Halion or Falcon?

[IvyBirds]

I have both Falcon 3 and HALion7 as well as Pigments and Omnisphere

HALion7 has become my favorite of them by far.

[Jac459]

I have both Falcon 3 and HALion7 as well as Pigments and Omnisphere

HALion7 has become my favorite of them by far.

Sure but can you elaborate of the reasons why ?

[SLiC]

I would be curious as well, I have barely used HALion7 since getting it (mainly for the FM stuff) and would rank it 4th in that list. I think I just don't like anything Steinberg- the copy protection, updaters*, browser, GUI. UX...it all looks so dated. Sure, the instruments sound great (and it can actually sample!) but to me not better than the others listed, and I Omnisphere is the top of that particular list closely followed by Falcon (which is better value in the current sale. Falcon has also had amazing free and continuous updates sinch launch, even major updates are free, HALioin gets almost no updates other than paid!

HALion has horrible' phone home' copy protection, constantly having to log in to Steinberg and close pop ups...I actually find ilok far less intrusive !

(* To just install and use HALion Steinberg installed Activation Manager, eLicence Control Centre, Steinberg Download Assistant and Steinberg Library manager!!)

[Jac459]

Neither.
Demo Pigments instead.
https://www.arturia.com/products/softwa ... s/overview

Dude...I get why you are hung up on Pigments(I have it myself)...but Falcon 3 is a vast universe of sound creation....it's an absolute monster and Falcon 3 is on sale for $200! My advice...the man should take advantage of UVI's sale price and hold off on Pigments....or...he should just buy both, as Pigments 5 is still on sale for $100.

I'm not "hung up" on Pigments as much as I'm completely disappointed in UVI and Steinberg. At this time, Arturia is a far safer bet that can be all that someone just getting back into the mix would need. I'm just advising to stay away from those obvious rabbit holes of entanglement to start.
(And that includes NI as well.)

And if I'm "hung up" on anything right now, it's trying to find Native Linux plugins to do multiengine synths. I might mention Biotek2 in that regard, but it's not quite the level of Pigments yet and AIU, they don't allow license transfers.

But UVI which provide reasonable pricing and excellent support of their products is a bit weird to put in the same bag than NI imho.

I mean it is fair to not love Falcon, it is a difficult beast, but objectively, the company is good (excellent support, regular relevant issues, continuous overall quality, ...).

[kelvyn]

For me it’s definitely Falcon - I own Halion, Pigments, Kontakt, Omnisphere etc - it’s complicated - depending on how deep you want to dive - but is relatively simple if simple is all you want out of it. UVI are great with updates in comparison to Steinberg.

[BBFG#]

Neither.
Demo Pigments instead.
https://www.arturia.com/products/softwa ... s/overview

Dude...I get why you are hung up on Pigments(I have it myself)...but Falcon 3 is a vast universe of sound creation....it's an absolute monster and Falcon 3 is on sale for $200! My advice...the man should take advantage of UVI's sale price and hold off on Pigments....or...he should just buy both, as Pigments 5 is still on sale for $100.

I'm not "hung up" on Pigments as much as I'm completely disappointed in UVI and Steinberg. At this time, Arturia is a far safer bet that can be all that someone just getting back into the mix would need. I'm just advising to stay away from those obvious rabbit holes of entanglement to start.
(And that includes NI as well.)

And if I'm "hung up" on anything right now, it's trying to find Native Linux plugins to do multiengine synths. I might mention Biotek2 in that regard, but it's not quite the level of Pigments yet and AIU, they don't allow license transfers.

But UVI which provide reasonable pricing and excellent support of their products is a bit weird to put in the same bag than NI imho.

I mean it is fair to not love Falcon, it is a difficult beast, but objectively, the company is good (excellent support, regular relevant issues, continuous overall quality, ...).

iLok, and their samples always sound lacking and mediocre to me. The most interest I've ever had with them is Falcon, as it gives those mediocre samples a great boost, but not enough to ever jump on. And the few communications I've had with them have raised more flags than direct answers. The one product is promising, but IMO, the company doesn't deliver as one I want to have any relationship with. And iLok is a company I will never trust again.

