HALion 7

VST, AU, AAX, CLAP, etc. Plugin Virtual Instruments Discussion
Post Reply New Topic
RELATED
PRODUCTS
HALion 7$349.99Buy HALion Sonic 7

Post

twal wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 8:42 pm Oh so it's not so good for Brass, orchestral, woodinds. What about Falcon or is there a megasynth better than these at bread and butter?
I've got Absolute collection, so it's HALion plus extra libraries. And to be honest, the bread and butter sounds are ok if you want to get some ideas down... But they're not 'great'.

Kinda like a synth workstation really - you could make some killer Karaoke tracks, or club covers of songs. :)

They're just quite dated and lack expression I guess is the best way to describe it - but then i've heard majority of the default patches so many times now they're not going to jump out at me anymore, so a little tainted.

Kontakt is the better platform purely because of the libraries available I think. But it can get expensive and take up drive space, you really want to come in at Komplete Ultimate level to get a good set of core sounds. HALion is stronger on the synth side of things I feel.

I'm starting to think that separates is a better way though. For example, I recently got into Ample Sound for their guitar and bass instruments and really HALion isn't getting close to that from what i've used. Kontakt has some nice 'session' instruments, but they're not as good as a dedicated product like Ample. And with all these 'mega' sets you're installing 100's of GB sometimes and only using a small selection....

That is something I like with HALion, you can just drop out .vstsound files and it removes the libraries. It's easy to swap in/out.

The annoyance is that the Yamaha Montage/MODX/Motif/MOXF sounds are pretty good - yet they don't seem to reach the HALion product. There's some great woodwind/flutes on them, not packed with articulations but just very musical to play.... As are most of the sounds.

It's very subjective though. Pick ignorance where you can, and you'll probably be one of the happier musicians out there, because they're all fantastic and have vast scope of creativity. :)

Post

skijumptoes wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 10:20 pm
twal wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 8:42 pm Oh so it's not so good for Brass, orchestral, woodinds. What about Falcon or is there a megasynth better than these at bread and butter?
I've got Absolute collection, so it's HALion plus extra libraries. And to be honest, the bread and butter sounds are ok if you want to get some ideas down... But they're not 'great'.

Kinda like a synth workstation really - you could make some killer Karaoke tracks, or club covers of songs. :)

They're just quite dated and lack expression I guess is the best way to describe it - but then i've heard majority of the default patches so many times now they're not going to jump out at me anymore, so a little tainted.

Kontakt is the better platform purely because of the libraries available I think. But it can get expensive and take up drive space, you really want to come in at Komplete Ultimate level to get a good set of core sounds. HALion is stronger on the synth side of things I feel.

I'm starting to think that separates is a better way though. For example, I recently got into Ample Sound for their guitar and bass instruments and really HALion isn't getting close to that from what i've used. Kontakt has some nice 'session' instruments, but they're not as good as a dedicated product like Ample. And with all these 'mega' sets you're installing 100's of GB sometimes and only using a small selection....

That is something I like with HALion, you can just drop out .vstsound files and it removes the libraries. It's easy to swap in/out.

The annoyance is that the Yamaha Montage/MODX/Motif/MOXF sounds are pretty good - yet they don't seem to reach the HALion product. There's some great woodwind/flutes on them, not packed with articulations but just very musical to play.... As are most of the sounds.

It's very subjective though. Pick ignorance where you can, and you'll probably be one of the happier musicians out there, because they're all fantastic and have vast scope of creativity. :)

Yeah, might have to bite the bullet and get a dedicated bread and butter ensemble from a good company like IK, but I really just want a megasynth that has good ones (cpu is bogged trying to stay away from Komplete atm)

Post

Try sampletank - often foe sale super cheap!
X32 Desk, i9 PC, S88MK3, S1, BWS, Live + PUSH 3, Osmose, RedShift 6 Pro3, Tempera, Syntakt, Digitone II, OP1-F, OPXY, Eurorack, TD27 Drums, Guitars, Basses, Amps and of course lots of pedals!

Post

SLiC wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 11:03 pm Try sampletank - often foe sale super cheap!
Yeah considering it, can you choose which instruments you can dl at a time or do you have to go gung ho on the whole 260 gb dl (I see there is 100 gb so nevermind)

Post

Talking about bread-and-butter sounds, for £85 or so, HALion Symphonic Orchestra is great value. I think it gets a bad rap partly because, at least on my system, CC1 needs to be jogged to wake up each sound. No true legato, not many natural releases on long notes, and the key switches don't stick until you set them to Controller mode in HALion (any better tips for that gratefully received). But look at the price.

Post

twal wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 11:07 pm
SLiC wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 11:03 pm Try sampletank - often foe sale super cheap!
Yeah considering it, can you choose which instruments you can dl at a time or do you have to go gung ho on the whole 260 gb dl (I see there is 100 gb so nevermind)
You can just download certain parts of it if you want.

Post

twal wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 11:07 pm Yeah considering it, can you choose which instruments you can dl at a time or do you have to go gung ho on the whole 260 gb dl (I see there is 100 gb so nevermind)
The trouble with IK stuff is that you can only download content for 180 days or something, and their installers are seperate for PC and Mac. It's a real pain if you're cross platform, but you can manually move it around, or copy to other machines if you work out the two main locations where everything should sit.

