4.5 update is great, but still no foreign Disc reading?

Virtual instruments
#1

Hi. I am loving Halion 4.5 and how you can read foreign disc images via the new browser, however, I would like to not have to have the images taking up valuable hard drive space just to read their contents, I do have lots. Will Halion ever have an update which will allow Akai, Emu etc discs to be read straight from the optical disc itself contained in my optical drive of my computer to avoid having to dump and waste hard drive space just to read their contents? You are almost there, but not quite. Halion 3 read directly from the disc without issue, I would like Halion 4 to do the same.

As well, I don’t have any on hand at the moment, but how does Halion 4 deal with Roland S7xx discs? Does it read them at all, even if only from the dumped ISO?

Thanks for reading.

#2

Maybe you should rethink your strategy regarding optical disks.

Disk space is not very relevant anymore, hard disk are cheap and huge now. For less than 100€ I’m sure you can have a new HD with all your sample CDs inside. It’s much faster to select the image from your computer and read the samples directly from it, than using the physic CD from a huge mountain of disks. The less you use the original CDs, less the chance to break them. Let them be your backup copy.

You are not “wasting space” as you see it, you are saving time which is (at least for me) more important.

My humble opinion, of course. :slight_smile:

#3

Thanks for your input on this. I see where you are coming from, but I am all about choice, not dictatorship. I like being able to work how I am used to working, how I was working in Halion 3 for the past 5 years, not having someone else tell me because HD space is cheap and huge, I should just suck it up and go buy such drives and be happy.

My humble opinion as well of course. :wink:

#4

Looks like… No!

I have an old Roland Ultimate Strings Collection CD that is not recognized either as a CD or an iso image.
However, Kontakt 4 can load patches into their browser without any difficulty. Patches can be loaded into the rack and played like anything else in the K4 library. Same with some akai discs.

In my case, I have very few sampler discs. But the fact that the HALion 4 can’t open what the competition is able to do is a serious drawback.

Hopefully SB will take care of this in the official release of 4.5.

#5

Thanks a lot for this feedback. Too bad on the Roland discs not being able to be read. Luckily I have none on hand that need to be used, but I will have to keep this in mind for the future to not bother looking into getting any of these disc types unless Steinberg can get them working in Halion 4.

#6

I can’t confirm that!
I was able to succsessfully import ISOs of the following Roland CD-Roms:

Roland L-CD705 CD-ROM ´Rhythm Section Vol1´ 1992 - 1993
Roland L-CDP-02 CD-ROM ´Guitar&Bass Vol1´ 1994 - 1999
Roland L-CDP-08 CD-ROM ´Symphony Orchestra1´ 1994 - 1999
Roland USV-3 CD-ROM ´Sonic Images´ 1994 - 1995
Roland RS-1 CD-ROM ´Orchestral Strings´ 1994 - 1995

best regards
Gerrit

#7

Hmmm, thanks for this info. I guess they are capable, but it depends on the image? Perhaps your image was bad Dr. V, or of some other Roland format?

#8

:arrow_right: I stand corrected.
My mistake was to not rename the .cdr file extension to iso in the Get Info box. :blush:

However, this still doesn’t change the fact that Kontakt is able to load patches directly from the Roland (an Akai) CD rather than having to create an iso image.

My understanding is that M5v3 also loads Roland and Akai patches directly from disc.

I can only encourage SB to add this functionality to HALion 4.

Best regards,

WV

#9

Thanks for the new feedback V. I don’t care so much that competitors have the optical disc reading option, it is the fact that even Halion 3 had this option!

#10

Since I’m new to HALion as of v4, I don’t have your point of reference.
But the common goal is to improve ease of reading foreign discs which will only make H4.5 that much more attractive new users and upgraders.

Cheers.