Is HALion 7 just a myth?

henrikmusic · February 18, 2023, 4:07pm

I do apologize for my lack of halion 7 knowledge,
bear in mind that i cant speak from a few youtube vidoes.

The good thing is , allso the wavetable has been improved, now you can make more acurate vocoder
fx etc, and a lot more than that.
I wonder if Steinberg would make it possible to
import patches from Yamaha montage, that could be awsome, even fought Yamaha montage is a complety different beast.
does anyone know how many algorithms halion 7 have , 32, 48,88 ??.

Can a operator act as a modulator vice versa, or
as a tone generator.
Can operator or modulator use any waveforms, including samples, or is ir just sine ??

I would think the fm synthesis engine in halion 7 is
maybe the same as the same fm engine in montage synth (fm-x). ??.

Well, expectations, maybe steinberg comes with an
upgrade in 1-3 years, with much more stuff, so halion 7 becomes halion 7.5.
As i recall it, it didnt take long for the halion 4.5 to arrive, if i can remember it correctly ?.

henrikmusic · February 18, 2023, 6:09pm

Ooh boy, just have a look in halion 7 manual,
here the manual specific says, halion has both
dx7 / fm-x (yamaha montage), emulation.

Allso, the fm operator can use any waveform, including sine, saw, trisngle, square…

Halion 7 has more than 32 algorithm, think it is 88!?.

You can even make you own complex algorithm.

wooow.

The complety new rewritting pitch / time stretch function is not only for just making sound slower, because this plays a important role, when you want to pitch stretch / mapping a sample, stretching severals key, thereby creating a new natural sounding instrument with a few samples, i think.
Yes, the halion 6 osc, needs a overhaul, better optimized code, i guess.
Properly a much better detune algorithm, polyphonic Unison with drift function.

Brian_Roland · February 18, 2023, 7:22pm

Kind of. I’m just saying that you’re not getting more for less cash in most cases.

HALion has been in a slow cooker compared to a few other products. At the end of day it boils down to ‘does it fit your needs, and do you use it much’?

Yeah, pay way more for way less on a number ‘software products’. Not just in the music world. It’s much worse with the stuff on subscription models that charge no less than $200 per year, have MUCH bigger user bases, and still mostly put out ‘service updates’ with only a minimal amount of actual ‘new features’.

As for the talk about ‘out of date sounds’ (maybe not from you, but others in the thread have said something like that). A lot of the newer stuff sounds like penny art to me. It’s SO LOUD and aggressive that there isn’t room in a mix to do much with it. Modern mixes have no depth, no dynamics…just compress, compress, side chain to bring something into the foreground. It reminds me of the differences in visual art…the stuff that has depth and perspective, shadows, lighting effects, etc, vs the stuff that is flat as a pancake without lighting effects.

Plus, I’d say a Stradivarius violin is a really OLD sound…but it’s still keeper. It’s voice that is ingrained in the languages of humanity.

HALion sounds have a warm/flat characteristic that has been a part of the industry for a very long time. The stuff is much easier to deal with in live mixes, or situations where you simply need to ‘knock it out’ and get a lot of content produced in a short time. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea…but there is LOT in the box to make nice music with for less than $500 at initial purchase.

It’s fine if it doesn’t inspire you, and your preferences and needs steer you in different directions.

To me the HALion cycles have been alrite. The instrument has been worth what I’ve invested in it. Even with near daily use, I’m always finding something it can do that I didn’t know about in the session before. I find it pretty quick and easy to shape up new sounds as I’m imagining they should sound and work. Particularly with huge multi-track textures in surround sound (H5 was already king of that realm to me…and it didn’t even do onboard sampling yet…but I could take in 8 mics at a time and just drag it into HALion and start shaping up an 8 channel patch).

Is it for everyone? Nah…

Is it worth the asking price, and $99 to upgrade 3 to 5 years down the road?
Has been ‘for me’, but I already liked it ‘as it was’ several versions ago, and use it often.

Scab_Pickens · February 19, 2023, 12:52am

Just out of curiousity … how much does one of those Stradivarius doo-dads cost?

Is it compatible with the latest McDonald’s updates, both hardware and software?

Does it have USB/MIDI output?

Any octave up/down type controls, pitch bend … please tell me there is, at least, a mod wheel on this thing!

Velocity sensitive pads would be icing on the cake … please tell me I don’t have to wait for an update!

Okay, I’ll stop now … .

