I think I found a good workaround for the lack of sample import preview in HALion. There is a program that adds a nifty preview part to any windows file requester. It seems to work nice (tested wav and aifs) within HALion. It's called Image Fox 2.0 from ACD systems:

http://www.acdsystems.com/English/Products/ImagingProducts/Utilities/I mageFox/index.htm

It's a full functioning Shareware (for 45 days), then costs 29,95.

It's sad that this simple functionality is not part of HALion anyways, but at least this workaround helps me getting "more" done, so I thought I share this with the community.

However, I don't take any responsibility for problems that you might encounter trying this software. Try it at your own risk.

Chris

If your sound card can use an ASIO and wave driver at the same time, then you can right click on the sample and press "play". Then the Windows Media Player or whatever player you have as default should play the sample. Unfortunately since I use my Pulsar in XTC mode I can't hear apps like the WMP and my wave editor (SF 5.0) that use a wave driver anymore, so no sample preview and sample editing in my wave editor while working in Cubase.

But I hope Steinberg will add a sample preview function just like Battery's "in-kit preview" (which uses the ASIO driver). HALion is nice, but it's incredible that it's lacking this feature.

Didn't know Imagefox also played sound files, I use PicaView (same developer as ImageFox) and it works well too within HALion:

http://www.acdsystems.com/English/Products/ImagingProducts/Utilities/P icaview/index.htm

Have yet to figure out the exact difference between PicaView and ImageFox though :-)

Bye

Toby

http://www.tobybear.de

Hey Chris,

thanx for the tip, gotta check it out. (Listening to "Harmonic Waves" right now. I like your music.)

quote:

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Originally posted by bajongo:
Hey Chris,

thanx for the tip, gotta check it out. (Listening to "Harmonic Waves" right now. I like your music.)

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Thanks a lot!

Chris

hey chris thanks for the link to the audio previewer.
its made my life with halion a lot better

i had an idea for a halion fxp preview workaround as well, so i thought i might share. it's not perfect but here goes...

first it requires importing to your hard disk whatever sample cds you want to use, into fxp files. then (and this is the not so fun part, but once it's done it's done) in halion, compile the fxp into fxb's of 128 programs each. even if you have thousands of patches, the number of fxb's you'll end up with from this will still be pretty easy to manage. and be sure to keep the fxp's around after this is done, too.

then in your sequencer... open two instances of halion... one is your 'permanent' instance, and the other is the 'preview' instance. when you need a particular sound, open up an appropriate fxb in the preview instance, and use *program change* messages, either from your sequencer or your midi controller, to quickly move through the patches and audition them. once you find the sound you are looking for, you can load that single fxp into the permanent instance.

the saving grace is halion's recognition of program change messages. like i said, not perfect, it requires a little bit of setup, but the result is being able to 'audition' groups of 128 patches at a time.

now if only there were a program to compile halion fxp's into fxb files.

Hi osofaux,

you wrote:
first it requires importing to your hard disk whatever sample cds you want to use, into fxp files. then (and this is the not so fun part, but once it's done it's done) in halion, compile the fxp into fxb's of 128 programs each.

The easiest thing is to store the bank IN THE MOMENT after you imported the CD. All fxps are already inside of Halion then: just store the bank.