Tried everything you suggested but still no luck. Have submitted a ticket. Explained the problem in detail and also attached a link to this discussion along with the attachments I posted here earlier.
Hopefully, they will respond within days and not weeks.
Thanks again to all who helped with this problem. You guys are great!
No problem. I hate that it’s not working for you. I know how frustrating it can be.
Plot further thickens!
So while I await a response from the tech support (been over 24 hours now), I decided to install the whole thing on my second Macbook. Went through the usual rigamarole of downloading the Download Manager, Activation Manager, Library Manager and downloading, installing and activating HALion Sonic 7 Connection, it turns out now I have only 20 libraries vs 23 libraries in the old computer. Flux, Indian Drum Basic, and Trip are missing altogether. And # of presets went down from 5024 to 3749, although, unlike the first computer, there are no locked presets on the second computer.
Also, on the previous computer I had both Halion 7 and Halion Sonic apps whereas in the new one it’s only Halion Sonic app. I know I paid for only HALion Sonic Connection (along with the iPad/iPhone version) and the other one is probably the trial version (which is still under trial period) should have only one app. But in neither app, the word Connection appears. One is HALion 7 and the other is HALion 7 Sonic. I guess this is also supposed to be the HALion 7 Sonic Connection.
I must say this install process for Steinberg is extremely convoluted and utterly confusing for a newbie. I have installed trial/full/player version of many other vendors (Arturia, Native Instruments, XLN Audio, UVI, Air Music, AKAI, East West, Toontrack, Wave Alchemy, Sounpaint, etc and have never ran into this kind of problem. Very frustrating indeed but I realize that’s the way things go sometimes. I am just hoping the tech support is able to resolve these issues without too much delay.
This might be normal if you’d had the full HALion Demo installed before; however, Sonic Selection stuff shouldn’t be locked!
It’s not supposed to be this difficult.
I have noticed here in the forums that users who tried the Demo first, then opted for “Collection” instead of full HALion seem to have more problems getting set up and sorting out what presets they can ‘get rid of’. Seems like in the past simply removing the ‘full HALion’ exclusive stuff using Library Manager got them sorted in the past.
Something isn’t right at the moment for sure. It’s only been about a week since Version 7.5 rolled out. Maybe there’s just an issue with SDA (Download Assistant) and SAM (Activation Manager) on Macs that’ll be sorted ‘soon’? So check for new versions of SDA and SAM every day (while waiting for support).
I do have full HALion here, with the key activated. Unfortunately I don’t have a 'Sonic Collection" key in my account to compare what shows up as ‘locked’ on my system without my HALion 7 key.
The fundamental content ‘distribution pack’ for full HALion can be different from that for “Sonic Collection”, “Absolute”, etc. The bigger the pack, the larger this base content download will be.
Full HALion’s main content download is larger than “Sonic Collection”, then you get Tales and FM Lab individually. Its base pack is larger as it comes with all the ‘HALion Factory’ stuff going way back to the early days of the HALion engine. Much of it are various default state templates and unlocked layers exclusive to full HALion.
Full HALion 7 comes with both ‘players’ (Sonic 3 and earlier were not ‘free players’, instead the free one was a less featured SE version [I.E. Sonic 3 SE). Full HALion offers options to roll presets, build your own optional ‘macro editors’, and to pack full libraries that will work in both players.
Back in the HALion 6 and earlier days, it also came with some extra guidelines and allowed rolling libraries for the ‘free SE’ version of the ‘Sonic Player’.
When Steinberg ditched the dongle, they decided to do away with Sonic SE, and give everybody the fully featured Sonic 7 player (it somehow registers itself with two plugin IDs, and should automatically work for old projects that used SE, as well as projects that used the old ‘not free’ variations of Sonic).
From there they’d sell ‘content’ for the Sonic player in bundles, or as individual instruments. It’d also be open to third party developers to make libraries for using full HALion.
They also unlock some of the libraries for Sonic 7 with their various Hosts (I.E. Sonic Selection comes with pretty much all of them [Cubase, Dorico, Live, etc]).
