About the New Halion Products and Naming

Virtual instruments HALion
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Hi @3DC !
Thanks for bringing up this question and sorry for the confusion.

TLDR:
It is two versions of HALion but sold in three bundles, including two new instrument libraries.

The looong version:

These are the plug-ins, in plain english :wink:
HALion 7: The well known and incredibly powerful instrument and sound design environment, we all love.
HALion Sonic 7: The beloved player for instrument libraries with performance features for layering, splitting, mapping and scene/preset jumping. HALion Sonic 7 is FREE and replaces HALion Sonic SE. HALion Sonic 7 has more features then HALIon Sonic SE regarding live performance and layering abilities.

We also created two new VST Sound instruments running INSIDE the free HALion Sonic 7.
These instruments are available seperately or in the bundles mentioned below:
FM LAB: A fully featured FM Synth, with the ability to create your own sounds and a great library of presets.
TALES: An amazing hybrid instrument of a deep sampled open tuned guitar and synth layers.

So which bundle (called versions on our comparison website) should I get?
HALion Sonic 7: The free(!) plugin, without any content. But even without anything, it is a functional subtractive synth (so what are you waiting for, check it out, it’s free!). It can load all existing VST Sound content, released for HALion Sonic and HALion Sonic SE, if you already own a license for that content.
HALion Sonic Collection: This is really a packed bundle of exquisite content. Since HALion Sonic 7 is free, you essentially pay for a collection of VST Sound instruments, that should leave not much to be desired (covers anything from electronic to classical styles, rythm, texture, melodies) For those who own the full HALion Sonic 3, It also contains the NEW FMLab (full fm synth capabilites) and TALES instruments, which run inside HALion Sonic 7! So if all you want is play and get your hands on these instruments, get the collection and run it in HALion Sonic 7.
HALion 7: Get this if you want to go DEEP into sounddesign and instrument development. It contains all the content included in the HALion Sonic 7 Collection in ADDITION to the Sound Design environment. So, you do NOT need to buy HALion Sonic Collection, if you buy HALion 7. Basically, you get HALion 7 with the Collection library thrown into the package, which is a great deal imho.

Please also read the announcement of @Florian_Haack:
https://forums.steinberg.net/t/halion-7-available-now/834144

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Hi,

HALion Sonic SE is discontinued as it’s place is now taken by HALion Sonic 7. We wanted to make it clear that one version is for playing and HALion 7 is for playing, design and development of VST Sound files.

Regarding the installation:
HALion 7 replaces any older versions of HALion. Existing rojects usually load just fine, we have put a lot of emphasis on backward compatibility.
HALion Sonic 7 replaces all older versions of HALion Sonic. If you load a project containing HALion Sonic 3 or HALion Sonic SE 3, it will replace those instruments. This should also “just work” as we also invested a lot of work to make this seamless as possible. EDIT: This does only count for Cubase and Nuendo! Third party DAW might still try to load old halion Sonic SE!

We decided to leave the discontinued HALion Sonic SE 3 files in place, since some, few, people still use old legacy VST instruments wich are now part of the VST Sound library.

I hope this answers the question.
In any case, check out HALion Sonic 7. It is free after all :slight_smile:

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Many thanks for the detailed explanation, but I’m not sure about the above statement: does that mean that both HALion Sonic SE 3 standalone and VST plugin are still available?
But now I have only standalone, the VST plugin has disappeared from my VST Plug-in Manager inside Cubase. Is that how it should work?

1 Like
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Yes, Cubase replaces HALion Sonic SE internally, even though the files are still there. But you might still have projects in third party DAWs or similar. For those you might still need the old files. And also if you load one of those old libraries, I mentioned, in Cubase. They will look for HALion Sonic SE under the hood.

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Thanks, much appreciated, now I get it!

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I think this may answer the issue that I’ve spent the last few hours trying to solve.

So a project that I created in 2021, that used a HALion Sonic SE3 trumpet sound will still play in that project, yet I now can’t use the same instrument on a project that I started in 2024. Is that right?