It’s been several months since I’ve used Halion but evidently since I last used it I’ve updated to Halion 7. I am finding loading the VST incredibly slow. This is whether I load the standalone programme, VST within Cubase or in a different DAW. I thought it may be a sample loading issues but i’ve reinstalled content libraries including to different drives (both SSD) and have even tried loading Halion with all libraries removed from my system and it’s the same issue. So i’m wondering if it’s a GUI loading issue? I find that once loaded the programme is responsive but often closing and reopening the plugin window takes the same amount of time.
Me too. Or rather, the UI takes ages to snap open. Even when the plugin ‘sounds fine’. Before the move to dongle free liscensing opening/closing the UI for active HALion and Groove Agent instances (that had already loaded) was always INSTANT. Now it’s common for the ‘busy cursor’ to spin for as long as 10 seconds before the window finally pops open!
I’m on Windows 10.
I click to open the UI and the busy cursor spins for several seconds. All screen drawing/scrolling in Cubase pauses until it finally opens. Fortunately if the transport is going, everything still sounds perfect (no glitches in the sound itself).
It’s sad because I like to bind controls to foot pedals and other remote controllers. I frequently want/need to call these UIs to open/close quickly, while the transport is going! Instead my heart skips beats wondering if the whole thing is about to crash!
I would suspect the new Media Bay stuff could be the part of the issue, but then again…this actually started on my system before taking HAlion/Sonic 7. Back when I first took Dorico 4, with Sonic SE 3.5.10.153 (Feb 22, 2022 D S). Dorico was among the first releases that no longer needed a dongle.
It was a few weeks until Sonic/HALion 7 and Cubase 12 came. HALion 6 and full Sonic 3 were still snappy opening if only using content that still required the dongle.
I’ve read somewhere that making sure everything Steinberg is ‘activated’ through Activation Manager before a session, and then disabling whatever drivers/device goes to the internet might fix things, but I haven’t gotten around to testing this theory. I need that ethernet port for things that have nothing to do with the internet as well! Actually I have 3 ethernet ports going (and sometimes a WAN as well for OSC devices), and I’m not sure how to insure all but one of them is ‘isolated’ from being considered by the OS as a ‘potential’ gateway to the ‘internet’.
I’ve noticed there is a new option regarding HD displays? I’m not using one, so I’ll fiddle with that setting just in case, but so far toggling that option doesn’t seem to fix the ‘open UI delay’ for my system.
Other issues I’ve come across. Do others get them too?
Auditioning Sonic SE presets with Media Bay
I can no longer ‘audition’ vst presets that are tagged as Sonic SE content in the Cubase Media Bay. Sonic and HALion presets audition, but anything that was tagged as “Sonic SE” refuses to make a sound from the Media Bay. I did remove Sonic SE from my VST3 path, because 4 out of 5 hosts I have CRASH on plugin scan if ‘both’ HSSE 3 and Sonic 7 have their VST3 plugin in place. Seems that only newer versions of Dorico/Nuendo/Cubase have a clue what to do if both Sonic 7 and Sonic 3 SE have VST3 plugins in the VST3 scan path.
Alternate Drum Kits in General MIDI Mode
When Sonic is in General MIDI mode, no matter what I try, the drum kit on channel 10 keeps jumping back to the stereo kit. I’ve triple checked that the track has no program/bank changes in play. It seems to happen when the system sends the ‘reset controllers’ event when stopping the transport. Seems like back in Sonic 3, I could manually pick a different drum kit and it would stick (or even use channel 10 for things other than drum kits). (In full HALion it’s easy to tick the ‘ignore program changes’ option as a precaution, and it doesn’t force anything to happen in terms of the instrument loaded in the slot on a reset controllers event, but what to do in Sonic 7 for this?).
[EDIT 5/2/2024]
I did fumble around and discover that for Sonic, if I set an alternate kit in Media Bay to GM Sound 129 and rate it with the most stars Sonic will use it in Channel 10.
So, add the column in Media Bay for “GM Sound”. Change the kit wanted to 129. Make sure it has the most ‘stars’ in the rating column. Sonic will now use that kit on channel 10 when in General MIDI mode.
Unfortunately it’s not a dynamic thing were each project can automatically change media bay ratings. One will need to go in and change it manually for every new project that needs a different kit here?
It’d be nice if in the least there were a flag/option to totally lock out any remote changes to slot 10 at all (Stereo kit by default, but user can drag in a different one and it ‘stick’). Or better…accept XG/GS/GM2 bank changes for the drum kits.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Sorry for the delay but finally got round to revisiting this. I am still on a USB dongle. I have Halion SE as part of a Cubase Artist package purchased a few years ago and though I did investigate the option of transferring to a dongle-free licence it looks like its not possible with the product I purchased.
As part of trying to diagnose my issue with Halion and Groove Agent, I’ve removed the entire sound library (which didn’t help). So I am in the process of reinstalling the content and I will see if I can try the other issues you raised. It’s frustrating that I now appear to be lumbered with an unusable copy of this software! Have tried contacting Steinberg for support, with no response so far. Surprised there aren’t other posters with this issue…
