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Touch The Universe Productions - Audio Label and Sound Design - Hive Sound Bank - Goa Trance, Progressive Trance, Psybient Prests Halion 6 will give you the most direct control to get in depth with the library and tweak every facet of the sound. It also does not have a 4 insert FX limit per bus, which Halion Sonic and SE do. Copy the downloaded Halion 3 Factory Sound Set 5 ('HALion 3 Sound Set 5.hsb') into the directory in which you've stored the standard soundbanks. Common crawl To use the free tutorial soundbank you also need to install the latest version of the Liquid Player.

This article was first written for Keyboards / Home Studio magazine. It is published here with their kind authorization, thanks,o)

Since its first version, HALion still looks after its direct competitor's success, I'm naming it Kontakt. This version comes with 50 improvements to face this competition. Detailed review.

WELL-lion, a dongle !

First innovation which won't surprise the users of Steinberg products,HALion is now protected by a pre-configured USB dongle. It is even so possible to transfer very easily the key licence towards Cubase or Nuendo's one, so that your computer's back will not flicker like a Christmas tree !
The installation is fully standard and without a problem, the plugin where I want, and the samples where I want too. Staying the chief, I like this well ! I had to install in spite of that a corrective patch, the 3.01, so that the plugin was able to do its job without crashing. It is traditional in the software world, but even so a little bit irritating.

The Macro page

RAM save

Steinberg invented a new technology and therefore a new term : RAM save. The basic principle is simple : you activate the RAM Save, you playback the song, and HALion locates the used and unused samples. At the end of the playback, you just have to confirm so that all the dispensable samples can be unloaded from the R/W memory. In practice, three notes : first, the process is really efficient, you gain some available memory, secondly, I would like the process to be automatic, and third thing, you will have to reserve this handling for the final stage of the project because, once the samples are unloaded, the soundbank can't be played except if you load again the missing samples one by one.

HALion makes you some effect

The version 3 offers a rather furnished effect section. You could say, well, no care about the effects, there are many ones in the sequencer ! Yes but, another novelty, HALion is also available in stand-alone version, then maybe you will be very happy to put some reverb on your piano sound. Do not discuss, I am right !
The released effects are rather the same as those proposed with the other Steinberg products like Xphraze for example. They are made of good quality and meet almost all your needs. The routing is particularly elaborated since you have at your disposal for each Midi channel 4 effect sends (with the choice of the Audio output for the return), an Insert which chains 4 effects in series and finally an Insert with its 4 effects in parallel. In short, the possibilities are numerous and flexible as soon as you accept to have a look to the manual because, at first sight, it is not inevitably clear clear.

The Global page

Second Strike

Behind these sweet words is hidden a no negligible improvement of the MegaTrig (programing of the launch of a sound if a defined condition is completed). You can define an other sample to be played when a note is hit a second time. Example with a piano : the first note is launching a raw sample whereas the other ones will read a sample which will capture the resonance of the other strings and the instrument structure. You will have to wait that the soundbanks use this innovation to undestand its real usefulness, but the intention is good !

The Loop page

The explorer

An internal file management was cruelly missing to HALion, now it is done and rather well done. In bulk, it allows to scan all the discs, to display 3 different views of the filetree, to manage the favourites, to listen the programs or one of their samples, to filter the searches by format type, etc. There is also a function for displaying by category and of bank filtering by type, but I've met many crashes or some serious slow-downs of all the system while using it. What a pity.

HSB format

For HALion Sound Bank. HALion uses now this type of file which encapsulates the soundbanks (.fxp files) and their samples. The main interest is to be able to rank some soundbanks to transfer them to an other system without caring about the location of each sample. Well done. Let's bet too that some other samplers will become HSB compatible as HALion is compatible with many standards, the new ones of the version 3 being Kontakt, and ZeroX BeatCreator...

Finally...