Amadeus-e.d.p · February 19, 2023, 4:22am

I will agree there are fair points and highlight the whole issue of use case scenario and taste. I didn’t personally say the sounds were dated (not that I remember at least) I can see where people are coming from. They are definitely Yamaha MOTIF-Gen One B-SIDE sounds with some EX5 sounding waveforms in there as well. It needs to be refreshed. I THOUGHT maybe that was happening since it has been so LONG. Like were the features that were put into HALion 5 years worth of programming? I would say they look like the features people like Tone2 just GIVE to you as ongoing updates.

I WILL say in Halion’s defense…it’s lack of “structure” can become a great strength once you learn how things are done. I also LOVE the ability to make the programs layout how I like it. Why can’t other synths do this?

Sound quality of the VA engine is really good once you find it’s sweet spots. The sample material is what you would find in a maybe low level 2000’s romper workstation. The GOOD thing is that the expansions are finally starting to pick up and hopefully we will see more good work here. I don’t understand the VST SIMPLE but it DOES sound different to what I can get using what HALion has stock.

I’m putting in my wish list now. 1.Better, friendly interface. 2. More Updated Sample Material. 3. More Yamaha Legacy Engines Available for sale! You guys are losing money to the used market. Why NOT release one of the older Motif’s on HALion? It would move revenue!!! Into YOUR pockets! 4. Yearly updates. 5.More updated sound design. 6. Participation with the community to show you are listening and helping.

Amadeus e.d.p.

Amadeus-e.d.p · February 19, 2023, 4:31am

It’s quite stunning they didn’t. I would IMAGINE they have a TON of old Motif stuff that they could have thrown in there easily. I wonder what the tech sharing agreement is between Yamaha and Steiny. It’s just weird to me not to have some official Yamaha VST’s on your OWN PLATFORM!! HELLO!!

But in all, I’ve actually grown to love HALion. 6 is kinda terrible on an M1 with the constant crashes and poofs, so I’m looking forward to the STABILITY hopefully. I will GLADLY pay $100 to be able to use this wonderful but flawed tool on my Mac Studio!

I guess we have to hope the next update comes sooner than what has been happening. I mean look at Mach Five at MOTU! Those dudes don’t even seem interested in that program at ALL.

Amadeus e.d.p

Brian_Roland · February 19, 2023, 6:16am

Phone a Music Conservatory and have them ship you an intern who can play. Lay out a few grand to rent the instrument for a few hours. Put them in front of a mic with a score/parts/lead-sheet and have a little fun.

For the opportunity to be recorded playing a real Stradi…that intern might even do filing, take out the trash, and bring coffee for a few months!

skijumptoes · February 19, 2023, 12:45pm

You’re describing decades old music there, so ‘newer’ is massively subjective. Plus, There’s no reason a newer sound set couldn’t be more dynamic, expressive and vibrant.

In fact, I’d like to have seen some of the acoustic instruments updated to bring more expressiveness and dynamics as what’s there has really aged. There’s plenty they could dip into from the Yamaha sound library.

I’d quite like to have seen all the arps from Montage/Motif put into flexphraser too as I love jamming on a Montage in performance mode. There’s many areas, such as that, where musicality is left by the way-side in favour of sound design features.

FM engine, algorithms and modulation is all great to geek over - but at the end of the day, it’s musical inspiration from updated sound libraries that really make a big difference to creators. And so many of it just filler nowadays.

HALion content is great to get quick ideas down, but they’re easily replaced in a project.

henrikmusic · February 19, 2023, 2:08pm

definitely we need a better sample / patch / instrument library, like those sound from Yamaha Montage 8.
To be honestly, not many of the patches found in halion 6 is interesting, some of them are great, just have a look at omnisphere library, insane crazy
15.000 fantastic sound.
The osc in Halion 6 does not sound big and fat, like
omnisphere etc, but then again, halion 7, can sample and create instrument, you got advanced wavetabel
that will give you that big fat sound, spectral editor, decompose, fm-x, etc.
If Steinberg want to update the age old library, they could make an expansion for halion 7 (nothing comes for free!), which you could buy.
I would like to see yamaha montage / motif expansion library, etc….

Allso , i wish Halion 7 had physical modelling of different kind of instrument.

Then again, you could make you own dx7 / motif / montage library youself, halion 7 gives you that much freedom, just think about that for a moment!.

