Multi switching by program change does not work reliably

Virtual instruments
#1

Just upgraded from Halion Sonic 2 to 3 and applied the latest (3.0.10) patch. Host is latest Cubase (9.0.20)

Unfortunately. switching multis by program change does not seem to work reliably:

I have a chain of 7 multis - 000 to 006, “Program Change” option is set to “Multi Mode”. I have the MIDI Monitor running as an insert on the Halion Sonic Channel to verify the correct program changes arrive.

Sometimes Halion Sonic switches the multi correctly, but in many cases no switch is done at all. Sometimes it switches to the wrong multi, sometimes it even switches through two multis - I send a program change for “006” but it switches briefly to “006” and then to “002” for example. Really unpredictable …

Tried to recreate the multi-chain from scratch - no difference. I have plenty of memory assigned to Halion (8 GB), never seems to be fully used and assigning less or more does not seem to make a difference. Any suggestions?

#2

Some additional information: the multi-chain program switching seems to work much more reliably (but not always) with the standalone version of Halion Sonic 3. Unfortunately, this is no option for me as I need Cubase as my VST host with reliable program change support for live performances.

#3

Two things:-

  1. Does the behaviour exist in the (old) HALion Sonic 2…? Can it at least be seen there (sometimes) as well…?
  2. I can only imagine they (SB) would love it if you could attach a small project file here, demonstrating the problem - is that possible…?
#4

I guess I’m able to reproduce the behaviour, at least within Cubase!
Its now in our Defect-Tracking-System and listed as Bug-ID “HALLY-7011”.
I hope we can provide a fix for it soon.

Thanks for your report and please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Gerrit Junge

#5

Good to hear that it can be reproduced in your environment! That’s always a good starting point …

How can I see when its fixed? Scan the release notes of upcoming Halion Sonic patches for that ID or is there a notification system?

And for the time being, what is the best/safest way to downgrade from Halion Sonic 3 to 2? I assume the license for version 3 I now have on my USB dongle still covers version 2?

#6

Same kind of issue with Halion Sonic 2.0.10 - it does not process Multi-Chain-Program-Changes properly. In some situations it switches to Multi 0, no matter which prgchange is sent. Most of the times it does not work at all. Tried it in an Ableton Live Scenario (9.7.3) as well as with Cubase (8.5.20).

#7

Retried with the latest hotfix (3.0.15) since it was released end of July - still not solved.
This really kills the usability of the multi-chain feature in a live environment, very disappointed.