# How far can you push halion? **URL:** \ **Category:** Virtual instruments\ **Created:** [August 18, 2013, 8:09pm UTC](https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-far-can-you-push-halion/631581 "2013-08-18T20:09:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![henrikh2008](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f05b48/32.png) [@henrikh2008](https://forums.steinberg.net/u/henrikh2008)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2013, 8:09pm UTC](https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-far-can-you-push-halion/631581/1 "2013-08-18T20:09:36Z")
hi, everyone. hmmm, maybe not a serious question !?, anyway here is a couple of questions. i just bougt halion 4( upgraded to 5, allso bought wavlab 7, cubase element 7). so i was wondering, if it was possible to create sound like those found in omnisphere with the same quality ? (i allso bought omnisphere, huge sound, so big!). recently i tried to sample my yamaha digital piano (only 7 key is sampled in key c, like this c1,c2,c3 etc… then remapped with halion 5), the quality was awfull, since the pitch get stretched when the pitch gets higher, i eventually gave up sampling the piano. i did allso sampled the jv880 (roland jv880 synthesizermodule with the 8mb sampled orchestra expansioncard). i did get sucess with creating a clone of the jv880 sampled violin, strings in halion, now i even sampled the same sound from jv880 but cromaticly sampled all keys from c2-c5. i then gave the sampled sound a touch off magic with filters , envelopes, velocity, warm reverb. and those sampled string are perfect looped kn halion with crossfade. it seem to me, that in order to get perfect results, one would need to obtain knowledge allmost like if you’re going to be an studio engineer and a recording expert. well i know the music software companies creating virtual instrument. have the best of the best expert with top knotch tech gear. i am not expecting to make the next east west virtual instrument sample library, i was just expecting to actually make some great sound in halion, but it is more diffcult than i ever imagened. i do have some experince with halion, because before i bought halion, i did learn much from the trial demo of halion 3-4. by the way, after downloading the halion 5 upgrade why do i get halion sonic 2 for free ? i mean, i just bougt halion 4, which i was entitled to get an free upgrade to 5, which i offcourse did download the upgrade, every thing works perfect! (my usb elicenser , after maintance check, downloaded the halion 5 license). maybe the halion sonic 2 is just a trial demo ?. henrik. ---
**Author:** ![enricberneda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5fc32e/32.png) [@enricberneda](https://forums.steinberg.net/u/enricberneda)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2013, 8:40pm UTC](https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-far-can-you-push-halion/631581/2 "2013-08-18T20:40:25Z")
Henrik (I’m Enric, Henry in catalan, Spain hehe): I think Halion Sonic is intended to be a lighter version of Halion, to use it without big stress in your CPU, because is only a sample player (you can’t modify sounds). I think that’s the main reason why Steinberg give it to us along with Halion. I don’t know if that’s any other reason, and if so, other people can reply. Cheers. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Cecil](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/steinberg/user_avatar/forums.steinberg.net/jeff_cecil/32/9_2.png) [@Jeff\_Cecil](https://forums.steinberg.net/u/Jeff_Cecil)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2013, 9:13pm UTC](https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-far-can-you-push-halion/631581/3 "2013-08-18T21:13:25Z")
To be honest H5 is about 1000 times easier to do what you are describing then how it was done 10 years ago. But, the truth is that to build an instrument based sample set is still a lot of work. Obviously you’ve discovered that pitch stretching sucks beyond say a half step. Even then for some instruments that isn’t good enough. The best approach for instruments is to carefully map out a project in Cubase and record with varying velocities ALL the keys or notes that you possibly can. For an instrument that has MIDI, this isn’t so bad as you just create a MIDI track that plays all the notes, and then copy/paste that and do them for each velocity. Once you’ve created the audio file, slice it and name the segments with the note name/#/velocity … Then just drag them either all at once, or in layers into Halion. Starting with Studio Perfect samples is the best first step to awesome library sounds. ---
**Author:** ![henrikh2008](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f05b48/32.png) [@henrikh2008](https://forums.steinberg.net/u/henrikh2008)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2013, 7:51pm UTC](https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-far-can-you-push-halion/631581/4 "2013-08-24T19:51:54Z")
Thank you very much for your answer. Sorry about the time it took for me to respond back! I did tried to post a couple of times yesterday on my iphone, but the post suddenly disappeared !?. Don’t know what happened!!. Anyway i took my times, adding some more sampled string to my newly created halion program ( a whole key range from c2-c3 etc). its sound so much better with the strings. I allso figured out, when creating synth path’es sound, a great thing is to add more oscillator, to get that big sound. I am not planning to sample my digital piano, if i really want to that, i’ve need to bloody sample all 88 keys, thats crazy!. (i might! 😃). I am not familiar with slicing loop either in Halion 5, nor Cubase element 7. I’ve do some google search on “slicing loops tutorials”. Henrik. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![henrikh2008](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f05b48/32.png) [@henrikh2008](https://forums.steinberg.net/u/henrikh2008)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2013, 8:21pm UTC](https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-far-can-you-push-halion/631581/5 "2013-08-24T20:21:03Z")
One thing i don’t understand is this, i mean can you actually just create 1 midi sequence containing the actually midi notes playing all notes from c0-c7 (all 88 keys!). then record and export the midi sequence as wavefile, then what ? I guess using the slicing tools would be the next, naming all the slices segment ( all the segment will be contained in the same wave file. right ??). Meaning that Halion only reads one big wavefile with segmented areas of all sampled 88 keys ??. ---
**Author:** ![janamdo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@janamdo](https://forums.steinberg.net/u/janamdo)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2013, 12:11pm UTC](https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-far-can-you-push-halion/631581/6 "2013-08-25T12:11:41Z")
In a HALion 4 tutorial : HALion4 in depth ( outdated , because HALion 5 is there ) there is a chapter about sampling Perhaps you get from this video a better idea what is involved in sampling Perhaps sampling from a existing sample can deliver a unique sound if you are after this ? ---
**Author:** ![henrikh2008](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f05b48/32.png) [@henrikh2008](https://forums.steinberg.net/u/henrikh2008)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2013, 1:24pm UTC](https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-far-can-you-push-halion/631581/7 "2013-08-25T13:24:43Z")
No, not actually!, what i did when i was creating my own sample library in Halion 5. ( my attempt to create a clone of the Roland Jv880 sound module, sampling the “JV-SR04 Orchestra expansion cartridge card”, which i ofcourse i own). Was this, my method, turn on the jv880 module, play each note (all 88!) record each note with 10 second for each note , same velocity using Wavlab element 8, manually cut each note at the beggining plus the end of each sample, then if necessary add some EQ, Stereo expander, final use normalize to even the volume of all 88 recorded sample. This way is painfully hard and takes a lot of time using this method!. So i am asking, is’nt there a lot easier way to do all this ???. Sorry, when i was posting first time, the subject was really about, how far can you push Halion 5, make quality sound, like Omnisphere etc. As the subject got into sort of dealing with sampling / creating instrument of your own, the subject is really not about “how far can you push Halion 5”. the Title of my post should have been changed to “How to make great sample instrument in Halion 5”. ---
**Author:** ![Ed\_Doll](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/steinberg/user_avatar/forums.steinberg.net/ed_doll/32/138966_2.png) [@Ed\_Doll](https://forums.steinberg.net/u/Ed_Doll)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2026, 9:23am UTC](https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-far-can-you-push-halion/631581/8 "2026-08-14T09:23:09Z")