Amadeus-e.d.p · February 19, 2023, 2:36pm

Ski just laid down the LAW. For FIVE years since the last major update…there was PLENTY of time to give us an updated core library.

Expressiveness, core complexity. Recorded with the NEW CONVERTERS available that sound LOVELY (I have an Antelope Audio DS8 Synergy Core…and it sounds AMAZING! It’s kinda considered only MID LEVEL). It just seems like this update was actually about a years worth of actual software development.

I have often wondered if Steinberg and Yamaha have whatever walls built up from them effectively being 2 companies. I’ve actually wondered why not just fold Steinberg INTO YAMAHA…and get everything and all products on the same code base like Roland have.

Too much noodling in this message. Apologies!

Amadeus e.d.p.

Amadeus-e.d.p · February 19, 2023, 2:42pm

This is EXACTLY what I’m talking about! If Yamaha doesn’t want to share their libraries…we will PAY them for it! I think Steinberg missed a big opportunity here by not going to a “Zen Core” type of system with Yamaha’s Keyboards/Synths.

Having all these individual walls between synths is starting to give way to newer ideas thankfully. HALion DOES break down some of these walls.

I’m just saying it is a update and updates are usually a GOOD thing…it’s just that it seems rather uninspired after over 5 years of “development”.

Amadeus e.d.p.

Amadeus-e.d.p · February 19, 2023, 2:47pm

Yep! And VL. AN1X. MOTIF. MONTAGE. Put them all on the new Yamaha Infinity Core Synth Engine! You guys can use the name if I can get a free HALion 7 update and a couple of expansions. Natch.

They don’t seem to love their back catalog as much as, say…um…ROLAND! Those dudes will repackage the same synth 200 times and get paid! It’s really nuts…but SMAART.

I call for a new BIG update in 2 years. That will give the entire HALion community time to get to know the new stuff in 7. Give us all the tech Yamaha/Steinberg!

Amadeus e.d.p.

henrikmusic · February 19, 2023, 5:21pm

I think Steinberg , is afraid of loosing costumers, i mean, if steinberg copied entire montage 8 onto
Halion , who would buy a Yamaha montage synth ??.
But then again, Roland does it the right way, i use to
have my subscription on roland cloud, but did cancel or, because i would rather have a life time key instead, pay once, which i allready lately with roland d50 vst plugin, now i own it forever, and never have to pay again.

And talking about expansions / library, Spectrasonics allso did made lots of expansion library for their omnisphere.

Why steinberg didnt choose to upgrade Halion 7 with
massive updates / libraries, physical modeling synthesis, i think it would take a longer time, before eventually halion 7 would be released, no one deserve to wait that long, instead, better to release soon upgrades , libraries, expansion etc, lets see what the future brings ?.

David_W · February 19, 2023, 6:20pm

Many of the recent posts on this thread are “HALion is not a Montage, a Motif, a Roland VST, Omnisphere, Komplete Ultimate, a Tone 2 synth or Falcon”. We know. As you note, those who want those things are free to buy them.

Steinberg is going to do what they feel will give them a return on investment which, for HALion 7, was to add FM, improve modulation and spectral resynthesis, fix some limitations (such as the inability to use your own impulse responses) and refresh the application somewhat including some workflow improvements. HALion now has Apple Silicon and Steinberg Licensing support. They have played to HALion’s strengths and hopefully made it an even more compelling proposition for personal sound design projects and for creators of add-on content.

Replacing much of the older factory library content has a somewhat questionable return on investment. Yamaha might well have decided that the Montage and Motif content should remain exclusive to the hardware, rather than appearing in a virtual instrument. If Steinberg cannot ship the Montage or Motif content, either included with HALion / HALion Sonic Collection or as a chargeable add-on, they don’t really have anything else readily at hand. Updated factory library content is probably not a compelling reason for many to upgrade anyway. Many of the paid expansions available from Steinberg are expansions they sell on behalf of third-party developers, who might want unaffordable per-copy licence fees to bundle those expansions with Absolute.

Steinberg’s own HALion content development seems to be focused on paid add-ons, some of which finish up being bundled with Cubase and Nuendo (Amped Elektra - though, strictly speaking, that was a promotional licence giveaway rather than bundling), and all of which eventually seem to find their way into Absolute (along with some of the third-party add-ons such as Olympus Choir Micro). That way, people have a choice whether or not to buy the newer content.

