Halion Sonic 7 seems to be loading 3/4 of a tone sharp

Dorico
1

I have been arranging orchestrations for about 2 dozen popular songs, trying to keep them authentic to the originals. However, I just discovered (after an artist told me the keys that 2 of his songs were recorded in) that Halion Sonic 7 seems to be outputting sounds approximately 1.5 semitones sharp?!

I have very simple setup – iRig Keys Pro connected to MacBook Pro by a USB cable, running Dorico Pro 6 and HalIon Sonic 7, listening through wired headphones. I re-set the controller to factory; no change. I looked at Halion and tuning is set to 440, and I cannot see anything transposed, individually or master. All sounds are in tune with each other, but all are equally sharp from correct pitch.

This is a disaster, as I am going to have to bulk transpose everything I have created in Dorico 6 Pro, and re-print PDFs of all of the parts (many of which musicians have downloaded).

But before I go much further, I would greatly appreciate a solution to get this outputting sounds at the correct pitch.

Thanks very much!

2

Hi @alexajcable, often such an issue is caused by a Sample rate mismatch between the various apps/devices:

try to change the Sample rate for menu Edit>Device Setup, and set it for example to 48.000

Then open the Audio MIDI setup app in your Mac and check that all the sample rates are the same between devices (in this case all at 48.000).

1 Like
3

Surely the written notes are correct; it’s just the tuning of the audio playback that’s affected?

As said, make sure all devices are using the same sample rate. Either all at 48,000Hz, or all at 44,100 Hz; but not a mix of both.

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The written notes are not correct, because I pitch-matched my arrangements based on what I was hearing from Dorico playback (i.e. I played along with the recordings before setting the key and starting the arrangement). So the arrangements are note perfect, but in the wrong key. I am now attempting to verify the 2 sample rates.

5

Dorico’s Edit > Device Setup showed Built-In Audio using sample rate 44.1K. Audio Midi Setup showed the same choice for mic/speakers/headphones, but showed the LG monitor and iPhone mic fixed at 48K. I changed everything in Audio Midi Setup to 48, when went back to Dorico to choose 48. It had already changed to 48. Pitch now seems reliable. Thanks for your help.

A note to those at Steinberg; This is a significant enough issue that there should be a feature on setup/installation/first opening that forces this to be inspected and corrected as necessary.

1 Like
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I’m not sure Steinberg can control your peripherals.

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Hello Janus, I’m not asking Steinberg to control anything simply to advise users of that this issue exists and will cause grief unless addressed on first run or initial setup

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The problem here is that some programs can change the sample rate without announcing it, resulting in a mismatch. This depends on the programs one runs on one’s individual computer and how they behave.

I found it safest to set all my sample rates to 48K. On my computer this solved the problem.

2 Likes
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I found this to be true on my Mac a long time ago. A single sample rate is a must.