HALion 7 available now!

Thank you, yes this is whats confusing me, elicenser shows my dongle and the licenses, in activation manager I am logged into the same account but its showing no licenses.
I have full license for halion sonic 3 which was the HS version of Halion 6
Content for halion 7 collection was made available to me via download manager and installed

Open Steinberg Download Assistant, press the ā€œEnter your Download Access Codeā€ button, enter the DAC of your purchased update (HALion Sonic 7 Collection from HALion Sonic 3) and go through the upgrade process.

You can download the new content free of charge, but you cannot use it without a paid update.

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Thanks gotcha just found the purchase upgrade area 85 to upgrade

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I totally understand and know how Steinberg operates, there should be an option to upgrade within the various ways of owning Halion 6, especially if you dont want or are interested in all the other Absolute 5 instruments , I do recall in the past there being an option to upgrade to a newer version of a individual VST Inst at a upgradeable price if the previous version is owned in a package or bundle, basically in all forms of ownership

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FM Lab is part of HALion 7 and HALion 7 Sonic Collection or is available as a standalone purchase to use with HALion 7 Sonic.

The FM Zone is only available in HALion 7.

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I am almost certain that the individual components of Absolute have never been individually upgradable. You have always been able to upgrade to a higher edition of a product, so you could have upgraded HALion Sonic Collection (what used to be HALion Sonic before version 7) to HALion, also HALion to Absolute or, for that matter, Groove Agent to Absolute. What you canā€™t do and so far as I recall have never been able to do is upgrade individual elements of Absolute.

You have a choice if you want HALion 7: sell your Absolute 4 licence and buy HALion 7, or upgrade Absolute 4 to Absolute 6. I suspect you will finish up worse off selling Absolute 4 and buying HALion 7 - plus you will lose all the Absolute 4 instruments and content that you donā€™t already have other licences for.

Whilst Absolute 5 wasnā€™t the most exciting release, both Backbone and Electric Bass are worth having IMO.

I think the added flexibility of Steinberg Licensing would allow Steinberg to allow Absolute users to upgrade part of the bundle, but I cannot see this being allowed for commercial reasons (there are all sorts of complex edge cases - imagine if you could upgrade to HALion 7 from Absolute 4, sell the HALion 7 licence, then upgrade again). You get a discount for buying into the bundle, but the quid pro quo is that you have to upgrade the entire bundle if you want to upgrade.

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I totally get the business model and understand what they are doing , I dont remember what software it was but I think it was Groove Agent and ppl where upset at the upgrade options in which they changed and offered an extra upgrade option for users , Im gonna search thru the forums if I can find it , I just would of liked to see there being an option for Absolute users at of course an appropriate price

You might be remembering when Groove Agent 5 first came out. For some time, Groove Agent 5 was only available as a standalone product, with Absolute users unable to upgrade to version 5. Eventually, Absolute 4 was launched, which resolved the issue.

Iā€™ve bought Halion 6 just two weeks ago and was very pleased to know i could update to Hlaion 7 ! This is a great and fair way to keep your customers. Thank you !

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The instant I found out that HALion 7 was available I purchased it.
Shortly there after I spotted that Absolute 6 had also been released.
Given the price difference, although a small one, I think despite me having overlooked it, it was the right thing to do.
And my plan had for a while been buy HALion 7, then in a handful of months upgrade to Absolute 6.
But when I go to Crossgrading it says, crossgrade from HALion 6.
Can I crossgrade from HALion 7 to Absolute 6 at the same price?
If I can, that would take my HALion 7 license as far as I know, but since Absolute 6 contains HALion 7 I would get it back, that would be fine, especially if in the future Absolute and HALion drops at the same time.

Do not buy a HALion 6 to Absolute 6 crossgrade, as the code will not work - that is intended to upgrade a HALion 6 licence (on eLicenser) to Absolute 6 on Steinberg Licensing.

You can use the other crossgrade offer to Absolute (from a list of Steinberg products) if you have HALion 7, but the UK price is around 70% of the full price of Absolute 6! Steinberg strongly incentivises buying Absolute outright, not crossgrading to it. The crossgrade offers from HALion to Absolute have never been that generous.

I would wait for a sale on Absolute before proceeding - in the past few years, Absolute has gone on sale at somewhere between a third and half off around once a year. Depending on the sale deal, you might be better off buying Absolute outright, then selling your HALion licence once the sale is over. You will probably have some time to wait, though, as the last Absolute sale was at the end of last year, with many lucky purchasers activating Absolute within the grace period for Absolute 6 (so theyā€™ll get an Absolute 6 licence free of charge.

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Thank you very much David, Iā€™ll wait for a sale and then buy the correct crossgrade you pointed me to.
I am almost sure that option wasnā€™t there before, but I might just have been tired, thatā€™s more likely. I didnā€™t see the other crossgrade option to crossgrade from HALion 7 and a bunch of other at the same price.
HALion was the important one to have and to learn for me.
The Absolute collection is mostly something I want to get, to get to a point where I can pay the lowest upgrade cost from Cubase version to Cubase version and then upgrade from Absolute to Absolute and get, almost I am assuming, all VSTā€™s upgraded in one go.

Kontakt 7 upgrade was $120.00. Halion 7 is $150.00 Iā€™ll wait for the sale.

I have the full Halion Sonic 3. Is there an upgrade path to Halion 7?

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Yes this really is a pitty - on a 4k screen its no joy using it ā€¦
I upgraded to Absolute 6 and this is the very thing I am dissapointed about ā€¦ its not the sound itself, the sound is great, thats actually the reason I am bothering about this, its the usabillity !
Why is it, that other developers of software I do use on daily basis - from Fabfilter, U-he, Arturia, IK Multimedia Bitwig, even Korg ā€¦ - worked it out to integrate a scaleable GUI, but Steinberg not!
I am wondering wheter the GUI designers still are working on 2k screens, because it really seems like this ?
so the lack of GUI scalability really really is a downside for the usage of this software ā€¦
I really do hope it will be recognised by Steinberg and realized that time has changed, 4k, 5k screens are standard, and GUI scalability is not a gimmick for ā€œfreaksā€, but a very basic feature.

just wait 6 years for Halion 8 :face_with_monocle:

hope they make all Steinbergā€™s plugins scaleable, i remember a leak on a website about cubase 12 before it was released that they had in cubase 12 beta a ā€œvector graphicā€ or something similar to test, but it didnā€™t make it in to cubase 12 eventually.
i honestly donā€™t know what exactly it means but maybe itā€™s somehow related to better graphics and ability of scalable plugins also ?

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Hopefully the framework for this is in the new UI and they just havenā€™t built/enabled it yet, thats my hope anyway, spent all last year waiting for this hoping it would be catching up as HS3 is my most used vst, was very disappointed. In fact to the point where I would have gone for the Halion 7 full upgrade, with this I canā€™t even bring myself to do the HS7 upgrade so using the HS3 content without the new devices, feels kind of lazy not to have done one of the most expected upgrades these days

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Testing the spectral re-synthesis in HALion 7 using an orchestral string sample from one of my soundtracks as sample source. Plenty of (written) explanations inside.

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Terrible quality control. Unusable for me w/o vertical resize!!