Is HALion 7 just a myth?

SE has been replaced by Halion Sonic 7. Mine’s gone from the Download Assistant, and Im downloading Sonic 7 now… I couldn’t really decipher from the comparison on the website whether this new version is more of a ‘lite’ Halion or just a player like Sonic SE was so might as well check it out…

For now I’ve just clicked to my old Default Layout (which was preserved) since I know my way around it.

Liking what I see thus far and all I’ve done is browse some of the new sounds.

(Tails Guitar at the moment)

I’ve piddled with Acoustic Guitar Libraries that cost as much as this upgrade and don’t sound a lick better.

Only a few minutes into it…

Here’s my thinking on HALion upgrade value. While it’s true they don’t come out very often…when they do have a release it’s pretty significant what all is added (might not be stuff of interest to all users, but once one digs in, it tends to a good bit of very complicated/intricate details…LUA and UI/Macro tools for users alone in the last round was HUGE).

It’s been what…five years since I paid a cent to update/upgrade HALion. This comes out at $99USD on the day of release (sales and such for considerable discount usually happen for those willing to wait some months).

Contrast this with other products. They might have more regular upgrades that pipe in a few new features at a time, but by now, how much would you have spent on 5 years worth of upgrades for those products? Quite likely…way more than $99.

With all the other stuff that is constantly hitting me up $50 or more every year (or worse, monthly subscriptions)…I’m kind of glad HALion isn’t on the list of stuff I’m constantly having to shell out money to keep up to date and working.

I did notice with both H5 and H6, that the HALion team was quite good at knocking out bugs and doing service releases at no charge. If you find a real bug, and send them a proper report to reproduce it and all, the HALion team has been pretty darn good about having it fixed in my experience (found a few myself over the years, and they DID get fixed…usually within’ a quarter…and when people found ‘show stopper’ bugs…well…they didn’t waste time gettiing out a service update [less than a month for a public release to fix it]).

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Great work for me, special thanks to new FM management to Steinberg.
Time to test and use now.

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Couldn’t resist . ALL Dx algo’s , ALL rom banks , the interface is snappy and looks cleaner , the way you can now modulate by just grabbing the the source and placing it on the destination is brilliant , the way to adjust the depth of the lfo’s is a great feature , there’s quite a few tweaks that haven’t been mentioned but after an hour im pretty happy with the update .

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5 posts were split to a new topic: About the New Halion

Basically. HALion Sonic 7 is equivalent to what people would have expected HALion Sonic 4 to be at this release, and SE users get a free upgrade to the Sonic 7 player instrument (which also functions as a subtractive synth). More FX and some other nice convenience features.

I’m a bit curious about how seamless this works with Dorico Pro 4, though.

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How many new presets are included (minus the FM presets?). Is there more sample content (minus the guitar?). I think I had my expectations WAAAAAAY up in the clouds and so I’m experiencing reality right now.

It just seems to me HALion could have been taken so much further for how long it took to do a version 6 to version 7 update. UVI’s free updates to Falcon have more features added then this entire update.

Well at least we have the dongle gone and FM finally. Wish we had VL, FDSP and ANX engines as well! DANG I wanted soooooo MUCH MORE!!!

Amadeus e.d.p.

Have you watched all the HALion 7 videos with Dom Sigalas on Steinberg’s VST Instruments & Plug-Ins YouTube channel? There are a lot of workflow improvements in HALion 7, especially the new MediaBay. The new modulation and envelope options open up new possibilities. There are significant improvements in the wavetable and spectral functions.

HALion 7 is rather deeper than HALion 6 plus FM, the Tales guitar and a coat of paint.

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Does Dorico behave the same as Cubase and Nuendo? It uses the same audio engine, after all.

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Not saying it’s not a decent release. I’m just saying that for THAT many years…I was somehow thinking they were gonna do some BIG things. Like give us a Motif ES soundest included. Improve the VA Engine. Improve the Virtual Organ. Give us double the sample content. Etc. Etc.

Again, not trashing on H7. I just PERSONALLY thought it was gonna knock it out the park.

Amadeus e.d.p.

That’s the only thing that is disappointing to me, too. The core HALion sound content is quite out-dated and there’s nothing else new like that. I was hoping for a new HALion 7 section that had some new/improved bread and butter sounds.

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I also thought the whole factory library would have a facelift since it has been so many years.

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Yea. Kind of a need to know as many of us own all of the Steinberg stuff.

I did notice that there is a set of HALion SE files in the Common Files/Steinberg directory, so they probably rolled out these changes to Cubase 12 well ahead. In anticipation for this.

Even if you uninstall HSSE, those are likely to persist there and be used by Cubase in the event that you use something that requires it.

