Sonic 3 - issues

Virtual instruments
1

Hello,

I apologise in advance for my ignorance, being totally non-experienced in midi and vst, and for the lengthy message, but I really need a competent advice.

I purchased Halion Sonic 3 (HS3) last week in order to get better sounds from my Roland VR-09 keyboard which I am using in our amateur rock band with my friends. I am using Mac OS Sierra and USB midi connection. I can provide full setup if needed. I am not using any drivers for the keyboard as it says there are none for the Mac. I hoped to use the HS3 as a stand-alone application for real-time playing, and as a vst plugin for my Cubase Pro 8.5 for editing the recordings.

However, I ran into a number of issues and questions, and am losing hope into my ability of using such setup. I will not go into all details, here are just some basic questions:

To start with, in the stand-alone mode, it works fine as long as I do not touch any controls (drawbars, knobs, buttons, pedals…) If I do, the stand-alone HS3 crashes immediately. I get a crash report basically hinting on the segmentation fault.

HS3 does not crash as a vst within Cubase, though, but I can not see any response on the CCs. I can not “learn” the functions of HS3 to respond on the controls. I would need that, e.g., for the automation of the expression pedal, damper, rotary speakers speed change, etc.

What bothers me most is that it seems that I need to invest a lot into learning about the midi and the related things, to be able to set up the keyboard, drivers, HS and Cubase. My expectation was that I just plug in the keyboard and go on playing, maybe do some minor tweeking. Could anybody confirm that, or do I do (or understand) something very wrong? I do not think I would want to write scripts for the panels, etc. (although I am an ITC professional)

I would really appreciate if somebody experienced could say whether HS3 can be used with my keyboard without “graduating” in midi and vst setup. In this case, I am afraid I will have to withdraw from the purchase of the HS3, what I can do until the end of this week.

Thanks in advance for the help.
Matjaz

2

If you’re still around - I see that the post is rather old… here is my attempt at answering some of your questions…

  • Totally agree that stand-alone mode had/has issues
    No short-cut to mapping h/w midi controls to s/w without bothering to understand the technology.
    Hint…with the aid of the Quick Controls, set up in the Quick Controls section of the Inspector for the corresponding track.