WTF, No Akai support in Halion 4?? Are you serious?!

I can’t believe I just found this out. Halion 4 has NO support for the Akai sample format? Funny considering here is a direct quote from the Halion 4 product page found on Steinberg.net.

HALion 4 supports all the major library and sampler formats. Providing true backward compatibility to HALion 3.

Right. So Halion 4 supports ALL THE MAJOR LIBRARY AND SAMPLER FORMATS… except Akai which is blatantly left out. It also mentions TRUE BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY TO HALION 3, yet Halion 3 reads and imports the Akai format just fine whereas Halion 4 does not?

This is an utter and complete setback for a so called flagship Sampler in this day and age. There are TONS of Akai Sample based CD’s that are extremely rare yet extremely useful to be used even today, far better than the crap spewed out of the likes of the current generation of sample sellers found online. Halion 4 is now nothing more than a ROMpler with a few tweaks available for WAV imports, big deal. I am extremely disappointed in this and has completely sold me in the direction of NOT purchasing Halion 4 like I had planned.

Hi there,

Good news: HALion 4 is able to import AKAI Format! But you have to copy the disc to your harddrive. Just create an ISO of your AKAI library disc and drag it into the import window of HALion 4.

Cheers,
Matthias

Whew! This is a good sign! Why is this not mentioned in the manual which instead states that it does NOT read the Akai format? Wondering as well, why does Halion 4 read Akai discs from an ISO but not from the actual CD in your optical drive? Halion 3 was able to read directly from the CD without issue. Is this something that will be rectified in the future or this is how it always must be?

Thanks a ton for the reply though Matthias, it really is appreciated.

Hi,

good news, but how can I create an ISO-Image on OSX?

Gr, Mike

Hi Mike,

It’s actually really easy. Just create a disc image with the “disc utility” application included in Mac OS X. Select *.cdr as file extension and rename it in *.iso afterwards.

Cheers,
Matthias

Hi Matthias,

thanks, that works.

But how can I import a whole CD? Now I have to do it with every single programm.

Gr, Mike

Hi Cantankerous,

Been following this thread with interest. Given the news about Akai format being useable in H4, how about amending the title of your thread by adding e.g. (solved)? Might interest people to read the thread.

Steve.

I feel this is only partially solved to be honest and until I get my copy in my hands to try it out, I have to wait. The manual does state it does not work in plain writing, plus, why should one have to copy all their discs over when Halion 3 works straight from the disc? When I get my copy, I will see about editing. Thanks for the idea however.

Can someone explain how to import the cd rom into H4,I’ve made an iso on win7 when I try to click on the cd rom drive, windows say it cannot access this disc ( I didn’t think it would)

I then load up H4, here’s where I’m lost, I don’t understand how do I get my Akai sounds in here? I’ve went to the import button,clicked on it,but it doesn’t find any akai discs.

any tips?

UPDATE: Nevermind I see you must import using the folder option.

Can someone from Steinberg comment on whether or not Akai discs will be able to be imported without the workaround of created disc images in a future update (as it did work in v3)? I have a huge library of Akai discs and created disc images is totally out of the question.

Without this functionality , I definately will skip v4.

Thanks
Denis