Does anybody know, do the keyswitches work in midi playback mode or only when playing live from a controller?

Keyswitches from Garritan products do work in BIAB. However, if you are setting them on anything other than the melody or soloist track, every time you hit play, the arrangement will re-generate and you will lose any edits you have made, unless you freeze the track before inserting the keyswitches.

John,
Thanks so much that is good to know, and could potentially save me a lot of heartache and frustration. I've been doing research on different samplers around that price point and GPO4 keeps moving to the top...

Not to be negative about Garritan (I own all the Garritan libraries), but be aware, however, that Garritan products do things differently from other similar products. Most notably is the use of the Mod Wheel to adjust volume settings. Additionally, it uses keyboard aftertouch to generate vibrato. You can usually remap aftertouch to use it in a DAW, but it's not pretty. So if you don't have an external keyboard with aftertouch, plan on spending time inserting CC's to get vibrato to work. That being said, some instruments do have vibrato implemented via KeySwitch, but not all of them.

Hmm...I guess the main instruments would be strings and horns that I want to sound more realistic than TTS-1. I tried the Coyote Forte synth for a while and liked it, but the trial ran out before I got into doing what I'm currently into doing. I don't recall that a lot of the sounds in there were better than TTS-1, just different flavors. That and the fact that nobody is making new samples in the format used either.

My keyboard does not have aftertouch, I'm not looking to upgrade, nor am I looking to spend a lot of time programming and tweaking. I'm open to suggestions though! Maybe I should reconsider Forte?

At $40, the Coyote Forte DXi is certainly an affordable synth.

True that!

Costs about the same as taking the kids to McDonald's! (this is how I justify making impulse purchases that aren't in the budget)

Orrrrrrrr.....I can save up for Garritan Instant Orchestra. That one is a little more expensive and a little less tweakable but that might be a good thing!

I'm thinking it might work a little better with BiaB