I’ve been breaking my head with a way to change program in Halion multi mode. I’m using a shared layer but cannot figure out how VSTLive does it. Any ideas?
As far as I know, only Halion 7 (not Sonic) has a program table, where you can use program changes to switch.
Thanks for the feedback. Halion 7 allows thus to change programs individually. Good to know, Sonic though cannot do it per individual program… therefore we have to use the multi mode which can be accessed by program change… except by VSTL as far as I’ve been trying… Hopefully the team will have a look at this topic and confirm if it is only me…
Read on and you’ll discover that there is a way 
This is incorrect. Sonic can indeed deal with individual channel PC events (except for channel 10).
Assigning General MIDI Program Change Numbers to Sounds • HALion Sonic Help • Reader • Steinberg
If you want PC changes to effect individual program slots, go to options in Sonic and change it to General MIDI mode.
You get 128 assignable Program changes (No bank support, bank events CC0 and CC32 are ignored). Yamaha lists instruments from 1 - 128, while the actual MIDI events sent are 0 - 127. Depending on your sequencer, you ‘might’ need to subtract 1 to get the proper instrument when poking PC events into a given sequencer’s ‘editors’. Even Cubase is a bit inconsistent in this…in some editors PC 0 might show up as PC1, and vice verse. Just something to be aware of if things ‘seem off’ when working with PC events in different sequencers.
As for what programs get called up, you can assign those in the media browser of Sonic (you will need to enable the column that displays the assigned program numbers). If more than one program is assigned the same program number, the one rated with the most stars gets picked. If more than one have both the same program number and star rating, the first one listed in the database gets picked.
Undock the Media Browser and rearrange the columns by dragging them around into something sensible.
You can undock the media bay by clicking here:
Now you can take advantage of your screen real estate and resize the media bay and see a whole bunch more columns. You can rearrange the size and order of columns as you like by dragging stuff around.
Added note....be aware you can click column headings in the Sonic Media browser for a quick and easy way to get at all Sonic Programs with a GM Sound number, sorted in order. So It's not too difficult to change this stuff around as needed.
Click a heading to change how Media Bay sorts the list. Click it again to reverse the order, etc.
Note, after reassigning things in Media Bay using these methods, you’ll need to reset your instance of Sonic before the new GM Sound entries and rankings take effect. I.E. Toggle the PrgChanges mode to “Off”, and then back to GM Mode. Your db changes will now be in effect.
Note, once you have a good layout for the media bay and everything that works well for you, save a multi-preset of it. You can use this in the future to quickly bring up an instance of Sonic in the state of your choice (this can include multi-bus output settings and such). Your Sonic User Presets will show up in VSTLive’s media browser where they can be ‘drug’ right onto an existing layer, or in some cases, double click it in the media bay and it’ll make a brand new VSTLive layer with all those settings all ready to go.
When in GM Mode, channel 10 will aways be ‘stuck’ to the highest rated program with the GM Sound number 129. It’s typically an exclusive ‘drum kit’ channel, and it will ignore incoming program changes. Unfortunately, getting channel 10 to change in real time is not possible. It’s also a pretty obtuse process to force it to use one of the other kits.
Seems like years ago I put in a ‘feature request’ to make it possible to mute or accept program changes per channel in Sonic like we can with full HALion, hence making it possible to more easily use channel 10 for stuff other than a 129 numbered drum kit (It could be muted by default when first entering GM Mode). Maybe they’ll do that someday
My personal workaround is to simply pretend channel 10 doesn’t exist in Sonic (Unless I know I want it to use my favorite drum kit assigned program 129 and ranked accordingly). If I need to hop about among different drum kits, I’ll usually just do drum kits in a different instance of Sonic in Normal mode (“PrgChanges Off”, ignores program changes all together), and drag whatever kits I need into play in different slots, and channel hop among them as desired.
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Hi, I will be testing this this week as I have a similar issue.
I use opx pro from sonicprojects as a global layer and also tried to send a program change (LSB, MSB, …), I can’t get it to work, it doesn’t work somehow. I had already opened a threat about this, unfortunately there was never a response.
BR Kyru
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Program Change issues?
What version of Live are you running?
I had fits with it from imported MIDI files over physical MIDI ports before. With the last two pre-release updates I’ve had much better luck sending program changes in Live.
I think these pre-releases come out weekly, usually on Fridays, or close to it, so keep an eye on the forum to see when they come.
With other hosts…yes, I’ve come across a few that don’t do program changes over VST3 plugins properly. I recall MANY of them not working when they were first learning to support VST3. I think with VST3, program change is just another VST Parameter, and sometimes devs forget to implement things so an incoming MIDI PC event manipulates that parameter.
If on a Mac, try the AU version of Sonic if your host supports it. If on Windows, you might have to find a way to manually connect the Program Change VST Parameter in the DAW if possible, or contact the app’s devs and let them know about the issue.
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The last one 2.2.32 for windows
Yes I’m aware of that function.
Thanks for the reaction. I’ve indeed created several Halion sonic multi programs and would like to change the multi program saved using the program change function… that part is not working for me in VSTlive
I tried it today and it works with Halion Sonic without any problem. Program Change is received and executed in Halion Sonic.
Thanks. I finally figured out a way to make it happen here too
I just need to activate MSB 0 and LSB 32, for PGM change to work… as simple as that can you imagine? It made me feel stupid.
That’s what I usually do when testing MIDI files, options/Program Change/GM Mode.
Doc says " In GM Mode, *program change messages are used to switch programs in the slots of the Multi Program Rack."