"Some" VST Insruments are out of tune.

Virtual instruments
#1

Some VST instruments are +20 cent out of tune in Halion 6 and Halion Sonic 3.
To name but a few: Bright Slap Bass - Cello Duo - Dynamic Chorus Rhodes - Expressive Flute - Fingered Music Man - Processed Trumpet - SR Thuddy Bass - Texas Boogie.

The same instruments are not out of tune in Halion Sonic SE?

I play guitar, so + or - 5 cent out of tune is Rock & Roll to me, but 20 ???
I know about the fine tune button but I never thought that I had to check every instrument I use.

Windows 10 - Cubase Pro 9.0.20

MMarni.

#2

Hi and welcome,

Make sure, your Pitch Bend is set to 0 at all MIDI Channels.

Make sure, there is no modulation set to the Pitch in your HALion.

#3

I checked a couple of these - Expressive Flute and Processed Trumpet and they are both more than 20 cents sharp in SE3.

Did you find they weren’t out in SE or where you asking the question…hard to be sure from your post??

There are loads of others. Tack Piano, Velo Jazz Guitar are two examples I found from randomly loading 7 or 8 patches.

#4

There have been many reports of out of tune notes in the forums, very few which are the result of user error. (and if you read my posts you know I love to claim it is! :wink: :imp: )

I suggest posting to the Halion subforums. The VSTi devs read it, and I think they would be able to tune some of those samples.

#5

There are new updates (22 june 2017) for the Halion family, a lot of fixes.

#6

Sorry for my Dutchy English and I am not much of a writer.
Thanks everyone on this forum. I read it every day, learned a lot and LOL to.

When I discovered that whole instruments (not just one note) are out of tune I tested and tried a lot to find out what it could be. But I am not a Pro… yet…

And yes there are more instruments. It’s a warning not a question. “There is something wrong”.
And not fixed in 00.10. Just tested SR Thuddy Bass and Texas Boogie (H6 +20) (HS3 +20) (SE2 0)

It really worries me, I thought that I would heard it. But I squeezed some funny juice out of my mixes by correcting the tune of some instruments.

Marni.

#7

Are you saying that in HSSE2 these patches are tuned correctly?
They are definitely out in HSSE3 update same as your other results.

#8

+1.

Yes, one can re-tune but that’s a real pain, particularly in tracks produced with earlier versions when it was in tune.

#9

How does this get through “quality control”?

I’m one of the posters pointing out a poorly tuned note, years ago, I think it was a lower piano note :-0 . HSSE, prior to update of a few days ago (haven’t checked since the update)

I can’t imagine any update would fix this problem until the version history includes a reference to instruments actually being re-recorded.

#10

Of course, it’s not necessary to redo the recording.

#11

Oh, that’s what technical support told me when I contacted them back then.

#12

They could certainly tune those samples, just as anyone could. I suppose those who own Halion 6 could tune the sample on their own as well.

#13

Ah yes, of course. I was referring to having the instruments play back in the DAW as they were played live, i.e., without tuning artifacts, etc.

#14

It would be good to know if this is a bug in newer versions rather than something inherent to the recording or initial programming of the presets.
Mmarni seemed to be suggesting the identical patches were playing in tune in HSSE2.

Just tested SR Thuddy Bass and Texas Boogie (H6 +20) (HS3 +20) (SE2 0)

I don’t think multiple whole instruments being 20 cents sharp is the same as previously reported issues about individual notes or lower registers being out of tune to rest of instrument.

#15

More tuned data.

I up dated Halion 6 to 0.10 this week.
If I click on the Steinberg logo - about:
Halion 6 version 6.0.10.1038
Halion Sonic 3 version 3.010.1038
Halion Sonic SE 2 version 2.02.89

Funky Single Coil (H6 +11) (HS3 +11) (HSSE2 0)

Thick Pick (H6 +20) (HS3 +20) (HSSE2 +4) what I consider good (0)

Fingered Music Man (H6 + 25) (HS3 +25) (HSSE2 +4) again on average, good.

Cinematic Strings (H6 0) (HS3 0) (HSSE 0)

So yes my Halion Sonic SE 2 is as far as I know good, what makes it even more strange.
And I love the philosophy that music cannot be in tune, true. But lets get closer.

MM

#16

I don’t think they need to be re-recorded, you can get them back into tune within Halion yourself so I’m sure it can be done in the background in an update (once they check every sound!).

Additionally, as already suggested these include instruments that were in tune in the previous version of Halion Sonic SE (I just checked this for myself). Something within Halion 6 has de-tuned them!

#17

…and I can confirm this, my HS SE2 does not suffer from the detuning I see with Halion 6 and Sonic 3.

#18

To avoid having this entire conversation again: moved to the Halion issues forum.

#19

I figure you’ve already checked for this stuff but just in case:

  1. I have a MIDI Controller here that has a pitch bend wheel. Presently my pitch-bend wheel is not properly calibrated (it is off center with the spring, so at rest it’s not sending 0, but something a good 30 cents or more sharp)…it also sends intermittent data at times. Like a ‘real piano’, I have to take this thing apart every year or so, clean it up, and re-calibrate (sometimes even replace) stuff.

Sometimes this controller starts acting up when I don’t have time to mess with it. So, I go into the preferences of my DAW (Cubase 9 in my case) and filter out pitch bends (or use a global transformer to filter them out), or use something like a Cubase transformer, Bomes, or Bidule to intercept the pitch-bend events and ‘correct’ them in real time.

Before going back to work, I typically go into HALion and use my mouse to flick the pitch bend wheel in each instrument slot to insure it resets back to zero.

This thing drives me nuts with Dorico right now…as I’ve not yet discovered how to filter pitch bend (It always accepts all MIDI input, so I can’t reroute the stream through Bome for filtering or a real-time correction). I just have to unplug it for now, as it’s always knocking instruments BAD out of tune. Eventually I’ll get around to opening it up and re-position the wheel mounting and tune up the spring…something I’ve had to do with many MIDI controllers over the years every year or so.

  1. Some patches might be designed to alter the tuning a bit based on key-velocity, or keyboard mapping. I.E. Playing harder/faster might make it go sharp. I.E. Lower notes to the left of a given note might go flat while higher notes to the right go sharp. If you have such a patch in SE or Sonic, I’m afraid you are stuck with it. If you have full blown HALion, you can disable such velocity/pitch based tuning schemes with a few clicks.
#20

This is not due to any of that.