If you're interested in how it runs under the competition, look at Mark Wherry's box on using it with Emagic's Logic Audio, which you'll find elsewhere in this review.4 Steinberg Absolute 4 VST Instrument Collection VSTi, VST3, AAX Win64. However, as you might expect from a piece of Steinberg software, HALion was clearly designed for closest integration with Cubase, so that's what I used throughout this review. More specifically, it's a software sampler implemented in the form of a VST plug‑in, and therefore useable with Steinberg's ubiquitous Cubase VST MIDI + Audio sequencer, as well as compatible third‑party applications.
Steinberg Halion Professional Sound DesignersFeatures: State-of-the-art sound design environment developed according to the requirements of professional sound designers.Of course, software samplers are not a wholly new idea: several developers have already produced some creditable examples, perhaps most notably Nemesys with Gigasampler and Emagic with EXS24 (the latter offering seamless integration with Logic Audio). HALion can load almost every sound library available on the market and offers numerous tools to shape and even radically reinvent sounds. Steinberg Produkte werden von Grammy®- und Oscar®-pr&228 mierten Komponisten, Toningenieuren und Produzenten eingesetzt.Steinberg HALion 6. Das Unternehmen entwickelt, produziert und verkauft seit 1984 innovative Produkte f&252 r Musiker und Produzenten aus den Bereichen Musik, Film, Post Production und Multimedia.Steinberg Halion Manual States ThatIn other words, there's plenty to get you started.The manual states that the minimum system requirements for the PC version are a 266MHz Pentium processor with 128Mb of RAM, although a 400MHz Pentium is recommended. Also supplied are four 'Content' CDs full of high‑quality Programs and samples supplied by Wizoo and E‑Lab, together with three demo CDs from other manufacturers. The glowing blue Navigation Controller can be seen on the right, and is available from every window except the Macro page.HALion is delivered on a cross‑platform CD containing both Windows and Mac versions of the plug‑in. Installation & User InterfaceThe Channel/Program pages. Native Instruments' Battery is an impressive sample‑playback plug‑in which beat HALion on to the market by several months, but was primarily designed for use with single‑hit percussion sounds, and is not really suitable for pitched, layered multisamples.HALion is different: it boasts a features list to match even the most luxurious of rackmount samplers, and is perhaps the first VST plug‑in to offer a real, workable alternative to owning a hardware sampler.
Steinberg Halion Software Sampler ImplementedThe vertical lines mark the range of the Program across the keyboard at the bottom, while the sample column height shows the velocity range over which the sample extends — you can see the scale from 0 to 127 on the right.The Macro page offers easy access to HALion's most basic Program‑editing controls. Edit PagesHALion's well‑designed Keyzone page allows the easy creation of multisamples. Clicking the Edit button on the VST instrument 'rack' brings up HALion's graphical user interface, which by default opens on the Macro page. An ingenious grid of vertical and horizontal lines is intended to make Keyzone editing an intuitive, 'visual' process. It might seem slightly gimmicky at first, but once you get into using it, the Navigation Controller provides a quick, functional way to get around the edit pages.HALion's Keyzone page is where both the pitch and velocity ranges assigned to each sample in a program can be set and adjusted. It's also presumably responsible for HALion's name, as it closely resembles the memorable unblinking eye of HAL, the homicidal computer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001. You can also select to which of HALion's 12 virtual audio outputs (four stereo pairs, four mono) each Program will be routed.The Channel/Program page affords the first glimpse of HALion's distinctive Navigation Controller, an illuminated virtual trackball which can be used to scroll up and down or left and right, or to zoom in and out (depending upon the page and the parameter). Along the bottom of the Macro window are six buttons, one for each of HALion's six edit pages (these buttons and the keyboard appear on every other page of HALion, but have been omitted from most screen grabs in this article to avoid repetition).Clicking on the 'Chan/Prog' button opens HALion's Channel/Program page (see overleaf), where you choose which of a possible maximum of 128 Programs will be assigned to each of the 16 MIDI channels. There's also the familiar virtual keyboard for auditioning sounds. Full marks to Steinberg here.On the Waveloop page (not pictured), you'll find the kind of graphical waveform display familiar from most hardware samplers and almost all sample‑editing software. Crossfades can be set between samples whose pitch or velocity ranges overlap (so as to smooth the transition from one to the other) with similar ease.Pleasingly, new samples can be imported into a Program by simply dragging and dropping them from the desktop I was struck by the ease with which HALion allowed me to accomplish what can be one of the more fiddly and time‑consuming programming tasks on a hardware sampler. This is easier to do than it is to describe, and even complex velocity‑switched multisamples can be set up in a matter of moments. Each sample in a Program appears as a rectangle on the Keyzone grid, which can be resized and dragged around with the mouse pointer until the desired pitch and velocity ranges have been set. Settings of either 12 or 24dB are possible, and there are Cutoff and Resonance controls. Each stage can be up to 10 seconds long, allowing for the creation of very long, slowly evolving Programs.The filter section (known as the DCF) offers a choice of four filter types (low‑pass, high‑pass, band‑pass, and notch). Both the amplitude and filter envelopes can include up to eight stages, and the envelope between each stage can be either linear or logarithmic (ie. The amount of crossfade applied is controlled by how far you drag.The comprehensive Envelope/Filter page is next. Crossfading loops to disguise clicks and glitches is remarkably straightforward: hold down the Alt key and click inside your loop selection, then drag the mouse pointer outside the loop range to add crossfades at both ends. These might seem like glaring omissions from a software sampler — until you remember that any application capable of hosting the HALion plug‑in will also be capable of recording and editing audio files, which can then be imported and saved with HALion Programs and Banks.What you can do on the Waveloop page is quickly and easily set loop points by dragging a selection over the waveform, set start and end points for sample playback, fine‑tune the loop, and choose from four loop modes (Loop Until Release, Loop Once, Play Until End and Play Reverse). Prisma for pc downloadAdditionally there are two controls affecting stereo panning in programs: Panorama works just like a straight Pan control, while Spread provides random auto‑panning with each note‑on.The Modulation/Tune page allows for complex modulation of a variety of HALion's parameters, either by internal or external sources. A nice addition.The Amplifier section of the Envelope/Filter page allows you to control the extent to which a Program's volume is affected by both the envelope and key velocity, and you can also choose to which of HALion's 12 audio outputs you want samples in the Program to be routed. I'm not sure I'd completely agree with that description — to my ears it sounds more like a kind of compressed low‑frequency boost — but whatever it is, it can be used to make bass drums 'thump' in a highly satisfactory fashion. You can also determine the extent to which cutoff is affected by the filter envelope and key velocity.Another feature worth mentioning here is the 'Fatness' control, which the manual describes as adding a 'tube‑like distortion' to the sound. Games download under 100 mbThe options are not so much flexible as mind‑boggling. Possible modulation sources include HALion's two internal, sync'able LFOs (each offering a choice of no less than 10 different waveforms), velocity, pitch‑bend, mod wheel, aftertouch, four assignable MIDI controllers, a built‑in white noise source, and both envelope generators, amongst others. Even the amount by which another modulation destination is being modulated can be selected as a modulation destination, allowing for the creation of interesting and unpredictable modulation chains. In each row, a modulation source, an amount of modulation and a destination can be selected, and all 12 rows can be active simultaneously.Possible destinations include filter cutoff, filter resonance, volume, pan and pitch.
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