HALion 7 vs MODX+

[Saint909]

I currently use HALion 7 and enjoy the depth of the sound design. I was also interested in purchasing a new MODX+. Would this be to redundant? Are the differences worth the purchase?

[digitallysane]

I have a MODX, so obviously I got the trial for HALion 7 the moment it became available.
In the end I didn’t buy HALion 7.
It’s great to have the MODX FM-X engine as a soft-synth, but there’s a lot missing (of what makes a Montage/MODX great), and the way they ported the GUI from the MODX to the software world is not ideal, IMO.
Some of my views here:

HALion needs more/better effects, bring the whole Montage FX

I played with the HALion 7 demo today, mainly with the FM Zone. I own a Yamaha MODX and I love its FM-X engine, so HALion 7 would seem like a no-brainer. On the virtual instruments side, my most used synth is HALion’s main competitor, UVI Falcon. Even if the additions on the FM synth engine side, compared to the MODX, are excellent, overall the MODX still feels like a much more powerful synth, and this is in large part because of the huge pallette of fantastic effects. Not only very good brea…

and here:

A faster UI for FM editing

Steinberg didn’t lie when they said the FM Zone is developed in collaboration with Yamaha. The GUI and the workflow feel very much as directly ported from the Montage/MODX touchscreen UI, with separate “Pages” for Level and Freq and each OP modified individually. It works well on a touchscreen synth UI but on a computer it means a lot of clicking around just to change basic values like Level or Ratio and most importantly, it doesn’t offer a a bird’s eye view to directly compare values (like ra…

Plus, with the MODX you have the AWM2 engine as well, which is very powerful and quickly accessible. Of course there are “more powerful” VI romplers, but nothing beats the accessibility of haveing those into a keyboard. And AWM2 is an extremely powerful synth engine in its own right.

I might get Absolute when a deal shows up, as I’m quite interested in Groove Agent and Backbone (and HALion, but not interested to the degree of paying full price for it when I already have a MODX), so I might end up with HALion in the end. I’ll probably just use FM Lab most of the time, in that case.