KVR Audio

FrankFriessnegg · Post by **FrankFriessnegg** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 1:15 pm

Just for information: Steinberg already delivered the product in Germany. According to my wife (always a good source) my Halion Sonic is waiting for me at home. If I'll manage it somehow, I'll make a screencast over the weekend and will post the link here

Frank Frießnegg

danbroad · Post by **danbroad** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 3:39 pm

Frank - you're going to be the target of a hundred questions!

Anyway, my only question so far is - can you use flexphraser to play multiple arp parts live, like a Motif or similar?

bobbybland · Post by **bobbybland** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:28 pm

FrankFriessnegg wrote:Just for information: Steinberg already delivered the product in Germany. According to my wife (always a good source) my Halion Sonic is waiting for me at home. If I'll manage it somehow, I'll make a screencast over the weekend and will post the link here

Frank Frießnegg

You are indeed a nice chap.Thanks in advance

Let us know your thoughts on sound quality and oh the chord features...

your a lucky man!

FrankT · Post by **FrankT** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:47 pm

Just installed it - soundwise very good and to my ears totally at par with highend VSts like Omnisphere (Note: I am not saying it does what Omni does!).

So soundwise no need for worries if people weren't confident based on the published demo-sounds. Nice pianos, nice guitars, excellent strings, electronic stuff and and and. Very fresh sounds. Loading times are excellent on my quadcore. Haven't had the time to explore flexphraser etc yet.

Looks like here's a modern VST workstation - finally! - and I think I will have lots of fun with it.

Note: first impressions after noodling for 30 minutes !

djanthonyw · Post by **djanthonyw** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:52 pm

Note to anyone that has it, feel free to post your own sound demos!

bobbybland · Post by **bobbybland** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:55 pm

Frank thanks for the reply! Can't wait to see your screencast - this is better then a s.o.s imo lol

soooo wanting mine now

danbroad · Post by **danbroad** » Fri Jul 02, 2010 6:19 pm

Nice first impressions, Frank. If you find that you can play a workstation-like 'combi' [complete with drum grooves and basslines, if you understand what I mean] let us know - it's the only thing holding me back from buying this instead of another XS...

quantum7 · Post by **quantum7** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 2:58 am

I am getting rid of my Motif Rack XS due to not using it much, but I am planning on upgrading from HS2 to Halion Sonic. Do the sounds compare somewhat to the Motif XS?

bobbybland · Post by **bobbybland** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 3:07 am

The chord feature looks amazing,I had a Korg M3 for a short while,and loved the chord triggers. Steinberg/Yamaha really looks like they came through with a nice treat for us regarding that feature. More reviews please

FrankT · Post by **FrankT** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 6:03 am

quantum7 wrote:I am getting rid of my Motif Rack XS due to not using it much, but I am planning on upgrading from HS2 to Halion Sonic. Do the sounds compare somewhat to the Motif XS?

I played a Yamahas70 xs recently, which contains the full motif xs engine. Playing Halion Sonic does not give me the feeling I am missing out on anything soundwise compared to it. Here is an overview of the HS sounds that you might want to compare to your Motif: ftp://ftp.steinberg.net/Download/VSTi_H ... isting.pdf As said before, I am very much impressed by the sound-quality! Flexphrase: you can have four layers per sound and assign a flexphrase to any of these layers plus a flexphrase for the program. You can choose from approx 1500 flexphrases which are organised by e.g.classic arps, chord sequences, guitar an plucked, strings etc. This is very powerful althoug I doubt that you can do all the chord intelligence and live-tricks you can do with a Motif? I leave that comparison to peps who own both. Here is a link to the operational manual of HS, which might help to compare capabilities: ftp://ftp.steinberg.net/Download/VSTi_H ... Manual.pdf The HS Media Bay is well organised and damn fast. It is actually the best organisation of sounds I have seen so far in a VST - better btw than Cubase ver5 Media Bay, so I hope they will take some of that back to Cubase. Did I mention how good load times are? Very satisfying!

So far all good, a very powerful instrument/workstation! If I wanted to nag about something it might be the filter quality which I am not totally convinced of - which of course is always very subjective.

