Steinberg Absolute 7 and Groove Agent 6

[JiggSaw]

I own Halion but can't say I have been very impressed with the GUI or workflow, even the latest version seems dated with lots of 'windows' to work in and tiny fonts, I guess I just don't like the way they do things (but it sounds great, especially the FM). I also have way too many drum VSTS so no real interest in GA and that seems to be the main new update, I'll stick with Superior Drummer ⁠3 for real drums, I have been very happy with it.

I feel exactly the same. I keep going back to it hoping something will click. But the GUI is just terrible/outdated and the workflow feels clunky. Functionality wise, I know it's great but I always get frustrated with it.

[felis]

https://soundiron.com/collections/strin ... xe-machina

Sounds good. Not what I was expecting from the description.

[BJ]

I've been a Halion user for 10+ years but I have no need for any of the other stuff in Absolute. I can't believe the Carrier8 presets for FM Lab are not sold seperately.

[aMUSEd]

I've been a Halion user for 10+ years but I have no need for any of the other stuff in Absolute. I can't believe the Carrier8 presets for FM Lab are not sold seperately.

Yes for me that's the only thing I would want from this.

[Iernesto77]

I own Halion but can't say I have been very impressed with the GUI or workflow, even the latest version seems dated with lots of 'windows' to work in and tiny fonts, I guess I just don't like the way they do things (but it sounds great, especially the FM). I also have way too many drum VSTS so no real interest in GA and that seems to be the main new update, I'll stick with Superior Drummer ⁠3 for real drums, I have been very happy with it.

I feel exactly the same. I keep going back to it hoping something will click. But the GUI is just terrible/outdated and the workflow feels clunky. Functionality wise, I know it's great but I always get frustrated with it.

All that menu diving is what's kept me from getting on the Steinberg train all these years.

[felis]

I updated Absolute from 6 to 7. Might have to get another external drive though. It's a massive download.

[Igro]

I wish they improved the quality of the Halion envelopes. They are quite slow by today's requirements. You won't get the snappiness of Serum, PhasePlant or Pigments (7) and all the others.

[SamDi]

I own Halion but can't say I have been very impressed with the GUI or workflow, even the latest version seems dated with lots of 'windows' to work in and tiny fonts, I guess I just don't like the way they do things (but it sounds great, especially the FM). I also have way too many drum VSTS so no real interest in GA and that seems to be the main new update, I'll stick with Superior Drummer ⁠3 for real drums, I have been very happy with it.

Not sure, if you recognized, but latest HALion version can now scale up to +100%. So beeing small and having tiny fonts is not a problem anymore. Im am glad that they didn't keep it for HALion 8 as they did now with GA 6 to charge extra money.

[SamDi]

double post

[tripleflows]

Yes, HALion 7 is very usable on high-resolution displays finally

Basically all vital synthesis method has been covered in very high quality. For me it seems quite complete by now, the problems of previous versions were mostly eliminated.

Just curious, what do you still miss?

[xmstkvr]

I wish they improved the quality of the Halion envelopes. They are quite slow by today's requirements. You won't get the snappiness of Serum, PhasePlant or Pigments (7) and all the others.

I tested and compared Halion envelopes to Falcon, Kontakt, TAl etc., and many other DAW samplers. They can be exactly the same as within every other sampler. Phase cancel. They have tension curves, so they can be between logarithmic and exponential. Meaning they are as "fast" as any other out there. Not sure what your problem is. I have yet to hear someone complain about that in practical terms.

Though I did notice two Samplers had faster envelopes of all of them, and it was actually to my surprise - MuLab sampler, and BitWig sampler, but that's probably because of the fact that by the nature of MuLab environment itself (all instruments and samplers are pieces of modular parts - sam as Bitwig), it carried envelopes from synths into the sampler. I did notice drums are punchier in their attack phase within some scenarios and shapes. Is that what you are after?

[mothra]

Not sure, if you recognized, but latest HALion version can now scale up to +100%. So beeing small and having tiny fonts is not a problem anymore. Im am glad that they didn't keep it for HALion 8 as they did now with GA 6 to charge extra money.

Considering Groove Agent 5 is rather old, that should've been expected, especially after Halion 7 was released and Cubase 15 came with Groove Agent SE 6.0. Everyone knew GA was next up for an update, and it wasn't going to be a 5.x release..

[SLiC]

I own Halion but can't say I have been very impressed with the GUI or workflow, even the latest version seems dated with lots of 'windows' to work in and tiny fonts, I guess I just don't like the way they do things (but it sounds great, especially the FM). I also have way too many drum VSTS so no real interest in GA and that seems to be the main new update, I'll stick with Superior Drummer ⁠3 for real drums, I have been very happy with it.

Not sure, if you recognized, but latest HALion version can now scale up to +100%. So beeing small and having tiny fonts is not a problem anymore. Im am glad that they didn't keep it for HALion 8 as they did now with GA 6 to charge extra money.

Hi- Yeh, I think it came in with 7.1? Either way, I seem to have trouble with it, works in standalone great but in a DAW (Live/Studio One etc) the option to scale seems to vanish.

Also I still have that problem of the overall plugin size changing depending if your on FM LAB (a nice size for me) or one of the older instruments with a much smaller display, goes from a nice size with FM Lab to too small for my taste. I wonder if they will ever re-work the older instruments (Skylab etc) to give them larger more modern displays like FM Lab?

[sellyoursoul]

Not sure, if you recognized, but latest HALion version can now scale up to +100%. So beeing small and having tiny fonts is not a problem anymore. Im am glad that they didn't keep it for HALion 8 as they did now with GA 6 to charge extra money.

That is such a confusing way for them to describe scaling. It means that scaling can now be 200%. But good to hear that they finally fixed it.

[buffalo roam]

If I've got this right, one thing I see in scanning through Groove Agent 6's manual is that for electronic kits it looks like now the mixer enables setting effects for each individual drum in the kit. For electronic kits in GA 5, the mixer bunched all the drums into just four overlapping clusters of drums to add effects to, so that, say, a compressor and reverb added to the kick drum also got added to a tom the same way, whether you wanted that or not. In GA 5, only the acoustic kits had this individual effects for individual drums feature. I think this is a big step forward for all electronic and acoustic drums to have this flexibility of individual effects for individual drums in GA 6.

Meanwhile, a resizable gui for Halion is a big deal for me. I look forward to not having to squint my eyes so much.

And it looks like the orchestral offerings have expanded a great deal, accounting for the enormous size of the download.