HSSO tuba lacks low notes

Dorico
1

Dear Dorico users
I’m writing a piece for orch. The standard orch tuba goes down to D1. But the Halion Orch Combi tuba only goes to E1, so I’m not getting my bottom notes. Does anyone know
(1) Why HSSO tuba is two semitones short?
(2) If there is any way I can extend its range down?
I tried the GM tuba (the only other option), but it has a nasty sound.
Any ideas?
DCM

2

You can’t extend the range of a sound inside HALion Sonic SE, I’m afraid. I expect if you had the full HALion sampler you might be able to map some extra notes, but that won’t get you very far in Dorico.

3

Thanks, Daniel. Could you pls have a word with your friends there at Steinberg and ask them to provide their orch tuba with the correct profondeur?

PS I’m really beginning to get used to Dorico and finding it great, tho I still do some Sib key-strokes. :smiley: But your work is an amazing gift to the world music community.

Btw any news on when we get proper segno marks?

4

Segno marks will be included in this week’s update.

5

Hallelujah. Thanks, Pianoleo. By the way, how do I add personal stuff below and to the right of this panel, like you’ve got.

6
7

Hello,

I was wondering if there has been any correction with HALion regarding TUBA correct profendeur extending down to Low D1?

Thank you,

Amanda

8

No, I’m afraid we don’t expect to be making any changes to the HSO content.

9

OK thanks for the heads up Daniel…!

10

Here is a HALion Symphonic Orchestra vstpreset with the Tuba Range extended down to D-1 (D-0 in Steinberg World). I started to go ahead and take the range lower, but there is a key-switch on Db0 that gets in the way. It’s possible to move that key-switch, but then it would no longer be a match with the existing default HSO Tuba expressionmap that Dorico sets up by default.
Tuba Combi Extended Range.zip (103 KB)
I’ve not yet tried porting these presets across systems, but I am assuming it should work.

The tricky part is figuring out where to place it on your PC in order to get HALion SE3 to find it and recognize it.
For me, on a Windows System I’ve found a good path to be:
“%USERPROFILE%/Documents/VST3 Presets/Steinberg Media Technologies/HALion Sonic SE/Program”

One seemingly sure fire way to find out exactly where your installation of HALion is keeping user programs by default is to:

  1. In the “LOAD” Tab of SE, locate a user program. If you do not have any user programs yet, create one first by loading any factory sound into an instrument slot and then right clicking the slot and choosing Save Program As. Give it a slightly different name so it’s easier to find and sort out in your Media Browser that it’s just a copy of a Factory Preset.
    Managing Your Sounds

  2. From the LOAD tab, find and right click a user program and choose, “Show in Explorer”. This should open your native OS file explorer window to a proper default directory for user programs for your particular HALion installation.

  3. Unzip the download above, then drag a copy of this “Tuba Combi Extended Range.vstprest” file into the explorer window.

  4. Tap the content refresh button in the LOAD Tab. This forces HALion to refresh its known content.

Note, Dorico will NOT automatically choose this alternate preset for you. It will however, give you a compatible expressionmap all ready to go. You will need to manually adjust the relevant HALion instrument slot from the play tab after Dorico sets up a Tuba stave. I’m not currently aware of a method to have Dorico change its default instrument program choices. There are some XML files one might could edit, but I’d be wary of attempting such at this time, as we users don’t have enough information yet on how to properly ask HALion to load things form here.

While we cannot yet change the default sounds Dorico picks when adding groups/players/instruments/etc. from the Setup tab, it is good to know that manual changes you make to a plugin typically do stick with your project when saving it. It should also be possible to set up starting point templates that already have your alternate instrument choices in various VSTi plugins set up and ready to go.

Note, If you share this score with another Dorico User, I ‘think’ they will get everything they need to hear the file properly. I base this on the theory that HALion’s full state is preserved in snapshot form as part of the Dorico project file? Of course, if the secondary system user changes anything in the playback setup without saving a copy of the Extended Range Tuba instrument slot first, they might lose the ability to get the extended Tuba back unless they happen to have the preset installed as well. For this reason, if you exchange Dorico scores with other systems/people often, when importing a project made on a ‘different system’, it’s a good idea to double check and save any nicely tweaked instruments you like before changing things in the HALion instances. This best practice also is also advised before forcing Dorico to reset everything to default playback settings (sometimes we need to do this with shared scores, particularly if they used plugins that don’t exist on your system).