If one has a full HALion or Absolute key, it unlocks everything that comes in “Sonic Collection”, plus some extra ‘mostly unlocked’ content exclusively for full HALion. Absolute goes bit further and also unlocks a stack of other instruments, effects, and plugins.
Sonic Collection’s base content is a smaller download than the one for full HALion 7.
Why I think something deeper than ‘user installation error’ is wrong…
I find it odd that any “Sonic Selection” presets would ever show up as ‘locked’, or that the vstsound archives themselves would be in any way ‘different’ from one distribution to the next. I don’t think they’re meant to be!
Example:
Think of vstsound files as special securely encoded ‘zip files’. Here SLM (Library Manger), I can see all of the individual vstsound archives involved with the “Sonic Selection” library, where on the system they live and should be registered, their version, and size.
It might be possible that some libraries might have some ‘extra’ presets specifically for full HALion. In that case, I’d think they’d simply roll a second vstsound file for the exclusive content. Here I notice on my rig, Trip only has a single v5 archive for Trip at 6.03MB.
While it’s ‘possible’ Steinberg might maintain different versions of this archive for all the different bundles and OSes, I kind of doubt it. It doesn’t make sense. As far as I know, it’s just one archive for Trip at this time, and it should be unlocked if there are SAM keys active on the system for any of these: Absolute, HALion, or Sonic Collection (perhaps it even comes with some of the Artist and Pro level Cubase/Nuendo hosts).
I can’t imagine the purpose, or the nightmare of maintaining different versions of these libraries for all of the different variations and bundles that might involve these libraries! However, I suppose it’s ‘possible’.
Seemed to me like a user who may have previously installed the HALion Demo bundle, simply removing the stuff that doesn’t come with “Sonic Collection” would clear up the locked content.
I was prepared to help you track down and get rid of any ‘HALion Specific’ stuff. Seeing “Sonic Selection” content locked ended that plan. You should be getting that, and AFAIK, it shouldn’t matter how the vstsound files involved were downloaded provided they’re all there and registered.
Maybe I’m wrong about this. Ugg…
Sorry, I thought you’d also tried cleaning out ALL of the content, downloading the package specifically for Sonic Collection, and totally ‘reinstalled’ that a few steps back. If not, maybe give that a try (clean and redo it all, making sure to only download stuff from the Sonic Selection area of SDA).
Either way, something seems wrong to me! So many things it could be. 1. Issues with the Mac Activation manager. 2. Issue with SDA. 3. Corrupt or partial downloads.
If not a fully automated process, the instructions on how to clean up after the Demo version and get “Sonic Collection” working should be a much more clear and seamless process.
Support Tickets being filed should help red flag Steinberg that they have some kind of ‘issue’ here that needs to be addressed.
Hello again, Brian. Great explanation! Most make sense, some went over my head as I am not familiar with anything Steinberg until this purchase.
This second computer was a complete clean install with no trial version on it, ever. So unless it comes with only 20 libraries and a total of 3749 presets, in which case the install went flawlessly, I get the feeling things are missing from the second computer as well. Maybe someone in the forum with only Sonic Complete confirm how many libraries and presets when installed straight out of the box.
You may be right about the update barely being a week or so old and maybe an update would take care of the problem.
If not, maybe give that a try (clean and redo it all, making sure to only download stuff from the Sonic Selection area of SDA).
Did that on the first computer twice. Second computer was a complete clean install with only Sonic Selection items.
Let’s see what the tech support has to say. Thanks again, Brian. You have been more than helpful, learnt a lot from your responses.
Regards.
Explore and enjoy what’s working in the meantime.
