Hey,
Halion symphonic Orchestra 3 full version is in ‘new years sale’ for 50€. Is it worth buying it?
Is the sound quality much better then what you get with Dorico’s standard Halion Sonic SE?
I can’t imagine that you’d get much upgrade for 50€.
Thanx a lot.
Dorico already contains the HALion Symphonic Orchestra library, so no need to buy it extra.
If you want better sound without spending big money I’d definitely recommend NotePerformer.
For everything except pop/jazz it sounds absolutely awesome. It is also not very computer demanding, which is a great combo. It is also sort of plug-and-play in Dorico.
For my jazz charts I still haven’t found anything that beats my old Garritan Jazz And Big Band in terms of price/ease of use/sounding result.
Thanx Mats,
I have big Spitfire Libraries which are fantastic - but sometimes I need sth fast for ‘on the scratch’ and the Halion SE stuff is sounding really quite basic (what do u expect for the price !). I was always hesitating with NotePerformer cause I read that certain playback techniques are not supported yet. Maybe I should give it a try…
To me the combination ease of use/price/sound in NotePerformer is pretty unbeatable.
You can of course get better sounding result from other (more expensive…) libraries, but it’ll also take som more effort to get that result. The big advantage (and disadvantage fore some…) is that it is what it is. You don’t have to tweak it, just focus on the music.
One big advantage is that the sounds are so well balanced, which you can’t blame any of the other big companies for, like East west, Spitfire etc. If the music is well orchestrated it sounds great.
BUT…
NP plays the music very classical idiomatically, which gets the unpleasant result of swing music sounding really terrible. 
There is a 30-day free trial available for Note Performer…
I once had the trial version but back then a simple glissando has not been played back and I stepped back from buying it. Maybe that changed I’ll have a look
Glissando playback is Dorico’s problem.
If the HSO on sale is the same as the one that comes with Dorico, how come that it requires 32GB space compared to the 8GB that all Dorico sounds take up?
Hi Kenneth, welcome to the forum.
Yes, it’s the same HSO that also comes with Dorico. I don’t know how much space it takes up in the end; the installer download package is around 9GB, but it’s compressed and deflates to I don’t know how much.
I was always hesitating with NotePerformer cause I read that certain playback techniques are not supported yet.
NotePerformer has support for way more techniques than any sample library I’m aware, no matter how many terabytes of Spitfire or VSL you have.
For instance, I know of no sample-based library that has muted trombone gliss.
NP, can do that easily.
While flutter tonguing.
It’s just not that it can do them, it’s just that just about all of the possible combinations work too.
It even has a “jazz accent” mode that basically makes the attacks a bit more aggressive, for things like brass stabs.