Halion Sonic New Expansion?

What kind of Sound Expansions would you like to see from Yamaha and Steinberg for Halion Sonic. In the spirit of keeping things nice and neat, lets try and make this as easy for them to understand as possible… Explain the Soundpack you’d like to have:make it bold,if possible, thanks

feel free to post your thoughts… :smiley:

After Playing with Halion Sonic:

Ethnic Expansion: More presets

Chromatic Perc Expansion: More Preset lke hypersonic 2

Strings Expansion: Need more preset (big strings, harp,Timpani,Marcato, staccato and spiccato strings)

Synth Expansion: Sound really great but far from the level of virtual instruments today baseline

Need a new Category : Synth Lead Dance (Big Skid Hook Lead 1 ,2, Supertrance etc)
More synth preset sound like 2011 (Hard Lead and Soft Lead) (Sythesis engine)

Brass Expansion: (The Brass Instruments that come stock in Halion Sonic aren’t as gritty as I’d like - they r actually 2 pretty sounding - we need some reminders of Hypersonic’ 2 brass sections please - think gritty,rough,hip hop style,modern) with enough layering it’s all possible,but I’d like some harder sounding brass’s for sure…eg: hs2’s patches - Ultimate Brass Section,Miami Octave,Biggest Brass Low Octave…

For me two expansions


The Motif Expansion

and the

Hypersonic 2 Expansion


rsp

Brass Sections & More Multi Patches

I would love to see an expansion bank that sounds like the Motif or Hypersonic 2 also, but I’m not so sure it’s possible. The engine in HalionSonic is different than the two synths you mentioned so I doubt they would ever sound the same even if they tried. HalionSonic sounds good but different than either the Motif or Hypersonic 2 ( I own all three ). I would love to be wrong on this one though.

I still think there is plenty of room for improvement with the sound library. I particularly feel that the brass sections in HalionSonic don’t match the Motif or Hypersonic 2, at least for my taste.

I also feel that Steinberg would be best served by having some sound designers develop more multi patches that combine sounds. I my opinion that is where HalionSonic, and Hypersonic 2 before it, really shines. In many cases, combining sounds already in the library can yeild better results than adding individual patches to the library.

Thanks,
Quinn

I know that you are mostly right… but the example I want to give is spectrasonics when they were able to port their atmosphere patches (uvi engine) to their omnisphere synth (steam engine). totally different architecture etc. But definitely close enough for me…
rsp

  • Sound FX
  • Drumkits
  • Bass

Richard,

I have Omnisphere, but never had the original Atmosphere to compare it to. Again, I would love to see this happen, so I don’t want to come across as if I don’t like your suggestion. There is a certain sound that Hypersonic 2 had that I feel like is missing from HalionSonic in some cases. That was the reason for my original post, but there are definitely some patches in Hypersonic 2 that I would really like to layer with in HalionSonic. With that being said:

+1 for Hypersonic 2 expansion :smiley:

As for the Motif expansion, I would love to see this also. I have seen people working forums for years pushing the idea of in the box versions of hardware synths, but without alot of results. I hope this changes in the future though, since many producers are not performing musicians. There is a client base that is being neglected by the hardware companies. I know Korg and Access have tried it with the M3 and the Powercore Virus, but those are the only two that I can think of recently. I think Yamaha also tried something years ago, but I really don’t remember the name or any of the details. You would think they would want to do this to create more sales to help offset R&D costs, so I’m not sure why we don’t see more of this going on. Musicians buy boards and producers buy VSTs for the most part. You would think these companies would want to sell to both. Well that is my two cents anyways.

Thanks,
Quinn

Hi Quinn, never did it come across to me that you didn’t like my suggestion or even want it. I took at as you were pointing out the technically reasons why it wouldn’t happen, and I was simply saying whilst I see your point, there may be precedence why it could be done…

Truth be told I much much prefer the sound of hypersonic to halion sonic… I have owned them for quite a few months and halion sonic has not been used once in a project whilst hypersonic has been in several… But I do know there will come a time when I can’t use hypersonic anymore (probably some OS or version of Nuendo will break it), so just hoping for those reasons that the hypseronic sounds make it…


As you are probably aware, Korg did it with the Legacy Collection, but I am curious to know why those haven’t been properly updated or more versions added in the last four years…not sure if was too easily broken, or it cut too much into hardware (Although since it was done for hardware that they no longer sell, that would be strange).

peace
rsp

Talking about Korg legacy…

I would love to see a Yamaha AN1X VSTi plugin. It must be possible because the AN1X is fully digital.