AFAIK this is a complete list of what you should get:
Library (Number of Program Presets) [Number of Layer Presets] {Number of Multi Presets}
Sonic Selection (1257) [0] {0}
HALion Sonic 2 Combis (151) [0] {0}
HALion Sonic 3 Combis (101) [0] {0}
HALion Sonic Factory Content (1335) [905] {15}
FM Lab (320) [641] {0}
Tales (70) [1] {0}
Anima (251) [1] {0}
Auron (201) [1] {0}
B-Box (215) [1] {0}
HALiotron (26) [1] {0}
Hot Brass (26) [1] {0}
Model C (102) [1] {0}
Skylab (254) [1] {0}
Studio Strings (26) [1] {0}
The Eagle (26) [1] {0}
The Raven (26) [1] {0}
Voltage (151) [1] {0}
World Percussion (32) [1] {0}
World Instruments (150) [108] {0}
I’m not sure why, but I don’t see a listing for this in my SLM, but it works for me, and shows up in HALion and Sonic as coming from this archive:
I’m ‘guessing’ that points here on my system (seems SDA ‘updated’ it at some point):
I do not see Flux (124) [1] <0> and Trip (153) [1] {0} specifically listed here on the product page, but I was thinking these two synths get distributed as part of “Sonic Selection”. I can’t imagine Sonic Collection not including the full Sonic Selection library, as that’s where the core GM sounds, and anything else fundamental and ‘bread and butter universal’ in all the Steinberg hosts are usually packed.
It could be that these synths only get unlocked with specific hosts (Cubase Artist/Pro) or via an individual purchase if you don’t have a Steinberg host that includes it. If that’s the case, you can systematically remove the libraries for any content that shows up as locked to get that disk space back.
Thank you so very much, Brian. Your detailed answers are an example for anyone using a forum.
I will compare this list to what I have tomorrow as it’s almost 11 pm where I am.
Other than the missing preset issues, I have fallen in love with HALion. I love everything about it, the interface, the controls, the quality of sounds, and speed. I am truly enjoying it and learning new things everyday. Thanks for everything.
Sunil
So I compared your list with my list and they are all pretty much identical except for a few differences -
Your list doesn’t include “Trip” that is showing 153 presets but all are missing from my system (locked). So I guess I just need to remove it since it’s not a part of the package I paid for to begin with.
My Sonic Selection has almost the exact # of presets as yours, except out of 1256 (you have 1257), over 400 are missing (locked), as I mentioned earlier in this thread.
I did get a reply from the tech support that told me to check this page out.
I am about to go through it and see what result it brings. Fingers crossed!
Thanks again for your help, Brian. You have been wonderful in helping me sort out these issues and sticking with me all through this time.
PS - Just tried to remove Trip from the Library Manager and got the warning that this library is required by Sonic Selection. So I aborted the delete process.
Probably Trip and Flux, or combis that use something from them? I was ‘of a mind’ that they’d come with “Sonic Collection”, and they SHOULD as those give Sonic users access to base HALion Synth engines they otherwise won’t see, but I could be wrong. Maybe those are exclusively Cubase Artist/Pro darlings. Seems like they’re in a vstsound that used to be called ‘Hybrid Synths’, that since version 7 started showing up under “Sonic Selection”.
The main things I’m concerned about you having that are from Selection
The General MIDI stuff…
A lot of standard drum kits:
Loads of nice pianos
A variety of orchestral goodies (Winds, Brass, Strings)…
I see the link suggests removing “Sonic Selection” and “HS Factory”, redownloading, and reinstalling them. Thought you tried that.
If you give it another go, be sure to clean out the download directory for it in SDA (user can set up where downloads go initially) first, be sure to get a fresh start.
I’d also advise holding off on doing “Sonic Selection” on its own at first. Only install the packages from “Sonic Collection” and try that ‘first’. The “Sonic Selection” stuff ‘should’ be bundled there already. If still missing, ‘then’ try grabbing “Sonic Selection” by itself.
Still seems like a bug of some type to me, but we’ll see.
I’d love to see what happened with this thread? It’s been like watching a series lol. Goodness me how convoluted it all is…selection, collection, extension, SE, full, sonic. Brian you should get an award for your help here. I followed this thread because I’m a bit OCD and I like to know what it puts where during the installs. Anyhow hope you got sorted Sunil :o)
The reward? If you like the sound of Yamaha instruments over the ages, HALion is perhaps the most powerful and cost effective way to get your hands on it. Once you wrap your head around it, it’s kind of like getting the sounds of several generations of flagship Yamaha boards in one package. Steinberg throws in their own unique gems along the way as well. Factor in what an absolute powerhouse full HALion is at sound design…well, that’s the reward.