I just downloaded everything when I first got it and just put on a NAS drive for future use.

Sampletank I was initially really impressed with, the UI scales nice, some of the sounds are pretty decent, but there's alot of crap there really, everything is so sample heavy too. Even all their Syntronik stuff is a big install and you can't really tweak beyond the sample set.

The MIDI mapping resets itself which is annoying too.

But, It was part of the Total Studio bundle which they offered for £99:
https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/t ... dio-35-max

I mainly got the bundle for MODO Drums, Bass, Amplitube MAX and T-Racks MAX, but you get Sampletank, Hammond, Syntronik all in there too - So was a really good buy considering H7 update on it's own just cost me £85!

In fact, Miroslav isn't all that bad either if you want some basic orchestral sounds - that's included too. I've not used it for a while though as it doesn't run on VST3/Apple Silicon.
Last edited by skijumptoes on Thu Feb 23, 2023 4:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Post

skijumptoes wrote: Thu Feb 23, 2023 1:42 am
twal wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 11:07 pm Yeah considering it, can you choose which instruments you can dl at a time or do you have to go gung ho on the whole 260 gb dl (I see there is 100 gb so nevermind)
The trouble with IK stuff is that you can only download content for 365 days or something, and their installers are seperate for PC and Mac. It's a real pain if you're cross platform, but you can manually move it around, or copy to other machines if you work out the two main locations where everything should sit.

I just downloaded everything when I first got it and just put on a NAS drive for future use.

Sampletank I was initially really impressed with, the UI scales nice, some of the sounds are pretty decent, but there's alot of crap there really, everything is so sample heavy too. Even all their Syntronik stuff is a big install and you can't really tweak beyond the sample set.

The MIDI mapping resets itself which is annoying too.

But, It was part of the Total Studio bundle which they offered for £99:
https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/t ... dio-35-max

I mainly got the bundle for MODO Drums, Bass, Amplitube MAX and T-Racks MAX, but you get Sampletank, Hammond, Syntronik all in there too - So was a really good buy considering H7 update on it's own just cost me £85!

In fact, Miroslav isn't all that bad either if you want some basic orchestral sounds - that's included too. I've not used it for a while though as it doesn't run on VST3/Apple Silicon.
Hey man, thanks for all this information. I'll look into it and consider. Although Sampletank has ben recommended to me several times, it just feels unappealing but yet if I look into it more I may vibe with it more.

Post

Halion is a nice rompler. I stress rompler to both Halion and Halion Sonic libraries. It's really not bad.

Short lists of good VST romplers:

Halion
Nexus 4
Roland Zenology and SRX / JV / XV
Korg Triton / M1 / Wavestation
AIR Xpand!2
Last but certainly not least... the good old Purity from Luxonix / Sonic Cat

sorry Kontakt, Falcon, Sampletank

Post

skijumptoes wrote: Thu Feb 23, 2023 1:42 am The trouble with IK stuff is that you can only download content for 180 days or something, and their installers are seperate for PC and Mac. It's a real pain if you're cross platform, but you can manually move it around, or copy to other machines if you work out the two main locations where everything should sit.
I've never understood why they have that limitation... seems archaic to me.

Post

they should add Hypersonic 2 some time :D
DAW FL Studio Audio Interface Focusrite Scarlett 1st Gen 2i2 CPU Intel i7-7700K 4.20 GHz, RAM 32 GB Dual-Channel DDR4 @2400MHz Corsair Vengeance. MB Asus Prime Z270-K, GPU Gainward 1070 GTX GS 8GB NT Be Quiet DP 550W OS Win10 64Bit

Post

Caine123 wrote: Thu Feb 23, 2023 10:52 am they should add Hypersonic 2 some time :D
AIR Xpand!2 is Hypersonic 2

Post

tristan- wrote: Thu Feb 23, 2023 11:09 am
Caine123 wrote: Thu Feb 23, 2023 10:52 am they should add Hypersonic 2 some time :D
AIR Xpand!2 is Hypersonic 2
viewtopic.php?t=423373
X32 Desk, i9 PC, S88MK3, S1, BWS, Live + PUSH 3, Osmose, RedShift 6 Pro3, Tempera, Syntakt, Digitone II, OP1-F, OPXY, Eurorack, TD27 Drums, Guitars, Basses, Amps and of course lots of pedals!

Post

tristan- wrote: Thu Feb 23, 2023 10:42 am Roland Zenology and SRX / JV / XV
Zenology always seems to gets overlooked, there's some really great sounds there.
I was on Roland Cloud for a while and it was great having my old Roland Fantom/Integra sounds available plus the expansions.

I cancelled my cloud sub way back though. But I see they do a 2.99 option now which is interesting.

Post

Back to Halion 7- I read over at the Steinberg forum that they are 'working' on implementing MPE, so that's something.
X32 Desk, i9 PC, S88MK3, S1, BWS, Live + PUSH 3, Osmose, RedShift 6 Pro3, Tempera, Syntakt, Digitone II, OP1-F, OPXY, Eurorack, TD27 Drums, Guitars, Basses, Amps and of course lots of pedals!

Post Reply

Return to “Instruments”