The other issue is that HALion 7 has taken long enough to release - it is six years since HALion 6 was released and over a year since HALion 7 was announced as part of the Steinberg Licensing announcement. There comes a point where Steinberg had to ship what was ready, rather than keep feature creeping, not least to satisfy those who wanted an Apple Silicon native version or to migrate away from eLicenser.

It is clear what is included in HALion 7 and what is not - there are announcements, various YouTube videos and soon there will be a trial version. Those who want version 7 can buy it. Those who feel version 7 does not give them sufficient value over HALion 6 (or HALion Sonic 3) can stick with their current product. Those who feel they no longer have a need for HALion are free to sell their licences - at least that is easier for licences migrated to Steinberg Licensing than those on eLicenser.

Amadeus-e.d.p · February 19, 2023, 8:35pm

My thoughts EXACTLY! 5 years for what we got to ME seems unimpressive. Again…I’m not saying it’s a BAD update. But give ME 5 YEARS…oh I’m gonna come with something IMPRESSIVE. Disregard me feeling myself.

Amadeus. e.d.p.

Amadeus-e.d.p · February 19, 2023, 8:41pm

I feel like you’re stating the obvious and I’m not quite sure why. Of COURSE everybody is going to have to make the decision to either jump up or stay put. I’m gonna HAVE to upgrade for M1 compatibility alone.

I think what you are not seeing is that it was an UNDERWHELMING update for THIS AMOUNT OF TIME since the last one. Wether they updated it 2x a year or once in 6 years…it’s about the features being delivered -VS- the competition.

To ME it seems the “Bigger” companies have a hard time keeping their product base upgraded. Like Kontakt. They were at Version 6 FOREVER. Version 7 doesn’t seem to add much to that program either. I’m just wondering…what do they DO for all those years in between?

Again, maybe my expectations are too high. I’m very glad we got something. I just want them to UP THE BAR next time.

Amadeus e.d.p

Amadeus-e.d.p · February 19, 2023, 8:44pm

Well maybe you are different. But USUALLY getting updated content is the MAIN REASON for upgrading! I’m talking that this is a Workstation/Sound Design Platform.

It was a missed opportunity. Maybe they will add some new libraries and make them a small purchase for us but include them in newer versions of 7 as we go through it’s cycles.

Amadeus e.d.p.

Highly-Controversial · February 19, 2023, 9:10pm

Not totally correct , most people upgrade for new features to be able to make content , after all HALion 7 is a sound design tool/workstation to inspire you to create your own so adding the latest tech to future proof the program certainly out weighs adding content

David_W · February 19, 2023, 9:22pm

I am stating the obvious to an extent, but that is because all your complaining about what HALion 7 is not will not change anything. The product has been completed and released. We are likely to be several years away from HALion 8.

Products like HALion that have infrequent major releases are unlikely to be in constant active development. I suspect that Steinberg’s VST developers will now turn their attention to something else, perhaps a paid update to Groove Agent.

Competing directly with other highly-regarded products can be bad business. If you want Omnisphere, buy Omnisphere rather than complain that HALion is not Omnisphere. HALion with all the content depth of Omnisphere, Falcon and the Motif / Montage content for the price of one top-tier virtual instrument (around €400) isn’t going to happen!

HALion 6 was already an immensely powerful engine - HALion 7 takes it to a new level.

Feature creep (“why don’t we do this as well?”) used to be a huge problem in software engineering and still can be a problem if releases are inadequately focused. HALion 7 was announced a year ago and people wanted a release to get native Apple Silicon and Steinberg Licensing support.

I think expecting a total rework of the factory content is too much for a single release. HALion 6 added Raven, Eagle, Hot Brass, Studio Strings, Anima and SkyLab, all of which still sound pretty fresh. HALion 7 added just FM Lab and Tails, but FM Lab is very broad by itself. The older HALion content is perhaps showing its age - but it is arguably better to buy expansions that fit your particular needs than make everyone pay for replacing factory content that is unlikely to compete with specialist expansions that you bought according to your needs.

Amadeus-e.d.p · February 19, 2023, 9:24pm

Yep, I spoke to this earlier. It’s a mater of personal preference ultimately. What I"M saying…is that was a LONG TIME to wait for what little we got. I just think Steinberg can try harder. Make HALion the BEST. Give us Yamaha Content. Give us new engines. Why can’t we have an AN1X inside HALion? I bet you there are about 1000 people that would want an AN1X. Sell it for like $149. You already have the code. Just port it over!

Amadeus e.d.p.