Wow! Garritan is joining MakeMusic.

http://www.makemusic.com/Pressroom/Default.aspx

MakeMusic continues its aggressive course of action with the acquisition of Garritan.

They have been pretty busy.  They bought Recordare last month and Garritan this month.

For playback in Finale projects, Garritan sounds are much more realistic.  Light years ahead of the cheesy midi sounds from the late 80's.  Every Finale project I have heard lately has been played back on Garritan sounds.  These products go together well.

So with the Recordare purchase, you can now move your Sibelius projects to Finale.  With the Garritan purchase, the quality of sounds goes up.  You have been able to move a Finale accompaniment to SmartMusic for some time ( a big plus for music teachers.)  Maybe the idea is to attract Sibelius users to Finale (for many users) and then on to SmartMusic (for the teachers.)

If this purchase isn't to get more Finale users from Sibelius, one can assume it does put Finale users to the front of the line for new sound developments from Garritan,  another comptetive advantage.

Either way, it does "neaten-up" the package a bit.

It has been a while since MakeMusic has made this many moves.  Interesting stuff.