Is the Forum Dead?

Virtual instruments HALion
1

Where is everybody? :joy:

How about some speculation on when the update is coming? In my previous posts, I indicated that I believed that Halion and the Montage are essentially the “same” synth. They clearly have different engines in some instance (granular, wavetable, spectral, organ, etc) but they run on the same underlying engine.

What are the differences?

Effects
I think that the effects are clearly Steinberg. I would rather they be Yamaha effects. Yamaha’s synth effects are superior to Halion by a margin.

Library
Halion’s library is very dated and I would put it at the lower end of the quality scale. Think Native Instruments Kontakt Library. Not Omnisphere. . The quality levels are all over the place. The loudness levels. Like literally everything is all over the map. I will admit that I was kinda stunned they left the library as it was and we didn’t get a new one.
Most other workstations got library updates. Kontakt. Falcon, etc. Ours is stuck in 2008.

Reliability
This is where the Montage is much better. Halion is very unstable. It’s the most unstable synth I have ever used. I do push this software exceptionally hard…but these are programming issues for the developers to figure out. The surround plugin has literally been broken for 3 years. The interface elements don’t work sometimes. Text pops under the mouse. It’s a mess. I’m on the M1 Max, Mac Studio. Nightmare city. This needs to change or I’m not going to support this platform any longer.

Remember Halion 6?
Remember how LONG it took us to get updates? We literally got no major updates at all in the entire lifespan of Halion 6. The program was rarely patched and some plugins (like the surround plugin) have literally been broken for 3 years with no patch in site. WHY did this happen you ask? Because it’s the Montage and when they get a major update, we get one. Like in 6-8 years. Thats awful for software.

We literally got nothing during the entire Halion 6 product cycle because it is tied to the Montage. When that thing gets updated every 7 years…we get an update. That’s an awful product development cycle.

Value for money
This is where I think Halion fails. It’s not a good value for the money. I don’t mean it’s power, because it is powerful. I’m talking about how UVI does these big updates and they are free. Halion has never had that at all. We get maybe 3 small patches and that is it.

So the what’s the future?
I really hope that Steinberg and Yamaha end this weird product separation between the synthesizers. I would bundle the Montage XF soundest and include that as a free update in the future.

Should you choose UVI Falcon instead?
I have purchased 3 instruments in the last 8 months. It all went to UVI. Extreme FX 2 is nice! Synth Anthology 4 has some good stuff, etc. The UVI team is really managing their library well. Vintage keys. Just everything under the sun. Halion seems to attract the eclectic sound designers. Yamaha offers zero support even though they have a huge synth library they could just port over at minimal cost.

I know it sounds like I’m alway harping on Steinberg and I’m not. Halion is exceptionally powerful and I have achieved some legendary stuff with it. My version of Halion: SKYFALL is going to change the entire game. I just wish that I felt like Steinberg was trying to do the same.

I just want the Halion team to crank it up like 10 notches.

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I have always been underwhelmed by Steinberg’s instruments.

They are usually okay, but they seem to be the red-headed stepchild of their product map. They are poorly supported, and very little attention is paid to them.

I wonder if it’s because they are made by third parties, and the contacts are for putting out the product but not developing it.

If someone was looking for a Halion-type product now, I would suggest either Kontakt or UVI. I don’t think Steinberg’s instruments are getting much attention.

Which is okay. You can’t be great at everything, and they have only so many resources. Giving up these side products would free up a lot of resources to patch the many broken things in Cubase.

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HALion is my go-to synth.
But…
I found HALion 7 to have similar problems as Cubase 13 - major and largely cosmetic changes to the interface and little extra “meat”. Just as I got tired of finding out where old functions had been moved (sometimes quite a while wasted in doing so) so the changes in the HALion filtering system just don’t work for me.
I prefer C11 over 12 or 13 and HALion 6 over 7. And all just because of the useless cosmetic surgery.
YMMV.

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Noise!

Long time! Yeah, once again I think you bring up several good points. I do think that Steinberg should be focused on the DAW and related support products.

There is zero reason not to have updated the core library other than to protect the Montage M. There is zero reason to have all that Yamaha sample content and just do nothing with it.

There is zero reason to have so many bugs on a program…some like the SURROUND PLUGIN have been literally broken for 3 plus years. This is absurd.

What about Halion’s awful DSP? Not all of it is bad…but a lot of it is. The AMP simulator is horrible. The distortion is horrible. Some of the EQ’s are harsh in the high end.

How about the GUI? On the Mac M platform…good luck! This stuff was clearly not tested or they didn’t care.

How about we won’t be getting any more cool updates until about 7 years from now when the Montage gets an update?

I guess my tone has gone from “ok, we have some problems…but let’s work this out”…to “If I was running that department, somebody would be getting fired.”

Steinberg, please FIX HALION. Stop taking so long.

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Googly,

I see your point. I JUST came back to Cubase from version 6. I literally don’t know anything anymore. Like nothing. I think using Logic has made me soft. :joy:

GUI problems are definitely an issue. I can’t even click on the sends level slider. Some of the stuff just doesn’t work. Amateur hour stuff.

Too many problems. It’s highly frustrating. I’m on the fence of leaving the platform because this appears to be the norm now and that’s not acceptable for me any longer.