TiUser · Post by **TiUser** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 6:40 am

Interesting thread.

I am too looking for a sw replacement for a (arranger) workstation.

My point is usually that I don't miss basic sound quality - but expressive playability (without dumb 1:1 keyswitching), instant response (how instant is "fast" sample loading?), simple handling and additional features of workstations.

I am not really a DAW guy. For jamming it's by far too much effort and needs to much knowledge beyond keyboard playing - like drumming for instance. Usually it sound's worse when you are not a gifted musician. Technologies like "super articulation" for solo voices and "mega voices" for background accompaniment or phrases are great for live playing but I haven't seen anything that comes even close to that in software - either in "realism" or usability/playability. PC+software can sound better, but not if you take comparably few time and effort...

I really like jamming with styles but I have to say I haven't seen any serious software replacement on a professional level. Usually any $500 psr keyboard sounds and works better and is much easier to handle. The software solutions that are there are dumb midi / GM based style players... but without matching high quality sounds it's a pain to make that work or sound great. The cord recognition is usually also no match. One post suggested "Catania"... forget that, it's a beefed up arpeggiator - no accompaniment cord recognition on Yamaha's level. Yamaha's experience and technologies are far superior. Korg offers advanced technologies too, like Karma (now quite the same I know) or their styles definition which is even more complex than Yamaha's.

Finally - I am watching this thread with continuing interest - even my current impression is that his new Halion product is again inferior to HW arranger workstations - from point of usability and integration.

djanthonyw · Post by **djanthonyw** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 8:57 am

So my question to anyone that's gotten it, do you consider it a true successor to Hypersonic?

danbroad · Post by **danbroad** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 9:52 am

There are a great many ROMplers with superior sound quality to hardware - if you want a realistic brass, bass or drumkit there a hundred gigabyte libraries available. For me, the 'workstation' approach has ease of use, rather than ultimate sound quality, as its main purpose.

I'm hoping that the Yamaha connection here might bring some of that hardware ethos to software, moreso than the Kontakt/Sampletanks of this world. They are more 'hardware sampler'.

TiUser · Post by **TiUser** » Sat Jul 03, 2010 10:31 am

danbroad wrote:There are a great many ROMplers with superior sound quality to hardware - if you want a realistic brass, bass or drumkit there a hundred gigabyte libraries available. For me, the 'workstation' approach has ease of use, rather than ultimate sound quality, as its main purpose.

I'm hoping that the Yamaha connection here might bring some of that hardware ethos to software, moreso than the Kontakt/Sampletanks of this world. They are more 'hardware sampler'.

I think the "quality" itself isn't the main point.

You can't really play brass, strings or guitar realistically on a keyboard. What a good workstation has to do imho is to grab the essence of the keyboard playing and transform that into a convincing performance. If some of the typical articulations are thrown in proper this can make a performance convincing - independent from the basic sample quality. Automatic cord voicing, divisi, sections and related things are still underexposed in todays workstations.

Same with accompaniment or midi backings. It can be a frustrating task to make GM files sound great with high end sample libs...

Live sound is often far inferior to studio sound - so it's important that the samples work even under bad conditions.

Another story is that handling of huge samples usually avoids instant switching. This is again no quality issue, just a lack of todays systems capabilities.

I sometimes ask myself if the gap between these different concepts will ever be closed...

BJ · Post by BJ » Sat Jul 03, 2010 12:09 pm

FrankT wrote:Just installed it - soundwise very good and to my ears totally at par with highend VSts like Omnisphere (Note: I am not saying it does what Omni does!).

So soundwise no need for worries if people weren't confident based on the published demo-sounds. Nice pianos, nice guitars, excellent strings, electronic stuff and and and. Very fresh sounds. Loading times are excellent on my quadcore. Haven't had the time to explore flexphraser etc yet.

Looks like here's a modern VST workstation - finally! - and I think I will have lots of fun with it.

Note: first impressions after noodling for 30 minutes !

May I ask which operating system and sequencer are you using with it?

I want to upgrade from Hypersonic but I work on windows XP SP3 with Reaper and I wanna know if this baby will work for me.