I apologise if this has been raised before but I can’t find an answer. I recently upgraded to Cubase 13 Pro from Cubase 12 Pro. Since then, what was quite a comprehensive library for Halion Sonic and Groove Agent have vanished. I ended up downloading pretty much everything in the application manager but all that gave me was lots of sounds I couldn’t access because I didn’t have the license for them.
I mainly use audio tracks to record but do use some instrument tracks to supplement and compliment them. What it means is that most of the tracks I’ve used previously now have missing sounds.
What - if anything - am I doing wrong here? I used to have some pretty good sounds I would call upon for piano, strings etc. and they all seem to have gone.
First recommendation…
Check your My Steinberg Account on the web for any ‘vouchers’ to upgrade content and such from the old eLisencer system to the new Activation system. If any are listed, make sure your dongle is plugged in and run those vouchers.
I used my Steinberg specific vouchers ages ago, but my voucher page looks like this…
You might also find some extra third party free/promotional plugins like Fosfat, PolyMAX, or Guitar Rig, there as well. Skip those for now and revisit once you get the Steinberg stuff up and running.
I’d suggest going ahead and activating any of the Steinberg vouchers like Colors (even if you won’t be installing/using them right away), as some of those might ‘expire’ at some point if not redeemed by a certain date. Most of the third party ones will use their own activation systems, so you could revisit claiming those at your leisure (but before voucher expiration dates if applied).
Open the Steinberg Activation Center on your computer and make sure your Steinberg titles are activated on your computer.
I.E. As an owner of Cubase 13 Pro, Dorico 5 Pro, and full versions of HALion 7, and Groove Agent 5 (with the Simon Phillips Jazz library), and a stand alone lisence for HALion Symphonic Orchestra, mine looks ends up looking like this…
Make sure all of your Steinberg apps are closed (Cubase/Dorico/etc).
Run the Steinberg Download Assistant. If updates are needed they should come automatically. Let those happen.
Reboot your computer. This hopefully provides a clean memory pool, and insures the latest version of the Steinberg mediapool/database service runs with a clean start.
Sometimes the Database server app just needs some ‘time’ to check itself, verify content in all the directories and archives it monitors, and build everything fresh and up to date. Launch the standalone version of HALion Sonic 7, and Groove Agent SE. Just let them sit there, or run in the background for a while. On some systems it can take a while.
After an hour or so close Sonic and GA. Open Cubase. Open the media browser, and let it sit there a while (or run in the background while using the computer for other stuff) as well.
If you still have issues a couple hours later with stuff not being activated, or sounds missing, open the Steinberg Library Manager (found as a separate app in your OSes start bar). You can track down what sound libraries you have installed there. If you’ve accidentally installed stuff you don’t have a key for, it can be removed here.
If you need some help figuring out what libraries come with what, you might share a screen shot of your Activation Manager showing us what you have registered (redact out any personal information like email addresses or key-codes). Or…list them out for us.
It’s hard to say what you might want to remove, or try to reinstall without knowing exactly what you have bought and registered over the years.
Thank you.
So I did what you said but no joy. I can’t help thinking I’m missing something…? I used to have lot of sounds. For example, I had loads of different organ sounds, one I remember called Tonewheels and others like Fizz or similar which I used to use. None of them are there now. There are lots of new ones with little ‘warning’ circles next to them, like this:
I also have songs with some great little retro 80s synth lead sounds but when I now load songs I’ve recorded, it says ‘missing audio files’ and although the notes are there the sounds aren’t.
Here is my Activation Manager screen. Not much on there as you can see. I’ve downloaded all the vouchers and things as you suggested too.
Here is the library screen:
And here is my eLicenser screen:
I used to have lots of sounds that I used really regularly and a lot of them have just gone now.
I did as you suggested and let the standalone version of Halion Sonic 7, Halion Sonic SE and Groove Agent SE sit open for a good hour. Then I let media bay sit open for several hours but no joy.
