Halion 6 vs Falcon

[chk071]

Halion surely looks the most interesting of "those" synths (those flagship sampler, granular, wavetable, whatever synths).

[ChamomileShark]

I mainly got Falcon because of the MPE presets - but I get the feeling it's not too hard to use Halion in the same way.

[Echoes in the Attic]

I mainly got Falcon because of the MPE presets - but I get the feeling it's not too hard to use Halion in the same way.

Only if you have Cubase. Otherwise no mpe, except the pitch bend per note.

[deastman]

I guess there’s no upgrade path from the Halion Sonic SE that comes bundled with Cubase?

-Or-

Does anyone know if the current half off sale applies to crossgrades?

[ChamomileShark]

I mainly got Falcon because of the MPE presets - but I get the feeling it's not too hard to use Halion in the same way.

Only if you have Cubase. Otherwise no mpe, except the pitch bend per note.

I am on Cubase - probably should of mentioned that.

[ChamomileShark]

I guess there’s no upgrade path from the Halion Sonic SE that comes bundled with Cubase?

-Or-

Does anyone know if the current half off sale applies to crossgrades?

I think it doesn't. I tried last night.

[ChamomileShark]

and Re Sonic SE, no.

[egbert101]

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[XkaliberMoose]

Having a tough time deciding between the two monster synths. Halion has the great re-sythesis and Falcon has IRCAM stretch. I compared Halion's pitch shifting with Kontakt and Serato sample and sounds pretty much the same quality in terms of artifacts, but Halion seems to be louder and a little fuller. Anyone know how the pitch shifting in Halion 6 compares to Falcon's IRCAM stretching?

[Sampleconstruct]

Having a tough time deciding between the two monster synths. Halion has the great re-sythesis and Falcon has IRCAM stretch. I compared Halion's pitch shifting with Kontakt and Serato sample and sounds pretty much the same quality in terms of artifacts, but Halion seems to be louder and a little fuller. Anyone know how the pitch shifting in Halion 6 compares to Falcon's IRCAM stretching?

IRCAM Stretch is not meant to be used in real time (CPU hog), it's fantastic for offline rendering, you can separate transients from tonal and noise components and have plenty of options to maintain the original quality of the sample (formants/stereo image) even at extreme stretching times/pitch transpositions. Also Falcon has FM, physical modeling and a dedicated drum synthesizer plus it offers various phase distortion algos in the wavetable synth (Falcon only has formant shifting in it's wavetable synth). The wavetable editor and quality of re-synthesis is extremely good in HALion 6, Falcon doesn't have a wavetable editor, it's just a wavetable player really.

Here is a video I made explaining the wavetable synth in HALion 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOuTGhfU1Lo

[XkaliberMoose]

IRCAM Stretch is not meant to be used in real time (CPU hog), it's fantastic for offline rendering, you can separate transients from tonal and noise components and have plenty of options to maintain the original quality of the sample (formants/stereo image) even at extreme stretching times/pitch transpositions. Also Falcon has FM, physical modeling and a dedicated drum synthesizer plus it offers various phase distortion algos in the wavetable synth (Falcon only has formant shifting in it's wavetable synth). The wavetable editor and quality of re-synthesis is extremely good in HALion 6, Falcon doesn't have a wavetable editor, it's just a wavetable player really.

Here is a video I made explaining the wavetable synth in HALion 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOuTGhfU1Lo
[/quote]

Great video. I was watching some of your other videos earlier. They really highlight how good Halion's re-synthesis is. At first, I just wanted to get a powerful sampler that could give me higher quality pitch shifting than Kontakt. I already have a lot of synths, (which I can combine with the sampler in Reason) so I wasn't too interested in the synthesis aspect of Halion and Falcon. But the re-synthesis in Halion is making it difficult for me to pass up, even though the IRCAM stretch seems to offer what I was originally after. Would you say that Halion's wavetable editor and re-synthesis are its only advantages over Falcon? In terms of sampling, can Falcon pretty much do everything that Halion can?

[Sampleconstruct]

HALiin 6 can actually sample and it has a more advanced sample and loop editor. It also has this feature where you can skip a predetermined portion at the beginning of a sample when playing legate notes, very useful for brass or string samples where you want to lose the attack portion when playing legato lines. The only gripe with Halions wt synth is that you can't export the wavetables to other synths as it uses it's own native format.

[rlared]

Having a tough time deciding between the two monster synths. Halion has the great re-sythesis and Falcon has IRCAM stretch. I compared Halion's pitch shifting with Kontakt and Serato sample and sounds pretty much the same quality in terms of artifacts, but Halion seems to be louder and a little fuller. Anyone know how the pitch shifting in Halion 6 compares to Falcon's IRCAM stretching?

Are you just worried about re-synthesis and pitch shifting, or are you evaluating based on other features? They're both great but they have some significant differences.

[liquid234]

The only gripe with Halions wt synth is that you can't export the wavetables to other synths as it uses it's own native format.

Interesting, thanks. I have several wavetable synths, but none with a WT editor. Looking into the options. And Halion’s looks top-notch. So i assume there is no easy way or some other program to convert Halion’s WT format to some other synth, say Serum or WaveMapper, could use? I wonder if Steinberg could be convinced to change that, as it doesn’t seem to be a proprietary concern. (And then again there are the whispers of an imminent release of Dune 3 with an included wavetable editor. Decisions...)

[ansolas]

How does sample editing compares in both ? eg trim, normalise etc ?
How do you zoom samples in falcon ? is it possible with the mouse wheel or drag the waveform ?

Is it meanwhile possible to use the envelope to modulate a layer filter ?

In the video he says that it is not possible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9-BF26sxus