I’m posting this in “General” rather than “Sound Design”. The sound design forum seems a bit quiet.
I now there are restrictions when making a program for Sonic or HSSE such as 4 main layers max and the inclusion of certain midi modules and a macro. The “export as HSSE layer” doesn’t keep these layers intact on import in Sonic or HSSE though.
Quick Controls and macros for these layers can’t be reached when opened in Sonic/HSSE, so you can create a library, but a lot of functionality is missing. I’ve seen some posts where members have talked about importing layers from H6 into Sonic and then saving a program in Sonic, creating a library from that.
In a roundabout way this could work. But if you have, e.g. a 100 programs with 4 layers each and you have to individually export 400 layers and reconstruct your programs on the Sonic side, the amount of work and screw up potential seems daunting and laborious.
Is this an H6 limitation or am I missing something?
Hi Aposmus.
This limitation of 4 main layers is still a bit of mystery to me as well. Maybe it’s meant for Halion Sonic, where you can indeed load up to 4 layers into a slot. In that case each layer can have its own macro page and set of quick controls.
But that’s not the case with the HSSE.
For this reason I’m building my programs with one macro page and set of quick controls attached to the topmost layer, the one I’m going to export as HSSE layer.
You can use stack and several pages for the macro page.
While you can create macro pages and assign quick controls for sub layers, this is only usable in full Halion 6.
The 4 main layer limitation doesn’t bother me, but the inability to make a program for Sonic/HSSE does.
In that case each layer can have its own macro page and set of quick controls.
But that’s not the case with the HSSE.
That’s true for QCs but not macros. Each main layer in HSSE can have a macro. If you look at “American Jazz Organ” there are 2 layers that can have different settings, which implies 2 macros. Same is true for the Dark Planet set, where multi-layer programs can have varied macro settings for a given layer.
Another problem is the loss of program level QCs. If you export an H6 program as an HSSE3 layer, you lose the layer level macros and also the program QCs. Sonic/HSSE then defaults to layer 1 QCs. Obviously exporting just the layer solves the macro problem, but there is no way of getting the program QCs to a Sonic/HSSE program.
This is particularly a problem in HSSE which only has one QC layer. Where QCs could have been used to control the more global features, it’s now only attached to layer 1.
Also, a program bus with master fx, will also be lost with the export/import process.
It seems impossible to do a complete design of a Sonic/HSSE program to it’s full potential in H6. Even if you conform to the specifications. I might be wrong, but I haven’t been able to find any alternatives.