So there are really two things I want to accomplish:
- Get my sounds back - I really need them as I have a couple of songs almost ready for mastering but they need a few tweaks, but now the sounds are missing I can’t do it, and
- Get rid of sounds and things that I don’t need. I think I’ve done a lot of them through the library manager already, but as you can see there are still a fair few. When I look at the library marker in media bay it says something like Halion 2 Combis or similar but nothing like that in the library manager.
I’m so sorry that this is so long and drawn out. I’m not very up to speed with how all these work and I did the stupid thing and tried to fix it by just down loading hundreds of gigabytes of stuff I don’t have any license for.
Of course, the easy answer is to buy Halion Sonic 7 and the content for it, but crikey… that thing is so expensive, no way I can afford it.
Help! 
Hmm, looks to me like you have the staples of everything installed that comes with Cubase.
The Sonic programs you’ve screen captured above (Big Reed, British Jazz Rock, Fizzy Bass, etc) seem to be from full versions of HALion Sonic, and are now part of the Sonic ‘Collections’ Factory content.
These days Sonic 7 itself is a ‘free player/plugin’ that works stand alone, or in any VST3 compatible host, but it doesn’t come with any ‘sounds/content’.
The hosts, like Cubase, Dorico, and Nuendo do come with content that works in Sonic. The license for the host unlocks the stuff that comes with it.
You can buy a complete ‘Sonic Collections’ content pack, or buy each of the libraries individually. Another option to get a bunch of HALion/Sonic content is buying the full HALion 7 dev pack (everything you need to make your own custom HALion engine sounds and libraries from the ground up). Yet another option is the Absolute bundle, that includes HALion 7, Sonic Collections, Groove Agent 5, and a host of other/extra Instruments/Effects/And More (Some might be stand alone plugins/instruments, others are content for HALion/Sonic/Groove Agent).
I believe these days, a proper Sonic 7 Collections or HALion 7 installation distributes that ‘Factory Sonic Content’ as part of the HALion Sonic 2 Combis library, and this stuff is downloaded as part of a full content set through Download Assistant tabs for full versions of Sonic 7 Collections, or full HALion 7. Or through the Absolute tab.
In it’s most modern rendition, the old ‘Sonic’ product is now called Sonic Collections.
You do get several ‘Fizz’ instruments with Cubase that are part of the Sonic Selection, or Trip library.
Do you have keys for a full version of Sonic or HALion somewhere? I don’t see it in your lists posted above. Maybe you purchased it at some point and put it on a soft eLisencer instead of the dongle (soft eLisencers could work with HALion 6 and Sonic 3)?
Double check your My Steinberg Account. If you put it on some old PC as a soft eLicencer, there should be a way to ‘release/deactivate’ the old defunct soft eLicenser, get a new one, then get it working on your present system, and optionally move it to the dongle (might be a good idea stash all the old keys on a dongle since the old eLicenser servers will go offline sometime in 2025?).
At that point if the newer content downloads don’t get unlocked by your soft or dongle eLicenser using the Sonic 7 player, you could at least get a discount upgrading it all to the newest version.
If you’ve never owned it, maybe you had a demo version installed at some point, long enough to make some songs with it?
Or…
You only used stuff that comes with Cubase…you can get rid of the Sonic Factory Library.
For a long time, with any Cubase Pro registration…we used to get separate libraries showing in the Librarian with names like:
SE Basic
SE Pro
SE Artist
SE Hybrid
Etc…
I think most of that stuff gets packed in a way so it shows up in the Library Manger as single library called Sonic Selection now.
Trip and Flux libraries for HALion/Sonic have come with Cubase for a while now. I believe they still show up in library manager as separate libraries, but I’m also thinking they download at the same time, from the same link, as that one big download for “HALion Sonic Selection - Content”.
