KVR Audio

HM · Post by HM » Wed Sep 04, 2019 8:23 am

Kontakt, and its format, certainly needs challenge, and other players should be welcomed

I Consider Halion, this flagship, from a big company, looks much more intuitative, as a real instrument rather than another unsexy player-most

Support and libs for the format, big userbase, and online community being alive and in flow, is certainly also important, to me at least,..

Just looked at the Halion-forum at Steinberg.net ,... looked to me more like a ghost-town

So is this realy the flagship ? did the community hide somewhere else ? where ?

Tj Shredder · Post by **Tj Shredder** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 1:19 pm

It is absolutely a flagship, at least in packed features. I bought it during a sale, don’t regret it, but there is a huge but. Its the opposite of being intuitive and inspiring. The documentation is done by a bunch of technocrats who never heard about didactics. I probably need a month of holidays to dive into it without distraction to learn it... (I still want to learn it though...)
Quite the opposite of Bitwigs Grid, which makes you just jump in and happily start to experiment. Number of sounds I made in the Grid: about 50, number of sounds I made in Halion: 0, I bought Halion a year before the Grid went beta...
I believe Halion is more powerful than Kontakt and Falcon together, but I can’t proof it yet... And still, I rather learn Halion than Kontakt which I own as well. If you ever want to give away or sell your sounds, Halion would be an ideal platform, as nobody would be forced to buy it. The sounds run in the free player version without any problems... Ideal to share it with the world. Could even be an alternative to Synthmaker and alike, though its not completely cross platform (Linux support missing)...

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 1:22 pm

Flagship or not... take a look at all the Kontakt libraries, and take a look how many are available for Halion. Of course, Halion can do more than Kontakt, and, it's probably a great instrument, but... it seems to have way fewer users.

Examigan · Post by **Examigan** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 4:25 pm

Halion is on sale for 50% off but I’m not sure when that ends exactly.

Iva · Post by **Iva** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 4:48 pm

NI has just fired 100+ people. They loose sales. Kontakt is stagnating and not cool anymore. Massive X is a complete fault. Think about it.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 4:51 pm

Iva wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 4:48 pm NI has just fired 100+ people. They loose sales.

Why would they?

Iva · Post by **Iva** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 4:54 pm

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/0 ... s-layoffs/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NativeInstrume ... nts_xpost/
https://ask.audio/articles/native-instr ... s-going-on
https://samesound.ru/n/gearnews/112898- ... ad-trouble
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=531106

NI is a dying company right now. I would invest in Steinberg, UVI and East West

starflakeprj · Post by **starflakeprj** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 5:59 pm

Invest in Steinberg? The worst support in history, where some people wait (including me) for weeks before getting an answer. I wouldn't think so. Of the ones you mentioned above only UVI seems quite healthy.

DrEntropy · Post by **DrEntropy** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 6:09 pm

I picked up Halion 6 on the sale too. It has a bit of a learning curve, but I really like how so many things can be done (like building a UI) without scripting. And there is Lua based scripting, which has the potential to be much nicer then the arcane Kontakt scripting language. I am currently diving into Halion 6 and plan to spend a few weeks in 'deep dive' mode.

But I agree the documentation is not very good, especially when it comes to scripting! And I am having trouble finding good tutorials.

The other contender UVI shows a lot of promise as well, especially since Pro Tools has embraced it and bundles it with Pro Tools subscriptions. I have not tried it yet though.

v1o · Post by **v1o** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 6:10 pm

Tj Shredder wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 1:19 pm It is absolutely a flagship, at least in packed features. I bought it during a sale, don’t regret it, but there is a huge but. Its the opposite of being intuitive and inspiring. The documentation is done by a bunch of technocrats who never heard about didactics. I probably need a month of holidays to dive into it without distraction to learn it... (I still want to learn it though...)
Quite the opposite of Bitwigs Grid, which makes you just jump in and happily start to experiment. Number of sounds I made in the Grid: about 50, number of sounds I made in Halion: 0, I bought Halion a year before the Grid went beta...
I believe Halion is more powerful than Kontakt and Falcon together, but I can’t proof it yet... And still, I rather learn Halion than Kontakt which I own as well. If you ever want to give away or sell your sounds, Halion would be an ideal platform, as nobody would be forced to buy it. The sounds run in the free player version without any problems... Ideal to share it with the world. Could even be an alternative to Synthmaker and alike, though its not completely cross platform (Linux support missing)...

Kontakt itself is not exactly intuitive. In fact its a usability nightmare, most users use it as a glorified rompler to play commercial sample libraries. It's a lot easier to actualy sample with the sampler that comes with your DAW such as EXS, Simpler or NNXT.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 6:32 pm

I know it’s just wishful thinking, but what the community needs is a free open source alternative to Kontakt which offers what something like VCV Rack brings to modular... a core application with wrappers for the main plugin formats, providing the basic sample management, a UI toolkit, Python scripting, and its own plugin architecture. Developers could create their sample library interfaces in that format, embed their own or third party plugins such as convolution reverbs, and package the whole thing up in a locked format for sale and distribution. Unlikely to ever happen, but that’s what would stand the best chance of breaking Kontakt’s hold on the market.

felis · Post by **felis** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:43 pm

Examigan wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 4:25 pm Halion is on sale for 50% off but I’m not sure when that ends exactly.

https://www.steinberg.net/en/promotion/ ... _sale.html
"....But hurry — it is only valid from August 15 to September 5, 2019. Save now up to 50%!..."
Ends tomorrow.

Halion is my all time favorite.

If I could have only one - it would be Halion without a doubt.
At 50% off, I consider it a no-brainer.

felis · Post by **felis** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:45 pm

double

DrEntropy · Post by **DrEntropy** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:48 pm

deastman wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 6:32 pm I know it’s just wishful thinking, but what the community needs is a free open source alternative to Kontakt which offers what something like VCV Rack brings to modular...

This would be great! Although not quite what you had in mind, Halion Sonic SE is free and it can load user libraries made with the (pay) Halion 6. So it is sort of like the synth is free but the dev tools are expensive.
There are also some projects out there you might want to look at, e.g. HISE.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Wed Sep 04, 2019 9:34 pm

DrEntropy wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:48 pm
deastman wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 6:32 pm I know it’s just wishful thinking, but what the community needs is a free open source alternative to Kontakt which offers what something like VCV Rack brings to modular...
This would be great! Although not quite what you had in mind, Halion Sonic SE is free and it can load user libraries made with the (pay) Halion 6. So it is sort of like the synth is free but the dev tools are expensive.
There are also some projects out there you might want to look at, e.g. HISE.

Yeah I’m familiar with HISE. I actually have a full Halion license too, although I’m not wild about the workflow. What I’m describing isn’t specifically for me, but what would be required to free all the third party sample library developers from their dependence on Kontakt. I had hopes that Halion or Falcon would be that, but they just haven’t seen the kind of third party adoption needed to compete with Kontakt.

Halion ,... flagship or ?