FWIW, The idea that monitoring with Spacebar skips Human Playback seems (to me) to have been fairly common knowledge for a long time. Sorry you just found out.

http://usermanuals.finalemusic.com/FinaleWin/Content/Finale/Playback.htm?Highlight=playback

I admit that if using the spacebar for playback incorporated HP, that would be an improvement.

I agree with Avremi, there's no reason for this. The user either wants Human Playback on, or off. Playback should follow that parameter no matter how you initiate playback.

I don't agree that this is common knowledge among users. Users will use spacebar playback because that's a common feature of all music apps, they're not going to look it up in the manual first and read about the limitations, they're just going to use it.

Thanks Jeff. To avoid having to click the playback button now every time, I've set up through TG tool shortcuts. Alt Q to start PB and Alt W to stop

Up until a few versions ago, starting playback with HP always gave you a few second delay while HP loaded. Spacebar was a way to avoid that. But now that HP is almost instantaneous, I guess there’s no need for the different setups.

The audition playback feature was designed, as Mike mentioned, to intentionally bypass Human Playback to save time. On larger scores this could potentially add up to a lot of time, especially when HP processing was much slower. The idea behind this function is to quickly spot check check the notation and not to represent the full audio of the score. The playback controls could use some modernization overall and keeping this in mind during that process would a good idea.  

David, this is yet another example of how well thought-through Finale is, and was from the start. And of the fact that it's in sore need of modernization. Would going back to yearly upgrades help MM to finance this?

One thing that would be helpful to supporters would be knowing where the Finale team sees Finale going in the future, particularly in the face of Dorico's development. I realize that revealing too much risks revealing trade secrets, but knowing more about Finale's priorities is important as the industry is changing in major ways.

@ Avremi I always didn't understand why when I use the spacebar for playback it's not the same as normal playback. Now I know.