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When working on an orchestral score in Finale and using Playback to hear a phrase I want to review, Playback always ensures that the topmost staff is visible.  However, this is frustrating when I've just written a phrase for, say, strings, when those staves are located at the bottom of the score.  Thus, they're never visible on playback unless I'm willing to zoom out my 4K monitor prior to starting Playback such that the entire score is visible --  but this renders the notes frustratingly tiny.

Under Playback Settings, there are currently very useful Playback Region settings, but these are exclusively for the "horizontal" aspect of the score, that is, which measure to start at.

This request is asking for an additional Playback Region setting that deals with the "vertical" aspect of the score, that is, to have the option of viewing the currently displayed staves when starting Playback.

One way to do this would be to add two radio buttons: "Show topmost stave" [and keep it as the default behavior] and "Maintain current view" [the requested feature].

Thanks.

Bruce

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Bruce,

 

Have you tried using staff sets?

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Aha!  Thanks, Jeffrey. 

Staff sets definitely solve this problem, but as if often the case, the user needs to have an idea that they even exist (I've used Finale since its very first version).  

I'm not reluctant to search within Finale User Manual or do a general Internet search for solutions -- that's my first recourse.  However, even if I knew to enter "Staff Sets" in the Search field for Finale User Manual, it doesn't return any useful hits, even though that's the exact name of the feature.  I'm more likely to search in this case under a phrase such as "Playback settings", but that's of course fruitless.  I had to resort to searching on the Web for "Finale: Staff Sets" for an answer.  Again, if you hadn't mentioned that phrase, it's unlikely I would easily find an answer.

So, I would amend my request to improve the Finale user manual -- such that "Staff Sets" yields a hit to an article devoted to that, and to expand Playback Settings help to include a reference to Staff Sets.

Bruce

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Correct. Staff Sets would be the logical place to enable this. However, I don’t believe there is a feature by which only the currently visible Staff Set will play back. It would seem like a no-brainer. I requested something like this, years ago.

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