I’ve spent many hours reading through the manuals (Cubase 6 and Halion Symphonic Orchestra), forums, and knowledgebase. I have not found anything to date that answers what I think is a simple question. The question is “how do you get Cubase 6 to access the Halion Symphonic Orchestra instruments?” I keep thinking this must be very simple, but yet I can not find the answer. I have a Windows 7 64 bit system. Both Cubase and the Halion Symphonic Orchestra (full version) installed fine and operate well independantly. I would like to use the instruments in the Symphonic Orchestra in Cubase. However, the Symphonic Orchestra does not appear as an option on the VST instruments dropdown menu. The manual has a picture that clearly shows the Halion Symphonic Orchestra as an item on the dropdown menu. However, the manual does not explain how to get the two programs (Cubase 6 and Halion Symphonic Orchestra) to recognize each other, so that the Symphonic Orchestra appears in the Cubase dropdown menu. The manual skips over that step and assumes that it will be on the menu. However, it is not on the menu even though the program is running on my computer. So, what do I need to do to get Cubase to recognize the Symphonic Orchestra and to have it appear in the dropdown menu, so I can use the Symphonic instrument sounds in Cubase projects?
Not exactly pertinent, but I’d suggest using the Sonic SE HSO patches, as SE is much easier to deal with. I found the stand alone and plugin interface for HSO made the library almost impossible to use. It definitely cut down on the desire to try.
Sorry, I thought I said this, but upon re-reading realize that I did not quite say it. I am running the 64 bit version of Cubase 6 since I have the hardware and operating system to support that. I assume that it runs better/faster, but have never tried the 32 bit version to really see the difference.
Interesting insight. Sonic Se does appear in the drop down box. I also noted some references in either the forum or the knowledgebase to the fact that you could access Symphonic Orchestra instruments through SonicSE. I did not pursue this because it did not match the description (and pictures) in the User Manual. The manual clearly shows the Symphonic Orchestra as an option in the VST instrument drop down menu. Your point is that once I finally figure out how to get the Symphonic Orchestra in the drop down menu, I will determine that it is not very useful…that the SonicSE interface is better than the dedicated Symphonic Orchestra one.
Is it possible to set it up both ways simultaneously so I can experiment with both options? Where do you find the patches to add it to Sonic SE?
Thanks for responding. It is very helpful to talk to someone who has been down the road ahead of me.
You didn’t answer the first question, 32 or 64 bit install? HSO shows up in my drop down. I just don’t use it because the interface is crap. I use the Halion SE patches.
Not sure if the language is right above, and this may be part of the problem
The way to load HSO is using a MIDI channel (becaue it is multitrimbral instrument,
To do this go to the vst instrument rack and select it, if it is not there then the dll file for the VST is not in a plugin path, see the plugin information on the menu bar.
Once HSO ids loaded (speaking from memory - I am on my laptop) then on gthe left hand side there are sixteen slots - initially blank bars. at the right hand side there are little buttons with a triangle on them, if you hit these then Media bay comes up with the directory with the instruments in them.
If it does not then this is a media bay issue you may have to hunt them down - but I think this wont happen.
Click on one of these instruments and it should load into a slot. Make sure that the instrument channel and the MDI channel are set to the same number, hit the monitor button (small speaker) in the project’s channel and you should get a sound.
Be aware that iof you set the channel to pick up ‘any’ MIDI channel then all instruments in this instance of HSO will sound.
On the second tab of HSO instrument (again speaking from memory) you will see the MDI channel settings make sure they are not set to ‘anmy’ or omni.
In the instrument rack there are some very tiny little buttons, I think its the far right one or one near the right that brings up a list of ‘active channels’ you have to set this up so that it has as many channels as you need - up to 16 for a given instance of the HSO interface.
I am not sure of you are using HSO or HSOSE but I think this covers both.