Quinn and Zvenx,
Wizoo sold off the rights to hypersonic 2’s content awhile back. This content has made it,into Xspand2 within Avids’ Pro Tools… I personally bought ProTools 9 ONCE it became Native to use it.

AIR sound design team has done a wonderful job making it a more modern sounding synth (picture if you will Hypersonic 3) but the only downfall,it’s Multi-timbral with only 4 instrument slots,but a ton of new fresh modern sounds …

Alot of the deep editing has also went away,but it’s alot faster to use, then Halion Sonic… The sound engine is alot better to my ears then halion sonics as well…

They have done a wonderful job with the content now,and there’s a ton of goodies in there,it’s not just old rehashed sounds from HS2,but yet with newer idea’s as well as samples.

As far as hypersonic 2 content in Halion Sonic,I’m afraid this will not happen unless Avid,which they wouldn’t sold it back.

Moving on to the Yamaha XS sounds inside Halion Sonic,this is indeed possible,after all Yamaha sound designers worked on Halion Sonic,but chose a different route for it. I understand and feel alot like you both do here, It can be alot better sounding.

I would think an update of Halion Sonic could offer us better sounding everything.I design sounds myself,and would have loved to put together some Multi’s,stacked instruments and really sold this thing,to show what it can do, but to each his own… I find myself lacking alot of good bread n butter brass and synth sounds,alot of it sounds very flat and unpolished, it’s really the samples that are lacking here…

Perhaps I’ll purchase Halion 4 to stack these sounds with my own XS sampled instruments… Yes I’ve already done that :mrgreen:

Well my friends,I too hope to hear back from them regarding some more content to be offered…

Hi there,
I just dropped by to say that we at Steinberg are watching your posts with great interest. We are permanently planning new expansion packs as well as future factory content for HALion and HALion Sonic and it is great to hear what you as the users are missing in the libraries. So keep up posting about content you would like to have in the libraries and we will see what we can do.

Cheers from Hamburg,
Matthias

thanks.
rsp

Best news I’ve heard in awhile, thanks for the feedback.Is there anything you guys can say about doing a dedicated motif XS expansion pack, or perhaps as few others mentioned some ethnic styles etc.?

It’s really great to hear you guys are watching the threads. Hey for all the other users,that have some idea’s for packs,this is probably as good as time as ever to post your thoughts and idea’s…

Thanks Matthias for posting back

Hi,

AN1X expansion would be awesome, this was one excellent synth.
Actually one of the best virtual analog synths! I sold it, and miss it ever since…

…and why not a DX7 expansion, should be fun!

… and more ‘Bread & Butter’ sounds please. Nice and easy pads for example.
many of the presets are nice but overprocessed, a very common problem these days…

Regards,
Paul

Ethnic Expansion would be great :smiley:

+1!!!
and not just the usual cheesy pan pipes/shamisen etc that most ethnic sets seem to concentrate on…
some more esoteric sounds would be rather nice too!.. things like a marxophone, zithers with articulations, more indian instruments with articulations too… think how tabla and dholak have pretty much made it into western music now…ok not strictly ethnic but things like a waterphone etc…

i just bought the Ambiant VST loop collection the other night and the drum loops in the pack are top notch , the music samples are very usefull aswell , halion sonic would be well served with packs like this .

I would like to have more drum loops for rock, jazz and ethnic music.

+1 for Hypersonic 2 expansion

I would like to have a Tyros4 expention and sounds

As I mentioned before, a Hypersonic 2 expansion can’t and won’t happen. Wizoo (now known as AIR) the actual developers of Hypersonic are now with Avid! And that plugin is called XPAND 2 in pro tools,it’s good,my fav plugin. Steinberg isn’t being completely up front with their customers, they’re using the Hypersonic 2 successor pitch to lure customers in, but not telling them the real facts behind this…


Steinberg should really be a bit more honest about their products,and give the developers more credit…