HALion 7

[Satch1]

HALion goes exactly 2 layers deep with its modulation it seems.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean, but you can use the modulation buses to go extra layers deep. For example:

Slot 1 Source - LFO 1
Modifier - Filt Env

Slot 1 Destination - Bus 1

Slot 2 Source - Bus 1
Modifier - Velocity

Slot 2 Destination - Filt Cutoff

You can even chain buses if you like.

That's awesome! Yeah I need to explore the bus system. Seems a bit weird to do it this way but it makes some kind of sense if you think about it in terms of a normal audio bus but for control signals.

This would indeed make it much more powerful and capable.

Yeah, with the mod mappers as well it’s a pretty flexible modulation system. I like it

[Satch1]

Still to this day it's one of the few synths that has an actual EQ node as an utility filter that is polyphonic. This is _extremely_ useful for transforming a layer/sound to exactly what you want it to be because you can keyboard track it so it stays consistent.

Yes, this is something I find very useful too. I would love to see more instruments with polyphonic EQ’s that can be keyboard tracked.

[Examigan]

IIRC I think Biotek 2 has that feature.

[Satch1]

Thanks. I bought Biotek 2 on a deep discount a while back but not used it much as yet. I’ll have to give it a proper go soon. Same for F’em as well, which I presume will have the same capability.

[zerocrossing]

I think from reading the 300+ page thread on Falcon that most users are like me and relegate Falcon to a preset player because the UI is simply terrible.

When I first got Falcon I felt similarly, but I watched a lot of tutorial videos and read through the manual, and when I was done, I actually totally flipped my mind on Falcon’s interface. Once you learn it, it’s quite clear and easy to use. It’s not intuitive, so you do have to put in some effort to learn it, but Kontakt is worse.

I don’t know about Halion, because unless you’re using it inside a Steinberg DAW, it’s crippled in ways that make it unusable for me. That’s a shame, because it looks really interesting. My employer is talking about putting together a DAW for me, and I requested Cubase and Halion, so maybe I’ll have a chance to use it. I’m not holding my breath, though. There was a lot of noise about doing this so they can control the PC being used to make their content, but after I put together a fairly modest proposal, they shut up about it. Funny how a price tag can do that.

[Gam456]

When I first got Falcon I felt similarly

It's even worse. Exemple I was looking to create an arpegitor/seq

Why they decide to name it FlexiPhraser ?

Why they call a lane CTRL1, CTRL2, CTRL3 and then there is two way to modulate the vcf (mod matrix or in the vcf section), you must link the lane to a midi controler.

contr.102 = CTRL1
contr.103 = CTRL2
contr.104 = CTRL3

Such a mess

[IvyBirds]

I think from reading the 300+ page thread on Falcon that most users are like me and relegate Falcon to a preset player because the UI is simply terrible.

When I first got Falcon I felt similarly, but I watched a lot of tutorial videos and read through the manual, and when I was done, I actually totally flipped my mind on Falcon’s interface. Once you learn it, it’s quite clear and easy to use. It’s not intuitive, so you do have to put in some effort to learn it, but Kontakt is worse.

I don’t know about Halion, because unless you’re using it inside a Steinberg DAW, it’s crippled in ways that make it unusable for me. That’s a shame, because it looks really interesting. My employer is talking about putting together a DAW for me, and I requested Cubase and Halion, so maybe I’ll have a chance to use it. I’m not holding my breath, though. There was a lot of noise about doing this so they can control the PC being used to make their content, but after I put together a fairly modest proposal, they shut up about it. Funny how a price tag can do that.

Yeah as a Cubase user long before I got HALion, HALion7 is a no brainer for me

The other thing about HALion7 is how customizable the UI is. I actually think the factory default UI ain't that great

With a few tweaks I was able to make it exactly what I want. Especially when combined with the Inspector and Note Expressions in Cubase

I wanted to like Falcon, I actually got it long before HALion7, I spent several months with it, read the f*ing manual, amd watched a bunch of videos, including the excellent and close to six hour course on Groove3 and think I learned it pretty well, I just find it extremely frustrating to use, but it sounds great

I think it really comes down to what you are looking to do. I view HALion7 as a modern software take on the Yamaha SY77 and SY99, and the Synclavier II where you can do all kinds of very cool things with samples (for the 1980s), and layer them with kick ass FM (again for the 1980s)

The new enhancements in 7.1 to the spectral oscillator are just incredible, dropping a single sample into it so it can be processed and resynthesized simply stunning results

For your work with old video games, drop a single sample of a sound from an old game into it and boom it's now a fully playable instrument that can be tweaked to your hearts content

Take any synth, hardware, or software from any era, record a few seconds of you playing C4 or C5 drop it in, boom it's a beautiful playable instrument especially cool for pads but anything works

Look what Dom is able to do with a simple EP sample in the first half of this video



Falcon most certainly can't do that

[bmanic]

Not to be a party pooper but Image-Line Harmor has been able to do that for.. hmm 5 years? 10 years? Avenger 2 probably also can do it though I haven't tried that one.

[IvyBirds]

Not to be a party pooper but Image-Line Harmor has been able to do that for.. hmm 5 years? 10 years? Avenger 2 probably also can do it though I haven't tried that one.

