Hi all, new here! I have just downloaded and installed Halion Sonic 7 to work on a cubase AI 10 where I had Halion SE3. Now I see many sound programs (most of them) with a banned sign (red circle with white horzontal line). How can I make them work? Thanks!!
Hmm, Cubase 10 used the dongle. Sonic 7 does not.
You might want to consider updating Cubase to 12? In theory Sonic 7 should work with Cubase 10, but there may well be issues between the old ādongleā versions of HALion, all the content that goes with it, etcā¦and the newer dongle free system.
Before doing anything drasticā¦You can disable the Sonic 7 plugin by āmoving its pluginā to a new location āoutsideā of your systemās VST3 directory (can always move it back later if desired). HSSE3 should still be on your system unless you manually/intentionally uninstalled it. Run some tests to see if the old SE 3 works as expected.
If you want to try Sonic 7 again. then āmoveā the old HSSE VST3 directory to a safe place on your system. It may well be that Cubase 10 doesnāt quite know what to do if it sees BOTH HSSE3 and Sonic 7 installed in the VST3 directory.
Where is the VST3 directory? Not sure about Mac, but on Windows itās in: ā%System Drive%\Program Files\Common Files\VST3ā
I.E. When using Sonic 7, you might move the Sonic SE folder to someplace out of the scan path. Example: Cut and paste the HALion Sonic SE folder to a place like āC:\VST3.disabledā.
When using Sonic SE, cut and paste the HALion Sonic folder to your disabled directory, and move the Sonic SE one back to the scan path.
In shortā¦only have āone or the otherā in the VST3 directory at a time. Iāve found this helps avoid some issues with non Steinberg (or older Steinberg before Nuendo/Cubase 12 and Dorico 4) hosts.
If you really want to press forward with Sonic 7, in all its dongle free glory, along side Cubase 10 (youāll still need the dongle plugged in I think?)ā¦
Try a fresh system reboot. Donāt open any Steinberg hosts.
Open Steinberg Activation Center. Make sure all your available Steinberg hosts and libraries are activated here.
If you have any extra sound packs for HALion or Groove Agent, make sure those are active as well. If you purchased any of them back when the USB dongle was required, check your My Steinberg Account for any āvouchersā to update to the newer dongle free system.
Open Steinberg Download Assistant. Give it plenty of time to do its auto-maintenance thing. See if you get Media Bay āupdatesā. Itās also possible to get some sound library updates that just come down automatically. If there are any other updates showing after the normal āautomatic maintenanceā go ahead and grab those.
If that doesnāt sort thingsā¦
It looks like the presets marked in your screenshot are from the HALion Sonic SE āArtistā Library which is included as part of the HALion Sonic SE 3 - Content" in hosts like Cubase and Dorico.
Since Cubase 12 and Dorico 4 and 5 came to market, a number of these libraries have had various updates and patches. It could be whatever is on your hard-drive is simply out of date.
If fast internet isnāt a problem for you (recommended)ā¦
You might try using Download Assistant to simply download a fresh copy and reinstall the latest version of āHALion Sonic SE 3 - Contentā. If for some reason you get a message that itās already āinstalledā when attempting this, open Steinberg Library Manager and try āremovingā the "Artist Libraryā (and any others that seem corrupt). Try installing again.
Note, you can see what library a preset belongs with using the column settings tab in the content browser:
Now you can scroll the horizontal bar at the bottom of the browser to see more information about it.
If grabbing 3.35 gig of files isnāt so easy in your situation you could give this a try first.
Open Steinberg Library Manager (Can be found in your OS Start Bar under Steinberg). Using the Library Manager, MOVE the corrupted library to a new location on disk. That should force an update of your Media Bay database. If itās working at this point, you could later move it back to the default location if you prefer.
One thing to be careful of if you manually install vstsound content by double clicking it. Do NOT register it from the Download Assistant cache location, as file might gradually disappear or be replaced at that location! Instead have Library Assistant register them to the Default, or a custom location outside this temporary storage cache.
Also note. If you do update all your HALion content to their latest dongle free iterationsā¦make sure you also have the last version of Sonic SE 3 at hand for times when you need HSSE 3. I think thatād be HALion Sonic SE 3.5.10 (works dongle free if you also have a qualifying host (If you donāt have one, grab a registration for the free version of Dorico maybe), and you can find it here: Dorico 4 Updates and Downloads | Steinberg).
The last ādongle requiredā version of HSSE was SE 3.4.40 I think (this one was easy to find in an isolated download). And you can find it here:
Cubase Pro 11 Downloads | Steinberg
Dear Brian, many thanks for your long and well explained answer. I will follow your instructions and come back to the forum with the results of my findings.
