Media Bay doesn't find Halion fxp files

Cubase
1

I hadn’t had a need to fire up Halion 3 since migration to a new PC awhile back (been writing). But I just got the Halion4 upgrade and wanted to check that H3 saw all of my existing presets, especially those H3 had previously converted from my S-750 sampler data. Since H4 doesn’t have the conversion function, I needed to make sure they were OK before upgrading.

I was quite surprised when H3 had zero presets available - not the original content, not my S-750 conversions or any other presets. I have a separate disk for all my sample libraries and the H3 original data is there too. So I rescanned that disk (a couple of times now) and still nothing shows up. I’ve watched it scan the pertinent folders. If I try to browse for presets from within H3 it is empty. When I navigate to those folders using media bay it has located the underlying wav sample files. But the fxp preset files do not show up, even though they really are in the folders.

Summarizing. The fxp files exist, MB is scanning the folders those files are located in, MB is not detecting those files. Musician is annoyed.

2

.fxb/p’s are no longer supported, you have to click on the icon in the plug’s preset selection window and choose Load Preset. There’s also an option to Convert To VST3 presets.

3

Thanks. I see how to load the presets now. But I can’t find where you can convert the VST2 presets to VST3.

Also if I’m understanding you correctly - at some time in the past a Cubase upgrade made it impossible for Halion3 to see the content that was bundled with Halion3?

4

Then you have to do them all manually via Load then Save Preset. Look in the Halion 3 forum, maybe someone’s already converted all of the Factory Presets.

5

That’s insane to have no backward read capability. Does Steinberg really expect customers to convert thousands of patches by hand, one by one? How incredibly rude and contemptuous that is to their customers. There must be more to the story than that, for a company to mess with its customers like that (I mean they aren’t a bank).

6

It’s worse than that. I have yet to find any H2 or H3 lib that imports into mediabay properly. Release envelopes are wrong, outputs are not mapped properly. Other sample format conversions were -never- particularly great in H3 but at least they got the basics right.

It’s a shame because H3 was -way- easier to work in than Kontakt and the new UI is great

The marketing message is simple and I agree, contemptuous and/or clueless: H3 customers were not even part of the equation—probably because they assumed (correctly) that everyone was so annoyed that they moved on. They made it nice n’ shiny on the outside.


7

Can Halion 4 still manually import fxp/b files?

Also since I kinda snoozed through this whole transition, can someone give me the chronology of what changed with which versions.

8

C4, with the advent of VST3 is when things changed.

9

Odd that a conversion utility wasn’t released at the same time. Sounds like the C4 product manager dropped the ball then. Too bad.

10

There was a converter, can’t recall if it was 3rd party or if it converted .fxb to VST3 or vice versa. I think it was vice versa, but not 100%.

11

Halion is a non issue in the wider world. No one but N.I. followed through on establishing the flagship sample playback engine-and they profited enormously from it. Steinberg made some half-hearted efforts, but never followed through. Hence, they ended up like MOTU-with a good product that wasn’t universally accepted. That ship has sailed. Aria-non issue. Mach Five version whatever-non-issue. Play-inefficient and limited to EW. Now we have Engine. I doubt they’ll make serious inroads, but who knows. Kontakt is the standard all others are judged by, and developer’s libraries need to be ported to it because that’s where the sales are.

My Halion experience ended at 3. I won’t be buying upgrades, which is a shame- because I was a prime candidate.

12

Chicken Systems makes sampler translation software. But they only convert to .fxb/p. So I sent them an email about that.

Do you guys have any plans to update your Halion translator to support
the current version so they show up in Media Bay? The is some
additional opportunity in this since Steinberg stupidly didn’t create
any practical mechanism to get their own Halion legacy patches into the
current format. A lot of users are not pleased about that and likely
would snap up a translator that properly converted Halion2 libraries to
Halion4.

Actually, if Steinberg were smart they’d hire you guys to make Halion
read everything.

No, they have little care for users needs in this regard. HALion 3 encrypted all files so they can’t be read by anyone. They also don’t tell anyone that, so those making their libraries are not immediately aware that their patches are “stuck”.

As you know, HALion 4 is even worse that it can’t read their old patches themselves.

Just don’t bother with HALion.

To be fair, these guys have an economic incentive to dislike Halion. Still, this sounds like the truth. I know I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of by all this.