To discover the other novelties for which I don't have some place anymore to quote them here, I invite you to go to this adress. HALion thus still carries on its way with insurance and elegance. It is still ideal for those who don't want to have to deal with powerful editing functions (although it proposes some) but who want before all a sample reader easy at use.
See ya soon, here or somewhere else…

The Sound pagePros : the stand-alone version, the effects, the easy at use, the ergonomics
Cons : not enough Audio outputs, the search function of the Explorer is capricious

• Editor : Steinberg
• Distributor : Steinberg-France

Minimum required :

• PC : Pentium / Athlon 800 MHz (Pentium / Athlon 1.4 GHz or higher suggested), 384 MB RAM (512 MB suggested), Windows XP Familial and XP Professional, soundcard MME or ASIO compatible, host application : Cubase SE/SL/SX, Nuendo (1.5 or higher) or any other host application VST 2.0 or DXi2 compatible, a free USB port, graphic display 1024 x 768 pixels (1152 x 864 and dual screen suggested), DVD player for the installation
• MAC : Power Mac G4 867 MHz (Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25 GHz or higher suggested), 384 MB de RAM (512 suggested), operating system : Mac OS X.3.3 or higher, soundcard CoreAudio compatible, host application : Cubase SE/SL/SX, Nuendo (1.5 or higher) or any other host application VST 2.0 or AU compatible, graphic display 1024 x 768 pixels (1152 x 864 and dual screen suggested), DVD player for the installation

Mainly noticed prices :

• 419 € VAT
• 119 € VAT for the update

In February 2014, I took advantage of Steinberg's upgrade pricing to buy the Absolute VST Instrument Collection and HALion 5. (If you already own a recent version of Cubase Pro or Cubase Artist, you get a discount on the VST collection, and if you already own the VST collection, you can get a discount on HALion 5.) These download-only upgrades were attractively priced, but I had some significant issues with both products once they were installed, and it took a fair amount of time to troubleshoot and fix them. Here's a rundown of the issues I had, and what I had to do to get things working properly.

Locating the Installers

After you order these upgrades from the Steinberg Shop and Steinberg processes your payment, you receive an Order Confirmation email from the Steinberg Online Shop that contains the activation code and download link for your product. The link goes to the download page of the Steinberg Shop and requires you to sign in with your Steinberg Shop credentials. These may be different from what you use to log in to your My Steinberg account.
This is really important to know, because if you happen to lose your email, you may be startled to find that unlike other Steinberg software you may own, you won't find installers for HALion 5 or the VST Instrument Collection listed either on the main Steinberg Downloads page or the Downloads tab of your MySteinberg account.
Another thing to note is that at least when I purchased my copies, the files Steinberg made available to me were a single EXE file for Absolute VST Instrument collection, and a single ZIP file for HALion 5. (I am a Windows user, obviously. There were also DMG files for the Mac versions of those products.)

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Restoring Missing Sound Files

I am very familiar with Steinberg's software product line and many of the installation-related issues people commonly encounter with their products. Some of the most popular articles on this blog are about how to restore VST presets for a number of Cubase plugins, for example. But I was really stumped by this problem for several days. Basically, once I had installed both Absolute VST Instrument Collection and HALion 5, I found that a large number of the presets wouldn't load due to missing sample files.
In HALion Sonic 2, frequently when I attempted to load a patch I'd be greeted with an error message that said, 'Some audio files are missing. Please check installation.'
With the same patches that didn't work in HALion Sonic, HALion 5 would display errors that said: 'Missing sound archive (double click to register).'
Sometimes a problem patch would appear to load (I wouldn't be prompted with an error message), but no sound would come out when I tried to audition the patch. Here are the names of some specific patches I had problems with, but there were many others: 12 String Acoustic, Xylophone, Zed Leppelin Kit.
I am very familiar with Steinberg's software products, and I spent a couple of days scanning my hard drive for extra VSTSOUND files and importing them into HALion's library, but it did no good. I was simply missing a whole lot of content.
To solve this problem I had to log in to my MySteinberg account and open a support ticket with Steinberg by clicking My Support > Create support request. When Steinberg responded to me, they sent me links to ISO files (these are copies of the disc images used to create the install discs for the boxed copies of the products). Upon downloading them, I immediately noticed how much larger the ISO images were than the installers available in my Steinberg Online Shop account:

