I have cubase 7 should I upgrade to Halion 4.5

Go easy on me, I am new at this. I am somewhat confused by the terminology. I have cubase 7 with halion sonic se latest version. I also own NI Komplete with Kontakt 5.
I would like to know your opinion if I should upgrade to Halion 4.5. I am also confused on the price of the upgrade. The only price I see is the upgrade from halion sonic. (not se). Any help is appreciated.

You can’t upgrade from SE to Halion 4. Only from Halion Sonic.
SE (standard edition?) is a stripped down version of Halion Sonic included Cubase 6.x/7.
If you are happy with Kontakt don’t expect Halion 4 to be a substitute at this moment. The only real advantage of Halion 4 over Kontakt 5 is the full drag and drop support of events and parts from Cubase’s pool and project window (Cubase 7 can drag and drop from the MediaBay to Kontakt though).

Personally I think Halion 4 is nice when you already own a product to upgrade from (prise wize). It’s a nice tool but at this point it isn’t even near a Kontakt killer. Despite the fact it’s also a full blown synth next to a sampleplayer.
Also Kontakt’s content is much more flexible to use within Kontakt. A lot of instrument patches within Halion 4 aren’t fully editable and the flexphrases aren’t editable either.

I have them both, Kontakt is always my first weapon of choice, despite the fact it’ll cost me a little more work to get resampled stuff in to it due to the drag and drop limitation within Cubase.

I agree with Niles. I have Sonic, Hal 4 and Kontakt 5, and they are all quite different. But if you are moving up from SE, then Halion Sonic is the right choice, as it is easy to use and master. If in time you find yourself limited by Halion Sonic, then maybe Halion 4, or Kontakt 5, but they are very different instruments. I’d suggest using Halion Sonic until you get “frustrated”, which is often a good sign its time to take the next step. As example, if Halion Sonic is Algebra, then Halion 4 is Calculus, and Kontakt 5 is Differential Calculus. For most projects, good old Algebra works just fine.

Can you please explain me the differences beetwen H & HS instrument library. I have Halion Sonic and consider if the bigger amount of programs is worth the upgrading ? Is there an detailed info about the differences between those two libraries ?

greetings :slight_smile:

I don’t know if there’s any detailed information about the presets. I do know you can trial Halion 4.
In comparison to Halion Sonic, Halion 4 comes with an additional 270 presets/programs. But all the sampled ones are based on existing Halion Sonic Layers. So no real new libraries.

The big difference is that Halion Sonic Presets are fully editable in Halion 4, the Halion Sonic SE presets to a certain extend though (not on sample level for instance). And of course you are able to import/create your own libraries.
Flexphrases aren’t editable either.

thanks,
acording to FlexiPhrase - you can import them - so I suppose you prepare it first ?

gretings.