Halion Sonic, worth the upgrade price? What do you think?

Virtual instruments HALion
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1

For start I’m telling you that I’m not a big fan of Halion (the full-version sampler), since I have too much invested in Kontakt, literally and figuratively. That doesn’t mean Halion is bad, just redundant for me. So, I would not spend $350 on Halion, but I was lucky I bought a Halion Sonic SE to Halion Sonic upgrade when it was on sale for $99 years ago and I thought, what the heck, with another $99 I’m getting Halion Sonic 2, which is supposedly much better than the SE version I just got with Cubase 7.5.

Well, for $99, I believe it was TOTALLY worth it. Halion Sonic 2 is a MUCH MORE CAPABLE instrument compared to its predecessor, and even more compared to the SE version you get with Cubase 7.5 at no extra expense (which is really a little more than a demo…) While I don’t care much for its real-world instrument emulation, the creative possibilities are quite intriguing and I’m definitely having fun with my new toy.

Now, would I have bought it for $249? Probably not.

What do you think? Personally, I believe that Steinberg should offer Halion Sonic 2 for $99 to every Cubase 7.5 registered user. I’m pretty sure many would buy it.

2

I totally agree. Went the same path. Grand SE 3, I feel the same. It should be a default acoustic piano, with an option to upgrade to full. Steinberg needs a real piano by default, it just makes sense lol.

The HALion family is getting convoluted as it is. Just give users a break, simplify the system, give them HS2, and they will eventually upgrade.

Fact is H5 is a bunch of routing shortcuts and a few more sounds.

The more Steinberg consolidates and reuse their internal systems, the more wary customers are going to be when new products come out rehashing, but reconfiguring the same systems utilizing similar sound sets with few extras. I understand consistency, but it can be taken the wrong way.