If you don’t get Flux and Trip synths with that, Maybe it’s part of some of those other ‘optional content’ sets? I’ve long lost track, but I’m pretty sure Cubase 13 Pro entitles you to those two HALion/Sonic based synths and a bag full of presets for them.
One thing that can cause issues these days is trying to mix and match older versions of HALion/Sonic, and older content libraries for them with the newest HALion/Sonic 7 stuff.
Since Cubase/Nuendo 12 and Dorico 4 went dongle free, they’ve also been gradually updating and reorganizing the content libraries to be less hassle grabbing with Download assistant, and also to be dongle free where possible. So, maybe it’s a good idea to clean out some libraries, redownload, and reinstall.
First…
If you still have any variant of Sonic SE on your system, go ahead and uninstall that. You don’t need it anymore, and here lately trying to keep it around isn’t worth the trouble for issues it can cause. You can uninstall it through your Operating System’s program manager.
Make sure you have the latest version of Sonic 7 installed. That can be found in Download Assistant in the Cubase tab.
It should happily replace any previous instances of Sonic SE you’d been using before. Even in older projects. It should also work fine in older versions of Cubase if you still have some installed and need to roll back the main DAW itself, so long as they support 64bit VST3. That’s a long way back I think…maybe as far back as a 64bit installation of Version 7!
I’m not sure about that HALion Sonic Factory Content library that you have showing in the Library Manager. I haven’t seen that one in a year or more, and I’ve been running full installations of HALion/Sonic since version Sonic 2/HALion 5.
I’m thinking delete that one for now. For one, because you need a full Sonic or HALion key to unlock it, and two, I believe it’s been reorganized a bit and packed into a differently named library.
I have a ‘hunch’ that getting rid of that one “Sonic Factory Content” library just ‘might’ fix all of your problems! (Older Duplicates of stuff, and/or things you don’t presently have a key installed for.)
As for the stuff that has traditionally come with Cubase (Sonic SE Content), I do see that in your screen shot, but you might try reinstalling it just in case. Since Sonic 7 started shipping with Cubase, a number of libraries have now been combined into the one called “Sonic Selection”.
If you open Download Assistant, and look in the Cubase 13 Pro tab, you’ll see all the libraries that can be installed, and get unlocked with a Cubase Pro key. They’ve been updated and reorganized a bit, but as far as I can tell legacy support is good, and you shouldn’t have many problems opening old projects that used Sonic 2 or 3 SE. You should also find Groove Agent kits going way back to version 1 (though you might have to open GA1 kits with the Cubase media bay since they don’t show up in Groove Agent SE).
Did you ever own any version of HALion Sonic as a stand alone license? If so, I highly recommend upgrading it all to the latest stuff (Collections, Version 7, or the full HALion 7 developers package). If you do own some older version of full HALion, or a full Sonic collection, and don’t wish to upgrade it to the latest version, it’s possible to roll it all back, but then you’ll need to uninstall the newer version 7 stuff, get rid of all the newer libraries that the Download Assistant pushed with Cubase 12 and 13, and reinstall the old stuff (either from your installation media, or from legacy installers you can download from the support area). Of course you’ll still need the dongle to get the old stuff working.
Personally, I don’t recommend trying to roll back to old versions of HALion/Sonic unless you really know what you’re doing, because the latest content libraries don’t seem to be compatible with them. Download Assistant likes to try to update them automatically when launched, so it calls for avoiding using that excellent service, and instead using old school manually downloaded installers. You’d need to maintain the old content separately from new stuff, rename directories in the hidden “ProgramData” directory by hand or with scripts when swapping back and forth, and more. The newer versions of the Steinberg database server/app that Cubase/Nuendo 12 and Dorico 4 or later use might not jive well with the old stuff either. So personally, if I need to work with legacy versions of HALion (extremely rare, only ever needed it to pack libraries for a friend who needed me to make some old HALion 2 content in fxp/fxb formats), I do it in a fresh virtual machine, or on one of my ancient PCs out of the closet that still has an OS from that era on it.
