I have not had a chance to dive into learning Halion 4, and see how it works with Cubase 7.
But, I thought of asking some of the experienced Halion 4 & Cubase 7 users if they think Halion 4 is the most closely/tightly integrated sampler when using it with Cubase 7 ? i.e. compared to Kontakt 5, Mach 5 (v3) ?
i.e. drag and drop features (both from Halion 4 to Cubase 7 and the other way around), Wavelab 7/8 integration, …etc.)
Finally, do you feel Halion 4 is pretty easy to learn to work with, workflow, logical layout, ease and speed of creating your own instruments in H4 ? …etc.
I can’t speak for kontakt as I don’t own the software but I find mach5 cumbersome and long winded compared to halion 4 .
If you use a lot of articulation on your samples then the integration with Cubase is just out of this world , layering your articulated samples and adding key switches which are instantly usable in Cubase is just brilliant IMO.
Being brought up from the late 80’s with hardware samplers I thought it was going to be a bit of a nightmare swapping over to a soft sampler but after great deliberation I opted for halion 4 for the integration of both c7 and wl7 and i can only say that for me this is near perfection on workflow .Editing all your samples in wavelab as you go and not having to resend them back to halion is excellent ,the program tree makes perfect sense to me and is so easy to use and work your way around ,unlimited undo’s the list just goes on and on .
For my choice of soft samplers i defiantly think halion is great and is so easy to learn and work with that all my hardware samplers are now being boxed and stored .
Couldn’t be happier
I think that it’s safe to say that the answer to the question is yes. At this time, no other sampler integrates closer or more tightly with Cubase than HALion 4.
I cannot say whether HALion is the best sampler out there, because I have not used all the samplers out there. Only the big brands or the more popular, are usually talked about in this respect, which often probably are the better plugins, but that is certainly not always true.
IMO, there is certainly room for improvements in H4, no doubt, but that can be said with any plugin. There are few things that stand out with it however. A logical GUI which I am sure some people dislike. Why do I say that? Well, some people just aren’t compatible with logical layouts. Fortunately, I am. The integration with NE (Note Expression) directly in the modulation matrix is totally awesome. The virtual synthesizer that is integrated into the engine is also outstanding, easy to use and a great tool to complement samples. It can also be used as a on its own as a synthesizer of course.
Is it easy to use? I think it is. Like others said before me, it is very logical to handle, few things are “hidden”, etc.
I went ahead, and checked out some video-tutorials of Halion 4, and Yes, I would have to agree that it is the most tightly integrated Sampler with Cubase at this time. Actually, Cubase 7 - Halion 4 - Wavelab 8 are all closely integrated.
i.e. Record your samples in Cubase 7, Drag them over to Halion 4, then edit the samples in more detail in Wavelab 8, then back to Halion 4, to build your instrument. Pretty cool !
Also to be noted : Wavelab 8 and/or (Wavelab 7) automatically updates the sample content in Halion 4 when you save your edits in Wavelab 8, which is another cool feature of how tightly these apps. are tied to each other.
I’m learning more about the features of Halion 4, and how to use them to create my custom instruments. I feel it’s fun to create your own sampled instrument, and experiment with the infinite possibilities of creative instrument and general sound design, sound-effects, …etc.
I also hope to see some new high-quality sample libraries offered by Steinberg, and maybe 3rd-Party sample developers, this has surely not been a very active area of Steinberg’s Products. i.e. I would love to see Steinberg develop new Sample Libraries that cover : (World Instruments, Halion Symphonic Orch. II, Cinematic Sounds and Effects, Drums & Perc. , Choirs, Baroque/Celtic/Period Instruments, and the list goes on … but sadly, Steinberg has not offered any thing like this, all I see them releasing are Loops (I hate using Loops)
HALion 4 does integrate very well with Cubase and Wavelab, without a doubt. There is one issue that really bothers me however. If one drags a sample from HALion into Wavelab, the loop markers are kept, which is great, however, this is NOT the case with Cubase. I would prefer to eliminate Wavelab altogether and just use Cubase for my audio editing, as it does everything I need. I don’t need hardcore editing, but normalizing and removing DC offset are my main tools of need and Cubase does this just fine. I can drag a sample from Halion to my project page, use the statistics tool to find out if DC offset is present, if so, remove it, normalize it etc and then import it back into a slot in HALion. This works very well, but I found out the hard way, that if the sample originally contained loop points, they are now gone and it will import the sample back without them. This makes the Cubase/HALion relationship almost useless for any real editing, unless you know for sure that you aren’t going to miss out on any loop points being omitted. This is extremely frustrating on pads and other material with long sustains, which are difficult to find accurate loop points for after the fact, especially when the original file had the loop points you already wanted. No, I will not waste my time writing down all the values on paper, just to manually input afterwards. I think the loop points should be kept when transferring back and forth from Cubase to HALion, just like they are in Wavelab.
