Halion Sonic SE - what is it for? Do I actually need Halion 6?

Hi, I have been told Halion can allow me to make a virtual drum kit assigning different velocity hits to the same key, but I have Halion SE 3 and I am aware there is Halion 6, which appears to be a completely different beast.

Halion SE 3 came with Cubase Pro 10 and I am just finding my way around it. From what I can see of Halion SE 3 all it really does is allow you to load instrument sets from the library and play them using your midi device. That’s fine, if that’s all it does, that’s good to know. Not sure why it has the same name “Halion” as Halion 6 which looks to be on another level.

And also, why are there 16 boxes down the left hand side to allow you to load 16 Instruments? I can only play the instrument in position 1. I suppose it offers the opportunity to sift through the library and keep potentially 16 instruments in reserve should you want to swap.

There is very little guidance about what Halion SE 3 is and does. If someone would just tell us that it’s just a player with a few extra features that would help.

It seems a bit like the Cubase version of Kontakt. Am I right? It just allows you to play instruments from a track.

Am I missing something, and do I need to buy Halion 6 to assign different velocity samples to the same key to make a virtual drum kit?

Thanks,
Justin

If I wanted to do drums/percussion then I would be using groove agent which also comes with Cubase and not halion. It’s more suited to the task.

So the reason there are 16 slots down the side of Halion sonic se are for 16 midi channels. You can create 16 midi tracks each with a different midi channel output aimed at the instance of halion sonic se. Each track will only play the slot on HS SE set to the same midi channel. It’s basically a multitimbral instrument like you used to get on keyboards and sound modules.

It can also be set to play back general midi files.