Really only need to know about/for Dorico Pro.

Half of it is fine (Pianos, Studio Strings, some of the synths) but some of it is old. Basically, no different than the Kontakt factory library. Lack of a lot of better HALion alternatives is more of the issue.

With Kontakt, you upgrade to Komplete Ultimate and it insta-fixes the issue. Would be nice to have a similar path for Steinberg.

Or better deals on the 3rd party instruments they sale.

I partially agree here but I’m not sure I would use Native Instruments as a guidepost. I mean, yes…the Kontakt library is pretty awful. I think worse than HALion 6. I can’t speak for Kontakt 7 and it’s new library…but it was not a “cohesive” Workstation Experience. Just a bunch of Pretty UI’s with middling sound design. Bloat.

I think the better comparison would be with Falcon. They release a LOT of top notch instruments…but the “Demo” of Falcon comes with presets that are just as bad as HALion 6’s…if not worse.

Here’s to hoping HALion takes a more important position in the product portfolio. For SOME reason…its seems like Yamaha keeps HALion from being TOO GOOD to steal sales from their hardware workstations.

Amadeus e.d.p.

Dorico uses many of the same plugins as Cubase. The effects stuff for the Mixer are straight from the Cubase world.

Dorico does use HALion Sonic. It ships with many of the same libraries that come with Cubase.

Differences being:
Instead of Flux and Hybrid Synths, you get HALion Symphonic Orchestra and Olympus Micro Choirs.

Dorico does NOT come with Groove Agent, nor any of the extra synths like Retrologue or Padshop.

Dorico usually ships with the latest versions of HALion Sonic (SE in the past). The SDA section for Dorico 4 now provides Sonic 7.

Sonic 7 and HALion 7 are working fine for me in Dorico.

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I’m also a Dorico Pro 4 user. I was asking solely for confirmation that the HALion Sonic SE 3 replacement by HALion Sonic 7 works the same in Dorico as in Cubase and Nuendo. I expected it would based on the use of the same engine. You’ve not only asked that question but given an explanation of the broader situation that will help others. Thank you.

I gather from various posts by Daniel in the Dorico forum that all is, indeed, working pretty much as intended. I can therefore go ahead and uninstall HALion Sonic SE 3 from my systems.

So far the HALion part as been fine for me.

I’m on Windows 10.

Where ever Sonic 3 was loaded in the past…this new one takes its place. Same applied for stuff I’d used HALion 6…HALion 7 loads right up, everything in the proper state, and it sounds exactly the same as I left it.

Since taking the last Dorico update, I have an issue, but I don’t think it’s because of Sonic (behavior persists with projects that don’t use HALion/Sonic at all). The first project I open is fine…but subsequent projects aren’t taking over the play engine properly.

I.E. If I open two projects at once, and allow the second project to take over the play engine. Going back to the first breaks something. Crashed once on me.

I.E. Open the first project, and no problems at all. Close it, and try opening a second, seems like the ASIO connections never were released properly…the second project won’t play unless I swap audio devices, then swap back to the one I want.

I don’t think that’s Sonic’s fault though. Seems to be something in that last Dorico update to me…and at the ASIO level as opposed to plugin level.

This is a reply to everyone.

Well, we should’nt complain, Halion 7 has much more than i was hoping for.
I was afraid the Halion 7 just came with simple
few buttons fm , integrations and some few upadates here and there etc, but i didnt expect Halion 7 did come with a full blown dx7 6 operators synth, actually 8 operators, which is insane.
Allso have a look at the deconpose page, acording to a few youtube video’s , you can magically extract anything from a sample, example, extracting noise from a sampled piano.
Allso, the New pitch-shift and time-stretch algorithm, lets you sample a few keys of an instrument , then use the new pitch / time stretch, so
one dont have to sample every key, to make the samples sounding more natural.
Then there is The warp mode , whatever that is.
Spectral function etc.
Tales guitar sample library.
importing thousind of dx7 sys / tx81z sys files.
Creating macro pages should allso be more easy.
I think the spectral and decompose properly use AI ?.
I think Halion 7 is great.
The only thing i think Halion 7 is missing is a kar strong plus synthesis function, that would be great.
Didnt buy Halion 7 upgrade , but i will certainly do that.

This is good to hear!!! I think I’m gonna try the demo…I’m not really interested in FM…but those sounds do give another canvas of possibilities. I’m also not quite sure about the other “time stretching” or whatever it was called synth. I don’t sound design beats and stuff I need to slow down in a preset. I’m just not sure where this engine would be useful. Will need to hear from you guys.

Amadeus e.d.p.