I have Harmor and a few other additive plugins that offer resynthesis

The results I am getting from HALion7 are significantly better to my ears however, I am not sure what, and I haven't really researched it but there is something else besides Fourier transform of sine waves run through an additive engine going on behind the scenes. Either that or the actual algorithm they are using is significantly better than anything else I have tried and I am pretty sure I have tried them all

[zerocrossing]

I think from reading the 300+ page thread on Falcon that most users are like me and relegate Falcon to a preset player because the UI is simply terrible.

When I first got Falcon I felt similarly, but I watched a lot of tutorial videos and read through the manual, and when I was done, I actually totally flipped my mind on Falcon’s interface. Once you learn it, it’s quite clear and easy to use. It’s not intuitive, so you do have to put in some effort to learn it, but Kontakt is worse.

I don’t know about Halion, because unless you’re using it inside a Steinberg DAW, it’s crippled in ways that make it unusable for me. That’s a shame, because it looks really interesting. My employer is talking about putting together a DAW for me, and I requested Cubase and Halion, so maybe I’ll have a chance to use it. I’m not holding my breath, though. There was a lot of noise about doing this so they can control the PC being used to make their content, but after I put together a fairly modest proposal, they shut up about it. Funny how a price tag can do that.

Yeah as a Cubase user long before I got HALion, HALion7 is a no brainer for me

The other thing about HALion7 is how customizable the UI is. I actually think the factory default UI ain't that great

With a few tweaks I was able to make it exactly what I want. Especially when combined with the Inspector and Note Expressions in Cubase

I wanted to like Falcon, I actually got it long before HALion7, I spent several months with it, read the f*ing manual, amd watched a bunch of videos, including the excellent and close to six hour course on Groove3 and think I learned it pretty well, I just find it extremely frustrating to use, but it sounds great

I think it really comes down to what you are looking to do. I view HALion7 as a modern software take on the Yamaha SY77 and SY99, and the Synclavier II where you can do all kinds of very cool things with samples (for the 1980s), and layer them with kick ass FM (again for the 1980s)

The new enhancements in 7.1 to the spectral oscillator are just incredible, dropping a single sample into it so it can be processed and resynthesized simply stunning results

For your work with old video games, drop a single sample of a sound from an old game into it and boom it's now a fully playable instrument that can be tweaked to your hearts content

Take any synth, hardware, or software from any era, record a few seconds of you playing C4 or C5 drop it in, boom it's a beautiful playable instrument especially cool for pads but anything works

Look what Dom is able to do with a simple EP sample in the first half of this video



Falcon most certainly can't do that

That’s the main reason I wanted it, but until it gets at least polyphonic aftertouch, I won’t get it for my personal use, and my company went from “we need to get all your work onto a company’s PC ASAP!” to being silent after I gave them the proposal. Like my friend Cindy said, “money changes everything.”

[IvyBirds]

That’s the main reason I wanted it, but until it gets at least polyphonic aftertouch, I won’t get it for my personal use, and my company went from “we need to get all your work onto a company’s PC ASAP!” to being silent after I gave them the proposal. Like my friend Cindy said, “money changes everything.”

Just have them get you the new Montage M 88 key to use as a new Controller, and a full blown i9 PC system

[zerocrossing]

That’s the main reason I wanted it, but until it gets at least polyphonic aftertouch, I won’t get it for my personal use, and my company went from “we need to get all your work onto a company’s PC ASAP!” to being silent after I gave them the proposal. Like my friend Cindy said, “money changes everything.”

Just have them get you the new Montage M 88 key to use as a new Controller, and a full blown i9 PC system

I barely have room for a 61 key Korg MIDI controller.

Going way off topic, I think it's funny how ignorant people are about how I do my job and what it takes. I think they had some idea that I needed $400 worth of software, and that I'd just move my software licenses and other hardware onto their machine. Uh... no. Even without software, a decent audio interface, MIDI controller, monitors, etc, ends up being fairly expensive. I could probably get away with using all freeware stuff, but I need to be able to open old projects and make changes. For instance, we're always adding VO files and I have a chain of effects for each type and having to go back and recreate those chains with freeware would take a lot of time, and why would you pay me for a day of my extra work when it would set you back more than just buying the software?

[gentleclockdivider]

Is anyone using halyon outside of cubase , if so are there any major cons ?

[BBFG#]

Is anyone using halyon outside of cubase , if so are there any major cons ?

Not extensively yet since I just finally upgraded to 7.1. I had an issue with certain 3rd party libraries that showed as having no license but showed up without issue after a complete system reboot. Also got hit with a Windows update that again, installed everything I had stripped off it and that added an additional 30%-60% on top of application usage. Once I got those stripped again, I've tried in in standalone, Cubase13, Bitwig4.4 with no issue and better, smoother and quicker response. Have yet to try it in Waveform13 or Mixbus7.
(Usage back between 18%-28% in DAW, 13%-17% in standalone.)
But it all seems great so far.

[IvyBirds]

Is anyone using halyon outside of cubase , if so are there any major cons ?

The only con is Cubase is designed for using Note Expressions which can be found in Cubase

So things like polyphonic Aftertouch won't work without Cubase

Outside of that you won't have any issues, some of the screens are similar to what you have in Cubase so familiarity with Cubase probably makes it a tiny bit easier at first

I have used it with Studio One and have run it extensively in stand alone mode both at gigs off a laptop and on studio. Most of the time when doing sound design I just load the stand alone version