I noticed HALion sonic has a “Select Sample” menu that seems to pull from the actual root samples a lot of presets are based off of.
Try loading the “Ballad Layer” program in HALion Sonic and then going to Edit>L1 and look at the far right. There’s a “Select Sample” dropdown menu. Why is it I can’t seem to find a menu like this in HALion 6?
It doesn’t seem to contain every original sound but there’s quite a few options you can load in to help create a custom program without loading and stacking layers in the slot rack.
I would assume HALion 6 would have a menu like this, but I can’t seem to find it. Could someone explain this to me?
These are called “Layers”. They’re similar to the idea of the “Waveforms” (multisamples) from the Yamaha Motif series, but in Halion Sonic they also contain some of the basic synth programming required for them to sound natural (this is ignored if you use the Select Sample feature). They were used by the Yamaha and Steinberg sound designers to create the original Halion Sonic 1.0 factory presets.
They’re a bit of a holdover from the Motif and the older Hypersonic 2 plugin. As you’ve already noticed, the idea of having almost everything available to the users as separate Layers was abandoned pretty quickly. The Halion Sonic 1.5 update must have added almost 100 new velocity layers and articulations for the Brasses and Woodwinds, and none of that new content was made available as separate Layers. The last factory libraries to feature separate Layers were World Instruments/Percussions and HALiotron for Halion Sonic 2. All other libraries are stored in a single Layer which doubles as an “Init” preset.
Anyway, there’s multiple ways to access them in Halion 6. Click to expand:
Using the "Layer Filter" (also available in Halion Sonic 3):
Right clicking the Program Tree and selecting "Load/Save":
Clicking "Show Program Structure", which allows you to extract Layers from existing programs without loading them:
Of course, you’re not limited to just using Halion Sonic’s Layers in Halion 6: you can drag and drop entire programs into the program tree, or even have the entirety of Halion Symphonic Orchestra layered together as a single program.
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Thank you for explaining this Romantique_Tp , I appreciate the help. I checked around the manual and couldn’t really find much but you cleared this up for me. I also had no idea you could extract layers from the program structure menu without even loading the program. Really good/helpful information!
