Halion or Falcon?

[SamDi]

So I just bought a new computer.. looking to go back into making music. Don't want lots of stuff (plugins..) What your opinion? Should I get Halion 7 or Falcon 3? another option is to pay for the UVI subscription.. But I'm not sure I have the time to use all of these stuff
I'm more into rock, metal, ambiance, instrumental music.. I think the vintage vault will have a lot of benefit for me.. Im not sure Steinberg has something similar.

So you wanna make rock, metal and instrumental music on a computer? I really don't get that

I own both and as you can imagine, the answer to your question is - "it depends".

If you just want to have realistic sampled instruments NI Kontakt and 3rd-party libraries are still the king. (and as far as I have heard, read, etc. nothing comes close to Kontakt when we talk about plain sampler capabilities)

Falcon and Halion are also full-fledged samplers, not in the Kontakt-tier-range, but thererfore they offer some synth-engine capabilities instead. Furthermore they offer (similar to Kontakt) a huge structure of layers, arrangable to programs, arrangable to a multiprogram setup channels, busses, aux-channels and many effects, which you can apply everywhere in this structure.

But this comes with a price:
-complexity und no fun to make your own sounds with these instruments, unless you have a clear goal and know what you wanna do. But if you have no goal, there's nothing which stimulates your creativity or invites to play.
-the synth engines are rather "jack of all trades, master of none". So amazing sounds can be created with layering, effects and so on, but if need a specific synthesized sound, often dedicated synths do the job a lot better.

The question is, what do you wanna achieve with Halion or Falcon?

-play presets/libraries
UVI has more libraries to sell for Falcon, than Steinberg has for Halion.
But Halion has a decent amount of usable bread & butter sounds as stock content, while Falcon just has some amazing sounding presets, but they might not fit to what you need.
So Halion is a little bit like a workstation in software and for sure a good workhorse for producing, when you need some standard sounds. Falcon is with it's libraries rather in the synth and sound design realm.

-make your own sounds
Making presets with Falcon is PITA, making presets with Halion is PITA². So if you intend to make your own presets and want to remain a little rest of fun, go Falcon

-do sound design
Falcon wins there easily: you can combine as many synth engines, modulators, effects, scripts and event processors as you want. As mentioned before: for just making a quick sound in Falcon sucks, but if you have a "serious project" and you are willing to go the extra mile, it turns into fun, because, there are not so many borders, which limit you. I just finished some scripting ideas these days in Falcon and I am really impressed, what you can achieve.

-play an instrument
While Falcon is very good for own projects and sound desing, there is a thing, where Halion excels: beeing an instrument

As mentioned before, it comes with a lo of standard sounds and you can find them in a really professional browser with tagging, searching capabilities I would say it's one of the most capable preset browsers on the market.

You need strings? Click on the tag and choose one from dozens of them, the same with brass, winds, synth sounds, whatever. Everything is there.

If you are a real (keyboard playing) musician, Halions supports many things: load old standard sample CDs, load Yamaha FM-synths sysex files, play GM sounds, support of many MIDI standards other VSTs don't (e.g. Sustenuto). I would say it's the VST plugin, which comes closest to be a workstation in SW.

OK, let's summarize:
Sound design projects, access to huge amount of vintage synth libraries --> Falcon
Bread and butter sounds, workstation in the box, producing workhorse --> Halion
High quality instrument sample libraries --> Kontakt
Creamy synth sounds (where the cream comes from synth and not from the Fx and/or layering) --> another specialist

[DrGonzo]

Making presets with Falcon is PITA, making presets with Halion is PITA².

Amen to that.

[_leras]

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

Dude... What the hell is with this annoying all bold font....? Please don't ever think to add CAPITALS!!!

[sonicvision]

I have Halion 7 and Falcon 3 and vastly prefer the latter in terms of GUI and UX...just more modern and easier to use. UVI offers constant free updates and has a suburb every growing library of cool stuff to use with it, Halion rarely gets updates and has far less support or packages to use with it.

Falcon is the ultimate 'if you can only have one' synth, covers just about every type of synthesis and has amazing FX and sequencing ability (modular like sequencers inbuilt). Pigments is also a cool synth and good value, but isn't a multitimbral 'workstation' or suitable for of playing massive orchestral sample libraries! Falcon is a bit more like Kontakt + Pigments...

I have both Halion (7) and Falcon (3.1) and can't see how one looks "more modern". They both look similar. The sampling functions are far superior in Halion. As for updates, well Halion is at 7 and Falcon at 3.1, hmm. If it's true Falcon updates are always free then that is awesome. They are both good but if I had to choose one it would be Halion.

[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.

Fixed that boldness for you.
I'm not "hung up" on Pigments. I own HALion7 as well. I might have bought Falcon at some point if it ever shed the iLok. But as a suggestion to someone that has none of them, Pigments is far more immediate and direct at what it does and let's face it, Arturia is an easier and more straight forward company to deal with.

[IvyBirds]

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.

Fixed that boldness for you.
I'm not "hung up" on Pigments. I own HALion7 as well. I might have bought Falcon at some point if it ever sheds the iLok. But as a suggestion to someone that has none of them, Pigments is far more immediate and direct at what it does and let's face it, Arturia is an easier and more straight forward company to deal with.

