.
I thought the new GM soundbank might be just an updated “Universal Sound Module”, but it has quite excellent sounds (certainly for my ‘ambient’ ‘soundtrack’ type uses).
Nice job HS devs!
I’ve only tested the update for an hour or so, but one vocal patch has an odd note. I was playing some chords and I thought: “Wait! Where the h*** is that horn sound coming from? I don’t have any brass loaded.”
I stopped playing and then played each note up and down the scale. At the C3 octave transition (and only on this note) there was a distinct brass like overtone.
It seemed to be in the sample itself, as opposed to anything synth engine might be doing.
When I do some more testing I’ll update this post with the name of the patch. (I should have jotted it down but I was too busy checking out the new goodies).
I’ve only had a quick play but it seems to me that you have to make a note first of the instruments and their MIDI channel in your file and then load those accordingly in HS; i.e not a major step forward. So, you can load the new patches prefixed ‘GM’ if you like, although obviously you can load whatever patches you like of course (so why designate some as ‘GM’?).
All that tells me I might be missing something here and that you should be able to load a SMF and HS should respond by loading the correctly mapped ‘GM’ patches, but if that’s the case I can’t see how that’s done and I can’t find a reference to it in the PDF manual. No doubt someone from Steinberg will come and enlighten us!
that’s correct loading a file works fine. But using the standalone host application and sending program changes through the MIDI device defined in MIDI Input shows with the flashing colour of the selected channel that Halion Sonic host receives the command but does not react on it by loading/changing the patch requested. General Midi mode is selected of course on the option tab. Might be there is filter option for incoming MIDI messages where PC is disabled? - But I could not find such a filter. Or, it does simply not work yet?
