how to use Halion Symphonic

Dorico
1

Yes, I have searched the forum and the scant documentation, as well as the new FAQ thread, but I can not find any help on how to actually use Halion Symphonic with Dorico. Sonic SE loads automatically the sounds during setup and you can see all the instruments/tracks and can change the instument sounds (although the changes don’t seem to be visible in Play mode window), but when I add another VST, the Halion Symphonic, it just shows its interface where I can find and change sounds, but no indication as to which instrument/track I am changing. It seems to only affect the first instrument, and none of the others, even if I change the VST to Halion Symphonic at the other instruments (changing the channel doesn’t seem to do anything either). Any help?
Also - in Setup mode changing the name of the instrument doesn’t change the “player’s” name (although it des show the change in Write mode) - can that be changed?

2

True, it is a bit confusing, but actually, you don’t need the HALion Symphonic Orchestra (aka HSO) instrument. It just got installed because in Dorico we use the standard HSO installer, and that always also comes with the HSO Player instrument.
This HSO Player is actually just a wrapper around HALion Sonic. Because we sell HSO also as a standalone product, this standalone player is also provided to the users, so that they can make use of the sounds even without Dorico, Cubase or other DAW software. Also, the HSO player has only one slot, but HALion Sonic has 16 slots, i.e. can generate 16 different sounds at the same time. And HALion Sonic can also play all HSO sounds. So because of the 16 possible slots, Dorico will always use HALion Sonic and not the HSO player, because it will use your computer resources more efficiently in terms of memory and performance. So even the HSO instruments gets installed, you are not encouraged to use that instrument, but instead load HALion Sonic SE and load the HSO sound patches into there.
I hope this clarifies things a little.

3

If you want to change the name that appears in the score, expand the player’s card and use the Edit Names menu item that appears when you click the little > chevron to the right of the name of the instrument held by the player.

4

Thanks, Ulf.

  1. That clarifies it. I was confused because the Dorico features list the HSO as another set of instruments, which made me want to explore those. It should probably be made clear(er) in the (to come …) documentation that Sonic is in fact the “player” for all instrumental sounds from both libraries.
  2. I also still hope that a future update will make it possible (or at least easier) to use other “players” and sound libraries (such as Aria/GPO). Although having attempted to utilize Aria/GPO (following instructions from other threads on this forum) this specific implementation doesn’t seem possible to achieve (for me, anyway).

Thanks, Daniel.

  1. I did know that I can change the name in the Edit Names menu, but that doesn’t change the player’s name in the Setup mode. If I, for instance, want to not have a trumpet player at all, but want to replace it with a trombone player, it seems I would have to create a whole new player (and thereby lose already written music in the trumpet player staff.
  2. I’ve also noticed the following - chosing trumpet in Bb, no key signature, the player’s name is Trumpet (Bb) (Bb).Why 2 Bbs? If I want the player to change to another instrument, let’s say, Flute, where and how do I affect that change in the music? And, by the way, it will still say Flute (Bb). Shouldn’t it be automatically in C?
5

I have roughly the same question. I fiddled a bit with instrument names and ended up with Trumpet (C) (C) (C) (C) at one point.