I own Pigments, Falcon 3.1, and HALion7

With Falcon you can download and install the iLock virtual software once downloaded you use it to activate Falcon and you are done

With HALion7 you download and install the Steinberg Software Manager and you use that to download and activate HALion7 and any other software Steinberg offers

With Pigments you download and install Arturia's software manager and you use that download and activate Pigments and any other software Arturia sells

Not really seeing any of those as obtrusive in anyway

Pigments is easier to learn than either Falcon or HALion7 because it's capabilities are significantly less than either Falcon or HALion7.

I know both Falcon and HALion7 pretty well, but prefer HALion7 because unlike Falcon it can actually sample, it's FM capabilities are far superior, and I love dropping samples into the Spectral Synth Engine

I also find the GUI of HALion7 easier to get around as it's just way more logically laid out for the way my brain works. Other people may find the GUI of Falcon better because of the way it's laid out just works better for them.

Both Falcon and HALion7 are to audio what Photoshop is to photography. You can go very very deep down the rabbit hole and transform a sample/photograph into something else magical, or start with nothing and create your masterpiece from scratch

Pigments is nice but somewhat limited in comparison, it's more like a nice photo editing app you use on your phone. It works and can do a lot, some of it might even seem magical but doesn't give you the options that deeper tools use

[BBFG#]

And that many don't use anyway...

[trusampler]

That's a tough choice, Both are really good. Just get one now, and plan on buying the other when you can. Flip a coin, they're both really good.

[kraster]

I also find the GUI of HALion7 easier to get around as it's just way more logically laid out for the way my brain works. Other people may find the GUI of Falcon better because of the way it's laid out just works better for them.

Also the fact that in Halion you can set up the GUI exactly to your taste.

The amount of configuration options is insane. As many divisions as you want, menus, submenus, being able to pin sections, being able to float windows. etc etc.

I have multiple window configurations for different tasks and it's simplicity itself to just swap between them.

I have one configuration that's just the sample editor and I can make that full screen or another where I have the oscillator section, filters and envelopes all in one window with nothing else.

It's one of Halion's strongest features, imho.

I always feel like I'm constantly fiddling with Falcon's GUI, collapsing sections, moving things out of the way etc.

[IvyBirds]

I also find the GUI of HALion7 easier to get around as it's just way more logically laid out for the way my brain works. Other people may find the GUI of Falcon better because of the way it's laid out just works better for them.

Also the fact that in Halion you can set up the GUI exactly to your taste.

The amount of configuration options is insane. As many divisions as you want, menus, submenus, being able to pin sections, being able to float windows. etc etc.

I have multiple window configurations for different tasks and it's simplicity itself to just swap between them.

I have one configuration that's just the sample editor and I can make that full screen or another where I have the oscillator section, filters and envelopes all in one window with nothing else.

It's one of Halion's strongest features, imho.

I always feel like I'm constantly fiddling with Falcon's GUI, collapsing sections, moving things out of the way etc.

I am the exact same way. Falcon has been reduced to pretty much a preset player for me. But I am having lots of fun just making a 5-10 second long recording of pad presets in Falcon and then dropping it into the Spectral Synth in HALion7

There is also some good stuff in there to sample, and then bring into HALion7 and turn into a Wavetable also

I have even subscribed to the UVI Subscription for a month here and there over the past year to get access to the many great libraries that I can then load into HALion7 especially of the vintage synth instruments they have

[seismicfm]

Falcon 3 is the most powerful and best sounding synth I never use.

[serge]

+1 on Falcon. Especially now, with the updated browser experience & sound previews. Falcon's highly flexible, extendible. Their sound packs are high quality and a great way to learn the instrument and module use. My favorite and most used expansions/sounds: Drum Designer, Subculture, Savage. I love that the expansions will have an interface script with a UI that makes the instrument super simple. And then, if you get to a sound you like, you can drop under the hood and modify oscs, effects, arps. For instance, Savage expansion pack has a nice bass patch preset called Complextro, which has 4 layers of arp. You can use the instrument tree to get right into the arps for all 4 layers, modifying pretty much anything to make the sound your own. So while a preset has a simple UI that distills hundreds of parameters to like 5-6 controls, you can quickly traverse the complexity and modify just about anything you need to, to make the sound yours. It's such a great instrument, with an amazing set of sound ware available to it. Lots of built in FX, lots of creative arps/sequencers, modulators. I've been using Falcon in pretty much every track.

And with the $149 price, plus a $50 voucher, it's in the no-brainer territory now.

[biberact]

And with the $149 price, plus a $50 voucher, it's in the no-brainer territory now.

Falcon's price dropped so fast... I'll wait for $99.
At least.

[Gam456]

And with the $149 price, plus a $50 voucher, it's in the no-brainer territory now.

Falcon's price dropped so fast... I'll wait for $99.
At least.

Is on sale at 149€
The regular price is 299€

[IvyBirds]

And with the $149 price, plus a $50 voucher, it's in the no-brainer territory now.

Falcon's price dropped so fast... I'll wait for $99.
At least.

Is on sale at 149€
The regular price is 299€

Falcon goes on sale a lot. When this sale ends, it will go on sale next month for Black Friday, then in December for Christmas, then in January for New Years, then in February for Valentine's Day

UVI is like that mattress store down the street from me, always looking for a reason for having a sale on Falcon

I think for them Falcon is the gateway drug. They want you to have the software so they can start selling you the Soundwares, or better yet convince you to drop $24 a month on the Subscription. It's also why they include vouchers so you have to browse and decide which one you want to buy which means you will want to buy more