Hi,
I am wondering about the quality and comprehensiveness of Halion Sonic.
With the Cubase 6 upgrade offer it can be obtained for (I think) $199. I am guessing it is not as comprehensive (variety of sounds wise) as Omnisphere but is it close? It is much less expensive and if it is nearly as good then I would consider it. I am not necessarily looking for the “best” as much as I am looking for something that is very good for a good price.
What do you think compared to other power synths?
Sincerely,
J.L.
These are way different instruments and really,comparisons are hard. Omisphere is a mega synth with thousands of sounds and hybrid technology. You get uniqueness and sound design unlike anything else but you don’t get stock instruments like basic piano ,horns etc. Some strings and stylized pianos and such ;all first class .Also its 8 part multi timbral
Halion Sonic is 16 part and gives a variety of general sounds like bass acoutisic instruments and such. Its not nearly the monster synth that Omnisphere is but a better choice for basic song writing and song building
Thanks for the help! One more question about Halion Sonic.
Does it have a lot of detail in terms of articulations? (VST expression) How would you compare it to other powersynths in this respect.
I think I would be better off with a wide range of DETAILED (articulation wise) instruments than thousands of synth sounds. Especially considering the price difference.
I have and use Omnisphere. While it has thousands of sounds I’ll agree with the previous post that it is lacking in basic “meat and potatoes” synth sounds i.e. bass, brass, piano, organ, etc. My personal favorite is Native Instrument Komplete (Version 7). This does have you meat and potatoes sounds as well as thousands of other sounds. You also get guitar rig 4 which is pretty good, battery, a drum machine, and a couple of synths. The price is comperable to Omnisphere, but NI is much more diverse. 
I downloaded the Kontact player and the free factory content and demo content. I was disappointed with the articulations of the “band” instruments in Kontact. It had a “noise” dial but no slides, slaps, hammers, etc. Even the basses in HALion one have better articulations than that. With the “world” instrumetns in Kontact there were articulations but I couldn’t really tell much difference by selecting them. I ordered Cubase 6 and I am waiting to try out the HALion Sonic SE content and the HALion Sonic trial. I guess the bottom line is that I don’t need 10,000 patches, I want, of course, the basics and some other “expressive” sounds but more importantly I want the patches to be adjustable and have articulations and details.
Give HALion 4.5 a try… incredibly powerful, its library is good for general sounds and also the base for any extensive sound design. Not mentioning that you can load any of your samples into HALion 4.5
Besides that, its sound generating and sound sculpting quality are first class… for this first time from Steinberg. The filter section is so so strong I have not seen yet before anywhere…
I think Cubase with HALion4 is a complete solution, you do not need any other instrument, if you know it inside out and you can focus better on song making still you are not limited at all…well done Steinberg!