[IvyBirds]

Sure but can you elaborate of the reasons why ?

Sure first and foremost with HALion7 you get a TON of control over how many cores the software uses, how much RAM gets allocated, how stuff gets streamed from your HD etc

You can't do any of that Falcon and Falcon doesn't even do multicore support

The reason you get a synth like Falcon or HALion7 is to make deep complex patches, and Falcon starts to choke LONG before HALion7 even with a fast SSD, an i9 and 32GB of ram because its 2024 and Falcon is unable to use any if it

Beyond that HALion7 has a really good factory library of samples.

HALion7 has FM Lab which is an insanely powerful 8op FM with all kinds of tools.

Besides importing WAV Files, you can use HALion7 to make samples, HALion7 can see any audio port your DAW can and makes it SUPER easy to semiautomaticly make samples from hardware synths, and software synths using MIDI. It's super simple yet offers a lot of control

Besides the deep sampling and synthesis engine and the FM, you also have a fantastic Granular engine. The Wavetable Engine makes it easy and fun to turn any WAV file into a Wavetable and I find that process easier and faster in HALion7 than Falcon. The spectral engine is also really cool with the way it takes a sample and resynthesis and turns it into something else by grabbing just a section of the sample and making it something new

Then you can take all of these different engines and make complex layered patches. This is where HALion7's ability to use multiple cores and efficiently use your ram allows you to use your computer's power to really make cool sounds

[IvyBirds]

Should also add that HALion7 imports .iso files from old sample CDs in Akai and Roland formats. Both the patches and the samples themselves. There is a lot of gold to be mined there. I have been told those are quite easy to find on Archive dot org but I don't know if that's true or not

[Jac459]

Sure but can you elaborate of the reasons why ?

Sure first and foremost .....
....
... cool sounds

Thanks for the detailed answer mate!

[felis]

Halion for me.

That said, I've been happy enough with it that Falcon (and most others) have never even tempted me

[mothra]

Never used, or even seen, Falcon, but I own Halion 7 and Pigments, Halion no question. I only bust out my EMU now when I HAVE to have 'that sound'. A lot of my older 'in progress' tracks have turned into Halion instruments even. Pigments is nice if you don't have another sampler, but on the rare occasion I open it, it's not for its sample engine. I'd rather use TAL Sampler over Pigments in that department.

[kimearo]

I don't own Halion, but had the same question a few month ago. What my learnings where after reading reddit, kvr and vi-control: both are roughly the same, insanely powerful and well regarded. I would say the distribution among responders was 50/50 - did not notice a clear winner. I bought Falcon eventually, just because had a nice offer from KVR's buy/sell forum. Don't regret it, it's a very deep instrument.

Also, I hope you know what are you gonna do with it. I'm considering of selling it, because I have not been doing multilayer complex patches, for simpler sounds I would recommend checking PhasePlant. Although, if I was allowed to keep only one of my synth it would be Falcon =)

[Funky40]

vs. the Granular engine, just speaking vs. "creative sample mangling" : Halion 7 !


i´ve tested both side by side, trying to achive a similarly well working "realtime-play, jammable" patch. Halion 7 has some details better. Which made it win by a long shot in real live => for that usecase.

[trusampler]

I think Halion 7 sounds cheap, or poorly sampled. Never been a fan of it.UVI on the other hand sounds incredible.

[BBFG#]

I think Halion 7 sounds cheap, or poorly sampled. Never been a fan of it.UVI on the other hand sounds incredible.

I think UVI sounds cheap, flat and lifeless. Can't find a way to be a fan of it. Steinberg on the other hand sounds beyond incredible.


Both are moot since one uses a parasite license and the other has introduced a poison pill license though.