Hi Steinberg Community,
I’ve been looking for old school VST romplers and discovered Hypersonic 2.
I found a download of the .iso in a Steinberg support page. My understanding is that this product is discontinued, however, it still seems to require a license after installation.
What would I need to purchase in 2023 to obtain a license?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
No.
.
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I figured, thank you.
Is there a legitimate way to obtain a license? The support page states the following:
“The ISO image here contains all data necessary for a complete installation.
A HALion Sonic 2 license is required!”
What exact product would I be purchasing today at a minimum to obtain this license?
Maybe someone else will weight in, but I don’t think any products today include Hypersonic.
Ah bummer, would love a way to check this out and use it in some music legit. Please Steinberg, grant us a way to obtain a license. There are dozens of us!
Thanks for your prompt replies steve
You would need to buy an appropriate licence second-hand, as this is a long-discontinued product.
I think a HALion Sonic 2 licence or HALion 5 licence would work - but I cannot verify this. I think any later version is not compatible. I don’t know if any Absolute licences would work, though I suspect not. You might find someone with an old Hypersonic 2 licence that they are willing to sell.
I have a HALion 5 licence that was issued for backwards compatibility purposes, but I will not be selling it (I regard it as permanently linked to my current HALion licence) and will not be installing Hypersonic 2 for testing purposes, as all the VST hosts I have installed are 64-bit only.
It is certain that no current licence sold by Steinberg will work, as all HALion family products sold today have switched to the new Steinberg Licensing system whereas Hypersonic 2 would be looking for an eLicenser licence.
Personally, I’d put this one in the “not worth the hassle” category, especially as you’d have to buy a USB eLicenser to hold any licence that you bought.
I still remember the emotional pain I suffered because of Hypersonic’s demise.
They are amongst several Steinberg branded instruments that got rug pulled because Steinberg apparently didn’t fully own them.
After a gap of a few years HALion Sonic eventually appeared and is arguably better. But I never got as attached to it as I was to Hypersonic.
Software instruments also die - just a bit differently than hardware. 
The “HS Factory” library (which is the original Halion Sonic 1 library) included with Halion 7 and the Halion Sonic 7 Collection includes most of the acoustic instrument samples introduced with Hypersonic 2. The Halion versions use the original stereo samples of the instruments, as well as dozens of articulations which weren’t available at all in Hypersonic 2. Some of the instruments were replaced with equivalents which were also used by the Yamaha Motif XS workstation.
All presets were programmed from scratch by the Yamaha Motif sound designers and the Halion team.
The ensemble strings from Hypersonic 2 were sourced from Halion Symphonic Orchestra, which is part of the Absolute Collection.
Of course, the synth presets from Hypersonic 2 aren’t included, as the synth engines are different, but Halion features modern equivalents to all of the Hypersonic engines. You’ll likely find some similar presets in either the included libraries or one of the expansions.
Thank you kindly for all the replies. I will perhaps check out the Halion Sonic 7 Collection in the future.
Yeah - I think it’s been gone from any Steinberg catalog for a lot of years.
– Wasn’t it also 32bit only?
If my memory serves me right, the transition to a 64bit OS is what killed Hypersonic and Groove Agent 3 for me. I never bothered with the whole bridging thing, although that could have made it possible to limp along for a good while longer.
And I should also add, that to Steinberg’s credit - I got version upgrade pricing, once the replacement products appeared. That made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.
The Sonic Collection looks good if you want presets.
If you think you want to do any programming, the full Halion version is well worth the small extra price.
The more I dig into it, the more things I find that are exactly what I was looking for.
Very satisfied with Halion.
Maybe worth noting is also, that owners of specific other virtual instruments can get a “competitive crossgrade” which (in my country) seems to be discounted to the same price as the lesser featured HALion Sonic collection.
Also - this comparison chart shows the differences:
Thank you for the chart.
What does it mean by “Build HALion Instruments”? It’s listed as a feature of Halion 7.
I think the content that I’m most interested in is the Halion Factory SE Pro content, but it doesn’t seem that there’s any way to simply purchase that on its own. Looks like Halion Sonic 7 Collection is the cheapest point of entry, right?
Users can create polished content and graphics that that run in Halion Sonic.
Have a look at this:
New tools for designing outstanding instruments
The Macro Page Editor is packed with incredible new features, like the spectral view in sample displays and many more tools to help you build extremely creative instruments. HALion now allows you to connect bitmaps and SVGs with external editors. You can also load SVG resources directly in HALion and animate these by using Lua expressions. With new appearance and color options, you can design controls even faster and more flexibly. Combine all of this with the new vector graphic controls library and you can be sure the instruments you design will look simply amazing.
Cool!
Thanks heaps.