it is to get a decent score translation from it; however, to me, it sounds just as much like a 'sampled band in the box' as Garritan....more-so really, and there's not much I can do personally to change how it interprets a score, set up a mix, or sounds in general....I get what I get from it.  Again, it's a great product worth every penny of its price tag.  Again, it's not perfect.  It's a great collaboration and communication tool, but it's not going to always 'please the ear', nor will it fool anyone into believing it's anything other than a computer generated rendering.

Currently, very advanced mock-ups require a lot of work and attention, regardless of how fancy and expensive your libraries are.  More expensive ones do offer some tools to improve work-flow and cut-down on studio time....but they are still in need of a lot of specialized human intervention.  That's pretty much how it is right now....so pick something in your budget and make music....do what you are best at, and get live musicians and/or pro audio engineers to help out when the time is right.  You're good at composing, they're good at micro-details and mastering (and have the million dollar equipment, along with a very different sort of ear training and experience to do it).

Finally, if you intend for real orchestras and bands to read your scores, don't fall in the trap of arranging for the balance of a computer simulation.  It's going to be quite different in the real world as to what audiences will hear (you can't just turn up a slider and be done with it).  So, never abandon your old theory books on balance, arranging, tonal modes and micro-tuning effects, playability for a given instrument, etc.  It's a very easy trap to fall into....so keep listening to live groups play, as well as recordings of real orchestras, or the whole computer arranging thing can throw your whole perspective way out of wack.

I have been using Finale  since the late 1990s. But I am new to the sound libraries out there. I have all of the Garritan libraries and I am now very interested in learning how to create good mock - ups of my compositions. 

Can someone please tell me how to get my mock ups to sound like the demos on the Garritan website?

Based on what Brian Rolland just said, I will assume that he exports from midi Finale to a DAW. My question is, does it matter which DAW when it comes to creating mock ups for concert band? I have been playing around with Garageband, but seriously considering Logic Pro. 

But when learning what to do within a DAW, where do you start?

On DAW choice....it's mostly about preference and feature sets you find useful.  Some are more robust at working with audio tracks or 'short loops' of audio than manipulating through composed virtual instruments, while others give you a good deal more power in working with MIDI and virtual instruments.  Little things do matter, and a lot of the 'little things' about work-flow, aesthetics, registration/activation/support/documentation/etc. are very subjective, so take time to shop around and personally try things.

I personally like CuBase Pro on the Windows Platform best, but its best to give yourself time to try a variety of them out for yourself.  These days there are enough out there to keep you busy for a good year or more exploring Demos.  Your platform of choice can ultimately have a good bit to do with what DAW is best for you, as some work better on Macs than Windows, and Vice Verse.

As for learning to do mock-ups, practice...........and lots of 'listening' to recordings and live performances of arrangements very closely.  Don't throw away your old theory books on how to arrange for live groups...and realize that the rules are often different for going directly through loud speakers through mics....so be willing to change things up a bit for the mock-up vs what you'd hand to a real orchestra....in terms of instrumentation, balance, and even the way you stack chords or assign melodic themes.

One of the first mistakes people make is loading up a library and going with equal temperament tuning across the board.  People just don't think much about it.  They throw in the notes and hit play....sounds good on the computer, but...something just isn't 'right'.  How many orchestras and wind ensembles play in equal temperament, all the time, in real life?  Even if there are pianos, glocks, and other equal tempered instruments in the ensemble, real orchestras inhibit various tuning characteristics from section to section, key to key, etc.  They like to lock various chords without 'beats', and enhance certain dissonances by 'adding beats'.  It just makes me turn my head sideways when I hear otherwise nice mock-ups with a stock equal temperament beat patterns across the board.........

Many Libraries out there, including Garritan, give you tools to change between tuning schemes.  Take advantage of them, but also realize that alot of those can only load one tuning system at a time...with no easy way to 'change them on the fly'.  The fix to that is to use more instances and bounce among them when needed.  A good tracking DAW makes all this bouncing around almost effortless.  While you can do this with lots of staves in something like Finale...it's a bit of a mess to keep organized and in control.

When changing keys and such, real orchestras and bands also exhibit tonal characteristics that don't always come across in sampled instruments without some tweaking.  When the samples were made, someone just stood there and produced long, pure, simple samples, probably while looking at a strobe tuner.  In reality, a musician puts some soul into things, and key changes often effect the 'tone' he's going to strive for.  It's difficult to explain with words, but listening to real recordings and live performances should be enough to get the point across.  So, experiment with tonal and subtle tuning changes along with key changes.  (EQ, compression, notch filters, or even just changing to a different instrument in the Library can often do the trick....I.E. in a minor key, you might put the labeled 1st horn on 4th part, the 4th on 1st, and swap the seconds and thirds....even if no other reason than to create a more obvious mood change).

