HALion 7

Steinberg's HALion is marketed as a "VST sampler". Unfortunately, it is anything but a sampler. HALion can't record samples, lacks waveform editing, and even lacks sample drag & drop to/from a VST host.

Perhaps in the early days of VSTi's these kinds of limitations in a software sampler were acceptable. That certainly isn't the case now. I think we all expected that HALion and Kontakt would be rounded out with these critical capabailities by now. After all, what good is a sampler that can't even sample? If HALion provided proper drag & drop of sampled material the lack of sampling and waveform editing might not be so crippling. But as things stand, HALion is really only good for loading and playing sound libraries. It is certainly not a "VST sampler" as Steinberg claims.

HALion also has serious problems in the file management area. HALion saves Programs by saving separate files for all of the constituent sample files for the program. This leads to a big tangled mess of files on your hard disk. HALion does provide a ".hsb file format" which saves bank contents to a single file, but be warned that once you save your bank as a ".hsb" you will be unable to access your samples outside of HALion!

Finally, HALion's onboard effects are weak, and the routing of effects is very hard to understand and use.

I've marked down HALion in the ratings because the manufacturer mistakenly claims that HALion is a sampler. When Steinberg finally gets around to addressing these problems I will raise these ratings accordingly.

HALion is in dire need of an update. Image-Line's DirectWave costs 1/4 as much as HALion, and does not have the debilitating limitations. DirectWave is a much better and much more useful sampling tool.Read Review