Thanks for all the replies -- a lot here to digest (and I will).

The last week or so I've been going through my old software discs (the ones I have left) and found that I had not only the original GPO but Gary's Orchestral Strings (which apparently is no longer sold -- probably folded into something else). I also found I had bought Kontakt but apparently only the "Band" one or something (it has discs for piano, drums, bass, guitar but no orchestral instruments, which is what I really like).

One of things I did a lot was composing my melody in Finale and even orchestrating it there, but now BIAB can take my melody and help me with harmonization, so I'm hoping to do some cross-software work like that. To that end something like GPO5 fits a bit better than most of the other things mentioned here (since I can use it easily in both places). What little background I have in music is rather classical in that I still like to view things notationally and an actually DAW isn't something that I like working with much. I *seem* to remember that Finale had some kind of hook into BIAB but I don't remember much about this (we're talking at least a decade ago and I'm an *old* man :>).

I do have some hardware sound modules, but honestly they are so old the sounds they produce can't even compete nowadays with even inexpensive software solutions (I have the Roland Sound Canvas and a couple of drum ones). I don't want to get into hooking those back up again because I want to keep everything in software now (for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is portability).

Anyway, thanks again for the help and if you want to keep the thoughts coming I can assure you I am considering everything written here quite seriously.