Just a hunch, try running Finale/Aria under Rosetta. If you then hear sound, (since Finale 27.2 is M1 compantible) it means that Aria is having difficulty with the M1 chip.

Thank you, J. Adrian Verkouteren. I am running Finale under Rosetta (for some other reason that escapes me at the moment.)  

Have you allowed Finale access to the microphone? It's supposed to ask and you need to grant access. Sometimes, this is ignored or doesn't appear till a shut down and restart. If you do not have a mic, then your monitor or interface will do.

27.2/Aria/GIFF do not need Rosetta 2 on an Mi Mac if the 2nd installer for Aria/GIFF was run and you rebooted. It installs an M1 Native version of both.

NotePerformer and many other 3rd party libraries do require Rosetta 2. To access these, 27.2 must be run over Rosetta.

Thanks, Mike. I attached a microphone and granted permission as suggested. Still no sound. 

Garritan for Finale works fine on the same computer with  Finale 25.5.

Is there any significance to the fact that the keyboard at the bottom of the new Aria Player window doesn't produce a sound even though I have Steinway Piano set for two of the slots? The Aria Player keyboard does play when I open a file under Finale 25.5.

Exploring all possibilities (but you know this...) : do the midi channels in the Aria Player match the channels of the Score Manager ?

What happens if you move the older Aria Player out of the Garritan folder so only the new version remains there?

(I think we are all playing hunches at this point: it is a bizarre problem.)

Thank you Michel.  Here are my settings. Do they look OK to you?  The same settings play back correctly on Finale 25.5 and the notes on the small keyboard at the bottom of the Aria Player play. They don't in Finale 27, so I am thinking that there is something wrong with my Aria Player.  When I reinstalled Finale 27 and Garritan for Finale, nothing came up about reinstalling Aria Player. Yet there was a new version of Aria Player in my Applications, so I have assumed that the reinstallation of Garritan also reinstalled Aria Player.  But maybe not?  

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so I have assumed that the reinstallation of Garritan also reinstalled Aria Player.  But maybe not?  

Installing GIFF installs the Aria Player. When you download any version of Finale, there are two installers. With 27.2, both must be run and it’s probable that you did. 

It’s likely that the problem is elsewhere. What are your Audio Settings?

In your screenshot of the Score Manager, I don't see the Midi Channel.

Sorry, Michel. I omitted the very thing you wanted to see. In any case, it is set like this also for Finale 25.5 and I am getting good Garritan sounds from that one. 

Mike, I am not sure what audio settings you mean. Sorry, you will need to lead me by the hand (or the fin since I am now a fish out of water.) 

J. Adrian, I may have mentioned that the new version of Aria Player installed separately under A in Applications instead of within the old Garritan Aria Player folder. When I first noticed the problem, I tried to do what you said but it is impossible to move the old Aria Player out of the folder, it just copies on the desktop and leaves itself in the folder. So I move the new Aria player into the old Garritan Aria Player folder where it is now called Aria Player copy. But this did not clear up the problem either. Here is the way the folders now look:

Mike have you tried just using one Steinway Piano first as a way of troubleshooting? And how does your MIDI thru features look like in MIDI/AUDIO - Device Setup? Just check to make sure your MIDI thru is on. That's what I would do.

Thanks Ronnie, MIDI thru has been checked throughout, although I am not sure how that bears on this since I am not playing back through MIDI. But again my complete ignorance is showing. I am so used this stuff "just working" without knowing much about it.  

Do you mean to get rid of  the second Steinway piano?  I just tried another file that has only the grand staff line and one Steinway with no success. Again MIDI playback worked fine.

Well if anyone can help you it is  MICHEL HERR!

I will ask my friend who uses a Mac to see if there is just a simple software connect you have to make for the output. Something simple for sure.

There are a few more things to check. A screenshot of the windows under Device Setup (Audio Setup, Midi Internal...) as well as the Mixer of the Aria Player.

Did you recreate your preferences ?

Michel, your questions caused me find my problem. The file when was set to play through the wrong speakers in Audio Setup when played in Finale 27 even though it was correct in Finale 25.5. I guess I didn't realize that it needed to be reset in Finale 27 and thought everything was fine because I was getting sound from the MIDI playback. Just one too many a moving part in an area that I need a lot more familiarity. So Garriton is now working normally in both and this thread can be given to a well-deserved rest. 

Thank you everyone for your help!  

You need to understand how the sound comes out. From the top menu: MIDI/Audio—Device Setup—Audio Setup

From there you will select the output. This can be the same as System Audio or different.

In my case, I have 7 possible Outs for audio or 8 if I turn my AIR 14|192 interface on. My monitor controller is hooked up to the headphone jack and feeds my studio speakers. If I don't select the right output, there's no sound.

This is covered in the basic tutorials. Because we do kind of expect that beginners look at this stuff, it rarely occurs to us that you might not know this.

Editorial:

We get this a lot. Nearly all Apple Apps put the control panel for Audio In/Out in Preferences. Finale does not and should. MM could leave the panel in the same place and add a simple shortcut to this panel under Preferences. It would be easy to do and would place it where it's intuitive to Mac users to look for it. It's been asked for and I don't know why it's not there. 

Thanks for the second tutorial, Mike. I sort of knew that, but there are so many settings and downloads and unexpected things that happen in moving to a new OS and versions of Finale and Garritan and Aria etc. that I missed the most obvious thing. 

As an explanation for why someone who has used Finale for so long would have such gaps: I use Finale almost exclusively as a notational tool and rarely use playback. Generally it's just for proofreading. So I learn just enough to get by and then forget it over the years if it is working as it should, which has generally been the case. Then I have to relearn it if something goes wrong. 

I learn just enough to get by and then forget it over the years if it is working as it should

I think that 100% of us fall in that category.

Seems like a century ago but it was closer to 18 years, I ordered the print version of the User Manual (2004, maybe?). It came printed 4-Up, This meant that each piece of 8.5x11 paper had 8 pages from the Manual, 4 to a side. It was over a ream (500 count) of paper but I no longer recall how many pages. What a totally useless waste of paper. I recycled it a few years later. That is a heck of a lot of information. No wonder we forget.

I do intend to do more with the audio side of Finale in the future, so maybe it will begin stick a little better. 

My first version of the manual was this beautifully printed set of, I think, two volumes that was the best organized and clearest explanation of how to use any piece of software I'd then seen and probably the best I've ever seen. Then I think they stopped printing it and sent out what you got to anyone who wanted physical manual. Sorry about that!