Over decades of using HALion on stage, and for general composition/song-craft, the problems have been pretty rare for me.
I also use stuff from Native Instruments (Full Kontakt), East West, and the list goes on. There’s no utopia. They all have weird library and db systems, locked up archives that hide in strange places, quirks, bugs, licensing issues, and worse pop up from time to time. They all tend to do a good job of fixing their issues ASAP.
Hi tronlady, I do agree with you about how convoluted the entire set up is. What makes it even more confusing is that somehow HALion Sonic 7 Collection, HALion 7, Dorico, and probably even Cubase are connected and share many libraries. I may be 100% wrong in my understanding but all my locked files became unlocked after I installed the trial version of Dorico (which I have no need), then uninstalled Dorico but it somehow preserved the presets. At that point, I stopped worrying about it as for what caused it or how it got resolved. I got all the presets and that’s all that mattered to me.
I couldn’t help but smile at your OCD reference. And as Brian (a big thanks to him) said it, I also use Kontakt, Arturia (that’s my ecosystem), Eastwest Sound (Opus), UVI, Toontrack, XLN, and a few more but found Steinberg to be the most complicated, convoluted system. As for HALion Sonic 7 Collection, I absolutely love it. There are many features here that aren’t available in other systems and presets are simply stunning. I am glad I invested in it.
It’s not supposed to be.
Something is ‘off’ in your case (and I’ve seen a few others with issues like yours on the forum too).
When it all works as intended, it’s simple and straight forward.
Personally, on Windows, I’ve not had any major issues with HALion, and I’ve been running it since HALion 5/Sonic 2. I have been running the full version of HALion though, plus I have stacks of Steinberg hosts licensed and installed so it’s quite likely I have ‘redundant’ sets of keys to unlock all sorts of libraries. I’ve never tried to install ‘just Sonic Collections’ on a system with nothing else Steinberg tagging along for the ride.
Perhaps some kind of ‘clean up’ process should automatically run if somebody tries the full HALion Demo, then decides to go with Collections instead. In the least a clean up app that shows up in the SDA as, “Run me if you’ve ever installed the full HALion Demo on this machine before.”
I’ve seen quite a few users chime in here about locked libraries in that scenario (Downgrade from a free time limited (full) HALion Demo to a purchased Sonic Collections key). Simply because, some libraries come with full HALion that don’t come with “Collections”. Sometimes users end up with extra stuff installed left over from the full HALion Demo. It IS confusing to somebody that’s new to HALion/Sonic as to what stuff should be removed at that point. Such users do not know the ‘history’ of the product line, so it’s going to be very confusing to them.
It’d be nice if a document existed right there in the SDA that lists every single Library and preset that should be included with each bundle. Then users could hone in exactly what they should have, and manually clean out what they haven’t paid for.
In your case, if I interpret your situation properly, I still believe something else was broken somehow. No idea what, but it’s not ‘normal’. Seems to me that nothing from the “Sonic Selection” library should be locked, as that’s the nuts and bolts core of the instrument!
Seeing as you totally cleaned your system of things HALion/Sonic multiple times, and then ONLY installed the packages under “Sonic Collection”, you should have been good to go. Something wasn’t right 
The mechanics of it are simple otherwise. Steinberg Library Manager is used to put the archives where ever you want them to live. Get libraries from SDA, and/or Double click any vstsound archive file and SLM opens to see what’s going on, and where you’d like it to be installed.
To me it’s not that different from Native Access, EW Installation Center, or Arturia Software Center. I’ve had minor issues with all of them over the years (sometimes my fault, sometimes bugs or licensing issues).
With EW I still get problems on a regular basis with older projects that used different Composer Cloud subscriptions (upgraded even, not downgraded). Same libraries (perhaps with more mic positions available after my upgrade), just under different subscriptions…so I’m always needing to contact their support, they add another temporary key to my ilock long enough for me to change some things and save a new instance, etc. I still notice lots of things that used to work in Play no longer do, until once again I contact them and they add some temporary key or another to my iLok (sometimes I need Play for RPN 1/2 based stuff that Opus still cannot do).
