These 2 companies have very different sound philosophies in my humble.
Halion’s sound design is usually done via what I call “pure synthesis”. Meaning the actual sound is created INSIDE Halion, as opposed to being “hard baked” into the sound.
So for example, Halion is much closer to the classic Hardware workstations where the sound designer is using the synth engine to complete the sound, usually built up of very basic sound units.
UVI on the other hand seems to create the total sound OUTSIDE of their synth. Than that gets sampled. The good thing is that sometimes you get some really great sounds. The bad side is EVERYTING is hard baked into that sound. If it’s a pad, you’re not gonna be able to change it to a sound with a hard attack. You’re stuck.
The other thing is that UVI seems to ‘over process’ their sounds. You’re gonna run into some harsh high frequencies once you start layering sounds. Lots of 4k, 2k and 8k peaks that hurt your ears unless you tame it down.
The next thing is playability. UVI makes your fingers literally hurt from having to play so hard to get the sound to a normal play level. This is a problem with nearly every synth I have purchased from them. Weird release points on samples.
Last thing is the sound browsing and user preset management systems. UVI’s is awful. You are gonna be hunting in folder after folder to get to the sounds. The user sounds get stored as if they are not part of the synth library. Impossible to find what you’re looking for. Halion KILLS UVI in this regard. We’ve got the best patch management system in the game.
Ooops…one more thing. UVI’s sampling of real world instruments is not good at all. Sampling analog synths is a whole different ballgame to sampling analog synthesizers. Once again we find the velocity thing I mentioned earlier. Their keyboard collection is not good at all. Halion’s keyboard are not stellar-but they are better than what UVI has to offer.
I don’t think UVI is a bad product. I own a LOT of their stuff. Just saying that Halion’s DNA is Yamaha Synthesis’s (from what I can hear and in my opinion). It’s hard to beat that core engine.
*EDIT
The Last last thing is CPU usage. UVI’s engine chokes with advanced levels of sound design, i.e sounds made up of multiple layers/DSP algos. It’s a HUGE leap in CPU performance. UVI will sometimes use over half of a M1 Max with just 4 layers! You can literally layer 15-20 sounds in Halion for that much CPU!
Let me clarify this. Take a pad sound. In Halion-the sound designer is USUALLY programming a slow attack in the envelope section. You can change that to a fast attack instead and you have a completely different sound.
UVI on the other hand HARD SAMPLES that envelope into the preset. You can’t change it to fast attack to make a percussive sound. I’m not saying every time. But a lot.
This “pure synthesis” is how Hardware workstations usually do it. Take a multi-sample or VA or whatever and you do all the LFO stuff synth shenanigans inside Halion, i.e. the modulations, etc. You can go back and change things inside the synth engine.
From what you’ve seen, are things like high pass and low pass filters also baked into the samples?
I guess, having everything baked into the sample
makes it less effort to mass produce large sample libraries from hardare synths presets, because you can set up a highly automated sampling chain to grab hardware synth presets.
saves computing power at playback time.
If their audio processing is as power hungry as you describe, they’d pretty much have to bake everything into the samples to make their instruments usable.
And here lies the rub. Sometimes UVI’s CPU load is comparable to Halions. Just using straight samples. But sometimes, using again just straight samples-the cpu on my M1 Max almost overloads. Even if you turn off all the effects. Something weird is going on.
This is using deep layers and building custom filters with EQ’s and multi-band compression. Halion 7 can literally stack all 7 or whatever engines without breaking a sweat.
As far as the sounds being baked in, I would say there isn’t any benefit at all if you want to sound design YOURSELF.
For example-if you listen to Synth Anthology, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between one synth and another. Everything is over-processed (outside) the synth and it all kinda sounds the same.
One of the other bad things about doing it this way is that those sounds are not too bad in isolation-but start layering them? Yikes. It gets very harsh and you’re fighting the samples themselves-because it was baked in!
There is no library for the UVI workstation. I’m referring to how the sounds are generally made with a lot of their various libraries.
I own about 8 or so of their products and USUALLY the synthesis/eq/etc is baked in. I am aware that Falcon uses its VA and those sounds are pure synthesis.
Sidestepping to another thing…the sounds are extremely harsh when you start layering. I.K. Multimedia is similar once you start stacking voices. Lots of 4k, 2k, and 8k issues. More than Halion. Halion’s library is “darker” sounding, and is easier to fix than the above mentioned.
How about the low end? Halion and IK Multimedia’s synths have a super bloated low end. Too much 125hz, 200hz. UVI’s newer stuff seems to have some good low end control vs the others.
Every library uses Workstation and/or Falcon; Workstation is their version of Kontakt Player more or less. If you don’t own Falcon, the library needs Workstation installed.
But I see that’s irrelevant anyway. I agree that it’s frustrating to have envelopes and filters baked in to a sound, so-to-speak, and the fighting of frequencies is absolutely problematic if you run into it. I found an old sample library CD from back in the day and it was pretty quick to make the wav files into a sample-instrument because they were just raw sounds played at length.
I can’t really comment anything on IK, I don’t own anything Sampletank-related and have ignored the Humble Bundle sale for IK as I’m just not interested lol. I have HALion 7 and enjoy using it much more than Kontakt or Decent Sampler.
I got Kontakt recently and it’s a strange program to use. That interface needs a complete overhaul and the libraries are never beyond anything “meh”.
I’m not saying that Halion’s stock library is better, cause it really isn’t . But Halion is a better WORKSTATION, and there is nothing stopping any of us in fixing the library.
The other thing is the Audio Engine. Halion’s engine sounds better. I have no clue how this is happening-other than it possibly being based on Yamaha AWM2 technology. Thats my theory at least.
Halion’s VA sounds better than any of there VST synths We’ve got wavetable and granular. Lots of goodies.
I have a goal to make a bass guitar library for HALion I know they exist, but something more metal-oriented, and I have some basses not covered by most libraries like this.
I think the Next Generation of Synthesizers (which I refer to as 7th Generation Synthesis)…is going to made by people like us, not the larger companies.
The overall quality of sound design is awful right now. We need people like you and me putting real skin in the synth game.
part of what drew me to HALion was how you can build wavetables. I have a VAST collection of single cycle wavs from Galbanum (Architecture 2010), by vast I mean 25,000 organized into folders. I just throw wave files into it and play with the parameters for each window and get magic out of it lol
Wait…I’m lost. So these wavetables are free? That is a lot of wavetables! Yikes!
Speaking of, I think it’s a good idea for Halion owners to get the WaveCre8 synth. Those wavetables sound really unique. Kinda analog but industrial at the same time!
I forget how much Architecture 2010 costs. It’s all single-cycle waveforms, not actual wavetables. I use the single cycles to create wavetables in HALion 7