HALion Sonic 7 in SDA together with Dorico

I made a search in this forum, but I didn’t find anything.
Now HS7 is downloadable in SDA with Dorico.

(Positive) Comments?

HALion 7 has jut been released, yes.

You should be able to download it in SDA.

I hope there’ll be a demo version in due course, because I am intrigued, partly because Omnisphere is named as a crossgrade option, which suggests they’re aiming to compete on the synth front as well as the sampler.

Thank you Ben! My search was unsuccessful because I did it for HALion Sonic and not HALion (and, as I wrote, in Dorico forum)!

It should be in the Dorico 4 panel.

Screenshot

HALion Sonic 7 is the new free-of-charge replacement for HALion Sonic SE 3 and is supposed to be a drop-in replacement for HALion Sonic SE 3, at least in Steinberg hosts. As Dorico uses the same sound engine as Cubase and Nuendo, I hope it will work the same as the behaviour @Philippe_Bono describes in that post for Cubase and Nuendo.

The product formerly known as HALion Sonic is now called HALion Sonic Collection - essentially, that is all the content of HALion but without the added features of the HALion instrument.

HALion Sonic Collection 7, HALion 7 and Absolute 6 are available as paid updates for existing owners.

I was very interested to know the reaction of Dorico people, on what looks an important announcement, being HALion the basic sound of this product.

  • Quite better than HALion Sonic SE
  • No difference
  • Very smooth transition of Dorico Projects
  • Transition wasn’t immediate

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I wonder, if there is any difference between Halion 7 and Halion Sonic 7 in playback? Dorico now picks “Halion 7” as “the best one available”. But what does Halion 7 make “better” just for playback?

Why not try it for yourself?

It’s an upgrade to the player, so the sound is unaffected. Dorico loads the v7 VST by default. There’s no ‘transition’ of projects.

The interface is a bit better and there may be some improved features.

Thank you for your answers!

For the factory content, no, there’s no difference. If you’re interested in tweaking the sounds, HALion 7 provides you with a full suite of editing and sound design tools (so you could e.g. modify the patches to extend their ranges). But if you’re just looking for regular playback using the factory sounds included with Dorico, there’s no reason to prefer HALion 7 over HALion Sonic 7.

I found a problem with Halion 7 (and Halion Sonic 7), where I can reproduce a crash:

  1. Fresh start of computer (Win 11)
  2. Create a new project with a solo piano
  3. Enter some notes → Dorico plays back the music and I can open the Halion UI in play mode
  4. Close the project without saving (have not tried, if this is important) → the hub comes back
  5. Create another solo piano project
  6. Enter some notes → Dorico doesn’t play back the music and I can’t open the Halion UI.
  7. Close the project without saving → Dorico crashes and the hub won’t come back and I can’t start Dorico anymore.

You can find the Diagnostics Report here:

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Just in case: I use Dorico 4.3.20.

We have seen this problem ourselves. We believe it is related to the new MediaBay component. We are waiting for the main MediaBay developer to have a chance to look at it.

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I read from Steinberg it will be available on 21 February.

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Me too.