• Absolute VST Collection EXE: 1.9GB, ISO image: 3.5GB (1.6GB difference)
• HALion 5 ZIP: 2.0GB, ISO images (combined): 12.8 GB (10.8GB difference)

So clearly, a fair amount of content simply was not present in those first installers. Anyway, I was able to use the ISO files to successfully re-install both products. Here's a quick run-down of the steps I followed:

1. Download the ISO files for the product you need to re-install. I do not think these are secret links, so I am providing the ones that Steinberg Support sent me here. If the links don't work, you will have to create a support request in your MySteinberg account and request new links.
   Absolute VST Instrument Collection disc.
   HALion 5 Installer disc.
   HALion 5 Content disc.
   
2. You have a choice of either burning disc images from the ISOs or mounting them directly using a third-party utility when it is time to install. I used the free tool SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive.
3. Go to the Programs and Features control panel on Windows and uninstall the existing product(s). You might actually have to uninstall a lot of stuff to completely remove Absolute VST Instrument Collection. I found it helpful to sort the list of programs by Installed On, and I just uninstalled every Steinberg product from that day.
4. Using discs you made from the ISO images, or by mounting/unmounting the ISO files as needed with a virtual drive program, install your products again.
   Important note
   Even after I had uninstalled all my old software (and even rebooted my computer), when I ran the installers from the ISOs, the setup programs seemed to think some of the content was already on my computer. For all of these options, I manually selected the item in question and chose Reinstall to make sure that all of the correct content actually did get copied to my system. Below you can see that I had to choose HALion Content and select Reinstall when re-installing Halion 5.
   
5. After installation is complete, and depending on which products you just installed, launch either HALion Sonic or HALion 5 in Standalone mode and don't quit the application until it has a chance to scan your computer for presets. This may take several minutes. You will know the scan is complete when you no longer see an animated cube in the field where the number of presets is displayed:
   

   Do not exit if you see this animation.

6. Quit the application once the library's finished importing and repeat step 6 for the other product if you have both HALion Sonic and HALion 5.

No HALion Plugins in Ableton Live

While the versions of Steinberg plugins that ship with Cubase are often designed to only work inside of Cubase or Nuendo, the standalone VST packages Steinberg sells at the online shop are designed to work with third-party DAWs with VST support, including Ableton Live.
When I first launched my copy of Ableton Live 9 Suite, neither HALion 5 nor HALion Sonic appeared in Live's Plug-ins browser. I quickly realized why: Neither of the installers for HALion 5 or the Absolute VST Instrument Collection had prompted me for an install directory, so their plugins must have been placed in a default location outside of the VST Plug-in Custom Folder specified in Live's Preferences > File / Folder tab.
After a quick search, I located the Steinberg plugins. Here's where you will probably find them on your system:
If you're running 32-bit Windows, the 32-bit plugins will be located here: C:Program FilesSteinbergVstPlugins
If you're running 64-bit Windows, the 32-bit plugins will be in C:Program Files (x86)SteinbergVstPlugins and the 64-bit plugins will be in: C:Program FilesSteinbergVstPlugins
The Absolute VST Collection is a bundle of individual products, so here are all the folders I found in the default location: Dark Planet, HALion 5, HALion Sonic, Hypnotic Dance, Padshop, Retrologue, and Triebwerk.
I moved all of these folders to the VST Plug-in Custom Folder specified in my Live preferences. (In my case that was C:Program FilesVstplugins.
After re-starting Ableton Live, I was now able to use all of my Steinberg plugins.
Note: At this time Ableton Live only supports VST 2.x plugins, and those are the ones described above. The current versions of all Steinberg VST products also install VST 3.x versions under the Common FilesVST3Steinberg folder

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in your Program Files directory. These files end with a VST3 filename extension, and you shouldn't move those.