Short Question: What do I need to make decent symphony music in Cubase 11
Long Question:
Basically I will be doing symphony based music along with string quartet formats etc. I will not be doing this on a professional level or need cutting edge software. But I would like to keep my options open and have some headroom to grow into.
What would you suggest? Will Halion SE be enough or should I go for the full ver 6? Or is there another program/VST I should be looking at? The price seems right with the current sale going on but when I look at the Halion webpage I realize that I don’t need a large portion of what it does i.e. synth sounds. I’m just looking for true to life sounds that can be used in the applications I mentioned above.
Sorry, but I’ve been away from Cubase for a long time and would like to start back up again without purchasing something that really wouldn’t be practical for my applications.
if your intention is only to make symphonic music, string quartets and similar I don’t think you need Halion 6. If you get, for example, Halion Symphonic Orchestra, this can be loaded in all versions of Halion. If you have the full version Halion 6, you can create sounds using different synthesis methods, but this is not something you are aiming for, I believe. You should look after an orchestra library, like the above mentioned HSO. Steinberg has Iconica too. I haven’t tested Iconica but, until I understand, it is more complete and has better sounds than HSO, but it is way more expensive too. Outside Steinberg there are a lot of libraries too. Another way is to use Dorico, where you can load these libraries (the Pro version comes with HSO and Olympus Choir Micro). In Dorico you can load Noteperformer too. Noteperformer is extern. It has synthetic sounds, but its great characteristic is the way it plays your music (the interpretation). Noteperformer can’t be used with Cubase, though.