How do I upgrade Halion 6 to 7. Grok said there is a free upgrade till december 31. I couldn’t find it in my downloader. Can someone PLEASE tell me in plain english how to upgrade because there are so many bits of advice I am running round in circles. I’m a musician, not a geek and I just want to upgrade. Explain it like I am a simpleton. Which I sometimes am.
Hi and welcome to the forum,
I am not aware of a free update and I don’t think there is one, at least not from the full version Halion 6 to 7.
If you want to be on the safe side check your MySteinberg account and see if there are any vouchers.
Halion SE is free and so are all of their updates. If you already own Halion 7 then the update to 7.1 is free as well. I think you confused it with these free updates.
- Make sure you have the elicenser with Halion 6 registered in MySteinberg
- Buy the upgrade from the online shop HALion: VST Sampler & Sound Design System | Steinberg
- Install and authorise
- Tell your mate Grok they got it wrong, there is no free upgrade
This is where the confusion starts. When I tried to upgrade it said no licence found and yet Halion 6 works just fine. I emailed them and they said I would have to pay to upgrade to Absolute 3. I’ve never even heard of that. I clearly Stated Halion 6 and Halion 7. I have emailed them again as they cancelled my order and are refunding my money. There was a time that you could speak to someone direct but now it’s AI this and AI that. It’s Halion 6 upgraded to Halion 7. Not Halion sonic or Absolute. Thanks for your input.
It’s not the first time my mate Grok has told me Porky Pies.
You emailed who? they are refunding you for what? If you don’t tell us what you’re talking about exactly then yes, this will be where the confusion starts.
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I’ve never heard of any free upgrade for full H6 to full H7. Your friend was probably referring to the free Halion Sonic 7 ‘player’. There is no more Sonic SE (Last Version of Sonic SE was 3.5.10, and has been superseded by Sonic 7 since the release of Cubase 12).
Now, anybody and everybody can get a fully featured Sonic 7 player for free, and no dongle is required to unlock and use it.
To get ‘content’ for the free Sonic 7 player, one needs to have a Steinberg host (A Cubase Key unlocked a good bit of stuff, you can find everything it all in the Steinberg Download Assistant with your Version of Cubase) that comes with content, or purchase it separately. It is possible to get a basic Sonic Selections library (General MIDI instruments, plus a bit) for free by getting a free key to Dorico SE. A handful of free libraries (scroll to the bottom of this link) for Sonic are out there as well. Users sometimes share free HALion/Sonic libraries here on the forum as well.
HALion Bundles are sold like this:
HALion Sonic Collections - You get a lot of sounds/libraries to use in the free Sonic Player. In the past, the full Sonic player was a special edition of HALion that looked and worked like Sonic SE, but had a lot of extra features. Sonic SE was dropped (along with the dongle requirements), and now anybody can get the fully featured Sonic 7 player for free (also comes bundled with Steinberg Hosts), period.
HALion 7 - You get all of the libraries that come with Sonic Collections, plus a fully featured HALion 7 plugin, plus some exclusive HALion libraries with fully unlocked layers/scripts/etc. Of course the key also unlocks the free Sonic 7 player.
Absolute - This bundle includes HALion 7 and its exclusive libraries, Sonic 7, Sonic Collections, full Groove Agent 5, Retrologue, Padshop, Backbone, plus a bunch of other instrument plugins and libraries.
If you purchased Absolute in the past, then no, you cannot upgrade single portions of the bundle. You’ll need to upgrade the Absolute bundle key. That key takes care of upgrading EVERY product that’s included in the Absolute bundle in one go.
I think it is possible to get a little discount when cross-grading a key from a stand alone instrument like HALion or Groove Agent to the Absolute bundle. Downgrading?
I’m not aware if it’s possible to ‘downgrade’ an Absolute key so it only works with HALion. I don’t think it’s possible, but I could be wrong. If you did do this, you’d lose the rights to run everything else that comes in the Absolute bundle (I.E. Groove Agent and Backbone).
So, my understanding is; if you have an older Absolute key, then you’ll need to purchase an Absolute upgrade to move up to HALion 7. That’ll also cover any other upgrades and/or new libraries/plugins that’ve been added to the bundle.
So, go to your Steinberg Account page, and see exactly which keys you have. Also check for any vouchers you might have.
If you have a key for Absolute, then that’s the product that you need to upgrade, and this would explain why you got a refund for purchasing the wrong upgrade.
Note, one minor disadvantage to going for Absolute, as opposed to buying each product in the bundle ‘separately’ is that sometimes the Absolute upgrade is delayed a bit from individual portions of the bundle. I.E. Individual upgrades for HALion might come out in November, but Absolute owners might have to wait a few months before they can get an upgraded Absolute key to cover it. Obviously an Absolute bundle upgrade is going to cost more than upgrading a stand-alone HALion key, as it covers everything in the bundle. Of course the advantage to going with Absolute bundle is a lower cost to get and maintain a massive library of instruments and libraries.
I had to smile when I read this. It reminds me of this hilarious scene from “Walk Hard”-
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I think I’ve solved the problem. I have to upgrade Absolute 3, I wasn’t even aware that was what Haion was purchased with when I got it in 2018. I have to upgrade Absolute 3 to Absolute 6. So i will need 136.0 GB free storage space and to fork out £207.00 to upgrade. I think that I will wait until they have a sale before I give it a try. Thanks for all your help everyone BUT, ”I ain’t no SCIENTIST and them fellers at Steinberg don’t speak English so well”.
I don’t think sales apply for upgrades. Those tend to be locked in at $99.99 (US Dollars) per major version, and they’ll usually apply a flat rate discount to upgrade leaps of more than 2 versions back. The price might vary a bit depending on your country/currency, but that’s the gist of it.
You don’t have to install every single part of the bundle at all times. You can use Steinberg Download Assistant (add/remove/update plugins) and Steinberg Library Manager (add/remove/move libraries) to customize what is actually installed at the moment.
I.E. If there are libraries you don’t need very often, you can bypass installing it, and just add/remove it when you need it.
You can also force any portion of it you want to install to different partitions and devices. I.E. A portable drive. Of course if the portable drive isn’t plugged in those specific libraries won’t work but might still show up marked with red dots in media browsers. You might get asked by a dialog if you want to locate missing content (Chose ignore if the portable drive isn’t plugged in, or point to the location if it is, if the device letter/name got changed or something).
Unfortunately I have Absolute 3 and that’s what it costs’ to upgrade
this is the page address
Yeah, that’s roughly 99.99 USD for two leaps, and half that added again for anything older than 2 versions back.
If all you want is HALion, you could wait until a %40 sale and get a fresh new key for just HALion, but it’s still gonna cost about this much, and future upgrades will hit harder. You’d also lose out on upgrading all that other stuff.
Absolute is a good deal. The only real drawback to the bundle is sometimes you have to wait a while after releases to get the latest versions of everything. Absolute releases can be some weeks, or even months after individual titles in the bundle get upgrades put on the market.
Thanks for all your help. Now get back to your music and make something great. Thanks again.
Glad you figured it out and it makes sense now… from a fellow Absolute license owner.
Thanks. I purchased it in 2018 and I didn’t even realize that it was called Absolute 3. I just thought it was Halion 6. That’s what caused my confusion. It was only when I looked again at my Cubase products I saw the Absolute 3. I had been looking for Halion so I guess my brain filtered Absolute out as being irrelevant. Thanks for your interest and happy music making.