Otherwise the newest version 7 stuff does it all and then some, I just run legacy stuff (if I REALLY NEED it) in a Virtual Machine, or on an old PC long enough to get what I need, and export it for use on my ‘current system’.
P.S.
Groove Agent is less complicated, but if you have issues with that one too…
Use your OS program manager to uninstall GA SE. Reinstall the latest version under the Cubase Tab in Download Assistant.
If that doesn’t fix things, you might try deleting (through library manager) and reinstalling the Groove Agent SE content. Again, that’s all listed in Download Assistant under the Cubase tab.
If you’ve ever used Groove Agent ONE kits…
The content for that old plugin is still shipped with Cubase. It just doesn’t show up in the native Groove Agent content browser. Not sure why! The good news is…if you use the Cubase Media Bay, you can still find all those old GA ONE presets. They’ll open in Groove Agent SE from there. If you save a new user copy of the preset from inside GA SE, it’ll then show up in the Groove Agent content browser.
Another option for the old Groove Agent ONE stuff, is to grab the legacy plugin from here:
Installation of Groove Agent ONE on Cubase (Artist) 8 or later – Steinberg Support
As far as I can tell it still works just fine in Cubase 12 and 13. If it requires a dongle or not I cannot say, as I’ve never unplugged mine to test that since it lives inside the rack/chassis and hasn’t been removed since I built the rig.
Brian - thank you. Basically I got rid of the Halion Sonic Factory Content and reloading the Sonic Selection sorted it out.
I can’t thank you enough, it was driving me mad! I genuinely wish I could afford the Halion Sonic Collection, but at £212 it’s just way out of my budget. Wish they did something like smaller modules, or a pick 'n mix… Imagine if you could select the sounds you want, say 20 of them for £10 or something… you could build up a collection as you go.
Or even better, I’d be really happy to do a monthly license so you can pay for them like that - like Slate do with their modules. It’s a really affordable way of doing it and you can stop and start it as you need. I bet Steinberg would clean up with that!
I hear ya. Don’t underestimate the stuff that comes with Cubase. To this day that simple Basic GM set for Sonic that comes with Cubase/Dorico is among my favorites on the market for laying down arrangements and sketches that are tight, predictable, and ‘easy to mix’.
If you collaborate with others much, let all your friends know they can get a key that unlocks Sonic, and a decent set of General MIDI instruments for free by downloading Dorico SE. Since you have Cubase, you’ll already have most if not all of the Sonic content that comes with Dorico SE, but it’s good to know this is one way to get into Sonic for free, and also get some very useable sounds to go with it.
Don’t forget that Sonic gives you different ways to ‘layer up’ your instruments. At 4 layers per instrument slot X 16 slots (set multiple slots to the same MIDI channel)…you can mesh out some very rich and interesting sounds.
Keep an eye out for sales. A few times a year promos and sales happen, and sometimes flagship products get big price slashes of 40% or more.
Keep an eye on services like Splice too. I don’t think they offer HALion/Sonic yet, but seeing Cubase and Backbone on the list could be a good sign that it might happen someday.
Sometimes you can find free sounds for Sonic too…web searches and such, plus some users post stuff up to share here in the forums.
Latest user-content topics in HALion - Steinberg Forums
I had this problem a couple of times. Once it was my dongle accidentally unplugged. The second time I realised that some products including Halion Sonic 3 (which I have) are not being migrated so must be on the e-licenser in order to have permission to use. I went into the e-licenser app and ran the ‘perform maintenance’ thing. I then saw Halion Sonic 3 and other purchases were present. On restarting cubase Eagle piano Trip etc etc were all present . I’m not sure how they had got removed fomr the e-licenser. To get an old Halion Sonic onto Steinberg licencing I was told it needs to be upgraded to the latest version. Toll then I am stuck with the dongle and e-licensing system. NIghtmare over for me and i hope for you too.