HSO banks?

Yesterday I took the plunge and upgraded my HALion Symphonic Orchestra from the trial version that came with Cubase 5 to the permanent license. I took a while to figure out how to “Locate Content” and whatnot. I think I’ve got that sorted, but I still don’t see any banks to load… ? Are there any out there to be had, or must I configure my own orchestras from scratch??
Thanks in advance,
Dan

I am not aware of any orchestra-in-a-box sort of presets for HSO, but there may be a few ways to tackle the problem. Depending on what you would like to do, one way might be to use the combi programs. If you have enough horsepower, another way is that you could instantiate multiple instances of HSO in the instrument rack and assign one to strings, another to woodwinds, a third to percusssion, etc. with multiple programs/articulations within each section.

Would either of those approaches help you do what you’d like to do?

I’m not certain I understand how the combis work. I set up a string quartett, for example, with 4 MIDI tracks set to channels 1-4. All 4 tracks are routed to a single instance of HSO, and I have set HSO with violin on the 1st program slot, viola on Program 2, cello on 3, and doublebass on 4, with MIDI 1-4 on the four Program slots. It almost works, but for some reason the viola won’t play any sound. Is there a difference in which sounds I’m choosing on the Program dropbox?

Maybe some sort of tutorial is what I need. Or, maybe HSO isn’t actually locating all of the content? I’ve done the Locate Content twice, and now the list of sounds that shows on About Content (in the Options button) shows every sound twice. So there are issues… I just don’t know what exactly is going awry.

Have you tried a different voice in that same slot? For instance, putting double bass or another voice that is working for you into slot 2 instead of the viola? It’s not necessarily a silver bullet, but might at least help with truobleshooting. FWIW, I have had it happen a few times where a project that works almost all of the time suddenly drops a particular brass part for some reason and I must restart Cubase. I don’t know if it’s a bug or what, but it’s about the only problem I’ve had with HSO since getting it loaded.

One other thing occurred to me - is the viola combi voice also an XFade? It sounds like you know enough to make it all work, but just in case you might want to check out this link to see if it helps: Cubase: Music Production Software | Steinberg

This new forum kinda sucks - I posted a lengthy reply, which all just disappeared! Oh well, here’s the short version:

I tried (again) opening HSO stand-alone and found everything working as expected. So, that eliminates “Locate Content” as the source of my issues. Must be an audio routing problem in Cubase.

Your linked thread, Shemaman, was a real eye-opener! From Cubase, I tried setting the “Out” parameter of each program in HSO to Stereo 1 (apparently this can also show up as “Violin” in the Lite orchestra). Viola! Everything works. Then, I opened the VST Instruments panel and enabled all audio outputs for HSO (F11, output icon). This also worked!

I’ve attached an Effects Bank .fxb that I created for a standard orchestra. Since this forum wouldn’t let me just attach the .fxb file, you’ll have to unzip it first. Then, in HSO, choose Load Bank. There are 16 programs. Each program in HSO is routed to its own output, so you’ll want to enable all outputs (F11-outputs) in Cubase. Let me know if this doesn’t work for you…

Cheers for that, will give it a try.

I tend to use different HSO instances for different sections, so I have some string orchestras, brass and woodwind sections which I’ll dig out and post.