Humanization and groove are obvious and simple to start exploring.  This is the practice of making sure every single attack and release of every single note isn't machine perfect.  In real orchestras there are phasing effects....relative to musician playing styles, seating, the room, etc.

Reverb, panning, and room shaping.  Again stuff to practice with.  Setting things in the mix where you want them.  A good understanding of a chorus plugin can help you spread things out over the stereo-field that should be, and isolate sounds that you want to come from an obvious 'point' in the field.  Most DAWs out there are going to come with quite a robust set of reverbs, EQs, compressors, chourus, notch boosters/filters, and the list goes on.

Expressive things like dynamics of each individual player....do they get a little louder when playing higher and softer when playing lower?  Do they get a little sharp or flat on certain notes and correct to ear over time?  Do you have individual players who maybe naturally crescendo or de-crescedo on every note a bit?  Does that Tuba section stagger their breathing if they have 12 bars of whole notes tied together?  Are things like vibrato just mechanical....or do they make sense with the context of the musical phrase?

The tracking DAW makes dealing with expression data much easier.  You get a visual layout, where you can draw things in as curves and lines.  Hopefully you also pick something with logic editors, or scripting abilities that allow you to make batch-edits.  I.E.  Increase the velocity of every note close to beat three of bars 11 - 20 10%.  That could take you HOURS to do by hand, one note at a time...a good DAW will make it a 10 second thing....

Be creative, and learn the strengths and weaknesses of your library.  Don't assume that because something might be called "1st Trumpet" that it might not be better to use the "2nd trumpet" patch there....or vice verse.  Just like you would a real band, know which players do what the best, and assign them accordingly.

Split off parts to many tracks so you can mute ideas and variations in and out, or even layer them up and combine them....pick and choose the 'best of'.

Are there ambiences, such as plain 'room noise'.  I.E.  Open a mic in the venue when it's totally empty, with no people, no music, etc, and let it record all night.  Lay that under your mock-up...might help pull things together with a warmer, more realistic context!  Other little subtle things like breaths, instrument clicks and clanks, buzzing snares, etc.  Practice with various sorts of white/pink/room noises can cover up, or otherwise pull together a lot of flaws (or rather the sheer consistent and redundant perfection) in sampled instruments.

Best of all, mix in real players if you can.  Invite some principals over to do important solos or features.  Record them........take what is useful and ignore what isn't....work in what you can.  A good DAW will let you slice and dice such recordings, stretch and shrink to fit your tempo, or correct subtle errors in things like tuning.

At first you'll probably find yourself 'over-doing' things, and that's OK because you need to wreck a lot of renderings with over-processing learning how it all works, and get concepts of how to create effects.....but over time you'll learn that less is often better.  Your ears will learn what to listen for, and you'll ultimately spend more time taking out, masking, or blending the 'crap' into something musical, than trying to add too many extreme details.  Make a sketch with the right hints in the right places, and let the listener's imagination fill in the gaps.

Learn to work Equalizers and Dynamic Compressors.

Invest in the right kind of monitors/speakers, and consider the target audience of your renderings.  Do you need surround sound?  Is your audience more likely to check you out with cheap ear-buds or computer speakers?  There are BIG differences in how to best apply compression and such for nicer speakers (if any at all).

Brass is notoriously difficult to make work.  Reverb and EQ are your best friends.  Sometimes it even helps to just play the brass tracks and record them from your speakers with an open mic, then work that track back into the mix as a layer in the mix.  Again, difficult to explain why, but it has to do with creating ambiance and melding harmonics.  Brass players often love to practice in echo chambers of sorts....and for good reasons :)

That's plenty to think about.........and your first projects will be slow and frustrating.  If you stick with it though, you'll save tricks and reuse them.  The work-flow will improve and speed up.  You'll know your libraries intimately, and won't have to spend a lot of time trying out and tweaking as much stuff.  Knowing and understanding what you have, is just as valuable (if not more-so) than having a huge tool-box with a million sounds at hand that would take decades to ever audition.

Jonathon,

I use Logic Pro and consider it one of the best bargains out there for what you get. Where to start learning a DAW? Get a book if that works for you, take an online course or just start googling and reading and watching everything you can. It's not something that can be learned quickly, but everyone is in the same boat, everyone has to learn this from the beginning.

Also using Finale you have the benefit of importing you Finale file with all the HP data in place and taking it from that point.

Good luck.