I'd like to share this recent Soundbytes article about Halion/SE, of which Celestial Spheres is mentioned.
http://soundbytesmag.net/review-halion-6-steinberg/
The writer brings up many good points on how the free SE version could be a game changer for the Halion line up as it removes the barrier to entry on any Halion libraries. Anyone can now buy the library only and not requiring Halion itself. This places it in a better position to compete with Kontakt and hopefully reach more of the marketshare for sample libraries if designers decide to adopt it.
From personal experience, setting up the samples is easier in halion since it reads the embedded tag info then automatically maps it across the keys. It also includes excellent synthesis methods, and now has a gui maker. Even still, it would be hard to break Kontakt's monopoly imo and don't see this happening any time soon. Hopefully soon we will start seeing more Halion libraries, which is a good thing, as hybrid live synthesis always seem to make for better libraries.
Here's an excerpt from the article covering this. Feel free to read the entire article though as its an interesting read and most of what he wrote about it is right on target. Except for the complexity bit - I didn't find it too hard to get started in it
.New Horizons
I think Steinberg has done something very wise with this new release. It would appear that Steinberg may have adopted the viewpoint that widespread access to the free version of HALion will ultimately promote wider market penetration of the commercial versions, and that new third-party content is needed to achieve that goal. So, in HALion 6 we see much in the way of new developer capability (of which, more later) that was not present in previous HALion versions. This may indeed prove to be just what’s needed to get HALion more firmly established as a top-tier virtual instrument. Here’s why:
It’s common knowledge that Kontakt is the de-facto sample player of our time. However, boutique developers of low-priced sample libraries must pay Native Instruments a sizeable fee to allow their customers to run their offerings on the free Kontakt Player, which is often prohibitive. So, those developers can only sell to those who own the full version of Kontakt.
There’s much in this new HALion release to suggest that this could change. Sound developers of Kontakt content can now create that content in HALion 6 to sell to users for use on the free HALion Sonic SE 3. This is because they can now create control panels (UIs) that accompany the sounds. This was never possible prior to HALion 6. And of course, this same motivation might apply to developers of non-sample-based content. Imagine if you are a developer trying to decide which instrument to choose for which you will create sounds. You want to pick something that lots of people own in order to have a market base into which you may sell. Well, if that instrument is both free and high-quality, one solution is staring you in the face.
To sum this up: developers have, for the first time actually, a compelling motivation to produce content for HALion. They can sell it to users who do not have any additional ownership (purchase) requirements. If I were a provider of Kontakt-based libraries, I would be taking a serious look a porting some of my material to the HALion world. A whole new set of potential customers, those musicians who do not own the full version of Kontakt, potentially await. And of course, Kontakt only does sample playback – there’s no synth capability to be found at all. So on that front, there’s not currently even any competition from Kontakt.
I found only one third-party HALion offering currently for sale (available for all three of the HALion versions). This is Celestial Spheres from Touch the Universe. It is a huge collection of very innovative presets that deliver the spacey, evolving sounds you’d expect, given the name of the collection. Touch the Universe developer Timothy Ivory had this to say about HALion 6: I really love Halion. Creating Celestial spheres was one of the most fun times I’ve had in my endeavors in sound design.
The scarcity of third-party content is a clue as to how little market penetration that HALion probably enjoys. Removing the dongle requirement should help Steinberg getting more copies on more DAWs. But if I were in Steinberg’s marketing department, I would energetically lobby for a free demo library of HALion sounds that would run on the free HALion Sonic SE. Just put it out there for all to access as an easy-to-install download. And it would need to be good to entice people to give it a try. IKM’s Syntronik is a great model here. The free Syntronik sampler has 50 presets that are musically useful and compelling advertisements of the quality to be found in the commercial products. Steinberg might be well-served to embrace this model for raising awareness about HALion. If the HALion family of instruments just had more visibility, many more musicians might eagerly join the party.
