![]() Here’s a small video showing what can be done with HALion. Competing products ought to take serious note of this… On the other hand, it can be easy to get lost with certain screen sets, but it is up to you to modify and simplify them. We can only congratulate Steinberg for this, because everything is possible with HALion’s GUI. It is also possible to create tabs in an editor itself, if need be, or even split them horizontally or vertically. In order to do that, HALion is open to all our fantasies, so it is possible to create as many windows as we want (which is awesome with multiple screens) and order them as we see fit by placing and resizing the different editors in every window. While it is possible to load screen sets to adapt the software to different situations, like searching presets or editing parameters, it is also possible and even recommended, to make our own screen sets, according to our own needs. But it’s important to know that HALion 5's interface is completely customizable, to a point rarely seen on competing products. The first time we open the software it’s a bit scary: the default “screen set” is “advanced, ” which displays lots of information on the screen. What’s more, we noticed a bit of slowness with our MacBook Pro Retina in spite of it being very new and high-end… We know the German publisher has a predilection for Microsoft’s OS, but we hope that they will at least address the issue in a future update… Even Microsoft ported Office to Mac, come on! First disappointment under Mac - as with Cubase 7 -, the guys at Steinberg seem to ignore the existence of Retina displays and the full-screen functions in Mountain Lion, which are very practical on a laptop to gain some pixels. Once the software has been started, we find ourselves in front of a big window divided into several sections. ![]() HALion 5 is VST 2 and 3 compatible under Windows and VST 3 / AU under OS X. MachFive uses an iLok key, but Kontakt uses a much more practical online activation system… Open windows It’s also important to know that HALion, like Cubase and any other product by Steinberg for that matter, requires an eLicenser USB key (that will cost you another $20), which means we have one less USB port, something that may annoy non-Cubase users. We know that Yamaha’s MOTIF team is behind HALion and they are used to doing miracles with very little memory, but still, it’s 2013 and 3TB hard disks are the standard, which can only make you wonder… We’ll have to see if it has any impact on the sound. ![]() That’s nothing compared to competing products that use over 40GB. Cubase users already know HALion Sonic, since a very limited LE version was included with their favorite sequencer.Īfter the installation we were surprised by the size of the sound library: it uses less than 12GB of disk space. ![]() HALion Sonic will interest composers and musicians who want to have a good collection of sounds, but who do not wish to roll up their sleeves and get dirty with sound design. The main differences concern the GUI, which is much less flexible, but also much more simple on HALion Sonic, and to certain technical limitations, like the number of MIDI channels, inserts and output channels, as well as the absence of slicing, an audio editor, audio warp, and MIDI or audio import. A first novelty of HALion 5 is that it comes with HALion Sonic 2, which, unlike its predecessor HyperSonic, is henceforth a light version making use of the same engine (while still costing $250) but more workstation oriented, given its limitations.
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