With Arturia, I remain puzzled at a cross section of ‘legacy’ presets that require older versions of some of the plugins be installed, yet somehow funnels through the latest version of Analog Lab, but I can’t find as an individual plugin anymore. Heaven help me if I start trying to use my own samples in some of the Arturia engines. If I wander off into different directories, I can’t ever find the factory samples again. Where do they live? Etc…
Native Access always feels like a major shopping expedition every time I open that one. For what it’s worth, it’s pretty impossible to take an entire NI Bundle for a free demo ride. I.E. You cannot grab everything in NI Komplete Collector’s edition, try it free for 60 days, then decide after the trial you’d like to scale down and buy Ultimate or Standard. At best you can ‘sometimes’ try a ‘scaled down’ demo version of individual instruments from those bundles, and they’re locked down jelly tight from examination in the Content Creator.
How convoluted would it be if you borrowed a key from a buddy so you could take the entire suite on a test drive, then installed the entirely of NI Komplete Ultimate, then decided to buy your own key for Standard; thusly needing to down grade your installation significantly? Would you not have to sit there, sort through, and remove a bunch of stuff there after such a downgrade as well?
So…no utopia for me. They’re all nice and powerful, have some super handy features and abilities. Then again, they all have snags, issues, and things that make me wanna pull out the last of my hair (not much of it left these days).
I’m pretty sure QC people from the HALion team check these threads on a regular basis. Whatever it is that’s broken, they’re probably onto getting it fixed if it hasn’t already been done.
Sonic 7 comes with all of the Steinberg Hosts, and the hosts all come with at least ‘some’ HALion libraries.
So, a Dorico Pro Key will come with, and unlock several HALion libraries (Selection, Iconica Sketch, Symphonic Orchestra, Olympus Choirs Micro, Etude Lite, etc). Dorico Elements comes with some libraries, but not as many as Pro. The different Cubase, Nuendo, and VST Live variants comes with yet different sets of Libraries (Some might come with fewer orchestral instruments, and more synths, or vice verse).
All of the Steinberg hosts can integrate pretty deeply with HALion as well. Most notably the Media Bay, which can share a common database with stuff like HALion, Sonic, Groove Agent, Padshop, Retrologue, etc. With full HALion, integration in Cubase gets even deeper, with the ability to drag and drop DAW audio tracks, or stuff from Media bay into HALion as samples, and vice verse. (Some third party DAWS can do this with HALion as well).
So, essentially, Sonic 7 itself is merely a free player. Kind of like the free Kontakt Player over at NI. You buy libraries or bundles of libraries.
This is why there is ‘crossover’ with different Steinberg hosts. They all unlock various HALion libraries. The bigger the version of a host you buy, the more HALion libraries it’s likely to unlock.
Well put, Brian. I agree with you on all of the points you have so eloquently put forward. For some reason, I never ran into this sort of problem in Native Access, EW, or Arturia. I have never bought a ‘bundle’ or ‘subscription-based’ collection of libraries because there are many presets that I’ll never need in my small setup. Native Access literally has several hundred products and no matter how ‘lucrative’ the offer is, I will not buy the bundle. Because then uninstalling all the sounds that I don’t need will be a pain in the you know what.
With my extremely limited knowledge of Steinberg products, and at the risk of making myself look like an idiot in this forum, I feel the problem is, it doesn’t have a fool-proof way of completely uninstalling a trial product. Even the trial versions are huge files scattered over a number of folders and despite uninstalling, its remnants remain in hard-to-find folders.
Having said that, I still love the Collection.
As for your hair, I’m in the same boat. Up to six years ago, I had hair like Tom Selleck. Now it looks slightly better than Telly Savalas. 
And now… who loves ya, baby?
Thank God, I have a wife for the last 33 years who still thinks I’m better looking than Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Tom Selleck combined… (No wonder I try to discourage her from getting new glasses but please don’t tell her that). 
