Updated for version 7 and many errors punched.
I have written about eras of sampling, and the horror of owning hardware in a seething pit of wires. That leads to a discussion about whether hardware is really worth it (for which I have flame-proof pants from eBay). Here I need to decide which sampler is the one in which to rest my hopes and dreams.
Good Olde Kontakt
Kontakt is still the default software sampler. If you buy samples it’ll come as Kontakt for sure, occasionally with a dog bone for the Reason and Logic people. In a way it’s good that there’s some kind of standard, but it’s not an open or versatile one. Kontakt is a good sampler, with some wavetable bits. No great innovation has taken place in a while and others are trying ideas that NI seems to have abandoned as they market pre-cooked ‘solutions’.
Due to secret men’s business I get the opportunity to review Steinberg products. Today I want to look at the strangely capitalised HALion 7. We will see it’s not just a sampler, but more akin to a workstation such as the Yamaha Montage.
Bear with me
Rather than provide various ‘zooms’ of interface (such as Alchemy) there are three different versions of the software:
- Daddy Bear – the full HALion, which makes new programs. If you’re a big tough electronic dude like me, you get this one.
- Mummy Bear – HALion Sonic Collection which includes programs from a rather large library of Yamaha sounds and synthesisers. It would probably sell better if it was called Motif.
- Baby Bear – HALion Sonic which is free, comes with no libraries at all, but can still play programs, some of which you can get for free. If you just want to buy one kind of instrument (e.g. FM LAB) you can use Sonic.
Programs, layers and zones
Straight away I must try to explain some terminology.
A program is a virtual instrument on a MIDI channel which may have a macro GUI and layers on which multiple zones can be placed. (Sonic has four slots available to hold programs – the full version has 32.)
A sampled piano might use multiple layers to switch samples selected by the velocity of the key strike (like many other samplers). A virtual synthesiser might use different zones to place different synthesis types e.g. FM on lower keys and Spectral on higher keys. The combination of layers and zones offer a 2D table of sounds. Some synthesis types can be losslessly converted e.g. a sample zone can be changed into a wavetable, granular or spectral zone.
A complex program might have a GUI resembling a Blofeld, combining two layers of wavetable synthesis with a layer of virtual analogue synthesis, all passed through effects. You may have 32 programs running through the mixer in stereo or 5.1. There is a complex system for natural musical phrases and arpeggios, but a host sequencer is still needed.
The price of great flexibility is great complexity. You may have to move back and forward between multiple Sections which show the program at different magnifications – a sample waveform here, a stack of layers there. It’s sometimes skeuomorphic, sometimes tends to a database grid.
But most of the time you can drag and drop a sample onto a layer to make a zone and get to work quickly. Unusually, you can also sample sounds directly into HALion. Or you can create new initialised zones – a 3 oscillator virtual analogue, drawbar organ, wavetable, granular, etc.
An Achilles file format
One thing I like about Kontakt is that it can be made to save monolith files – all the samples, compressed with all the settings bundled into one. That’s a killer advantage when you have multiple drives, 1000’s of samples and only hell knows where that one disappeared. But a monolith file takes your sounds behind a proprietary wall, locked away from any other software.
A HALion owner can sell their work to HALion Sonic owners without royalties to Steinberg. A program provides all aspects of the HALion engine to any version – loading samples, wavetables, virtual analogue etc. It’s a bit like Reaktor but based around the paradigm of sampling.
I have difficulty in explaining the way HALion saves files. Like most samplers, it saves a pointer to existing audio files unless told otherwise. It can also be asked to collect samples into a new folder structure. But the equivalent to Kontakt’s monolith is a complex business – a VST sound container is something that bundles everything from the macro GUI to the samples, that must be registered with Steinberg’s MediaBay and located in a library which can only be moved about by a Library Manager – and that’s daunting to the new user. You could argue that it’s good shared studio practice, especially so that users of the smaller HALion Sonic can load up sounds. But it’s not an inviting part of music composition. Given the problem of accessing sounds from multiple hosts most people will just keep the samples where they are and pray that none go missing.
Updates in Version 7
The most interesting part of this update is the spectral oscillator, a cousin to PadShop2. There’s a difference – samples are converted in PadShop and always cleaned up – but are interpreted in Halion. PadShop samples are nearly always smooth at loop points. If a sample loop clicks in Halion, it will also click in spectral form – so you must always manage the loop points in the underlying waveform. You have more control of things like phase lock which forces the component sine waves into phase for a sharper cleaner sound, but takes away some of the richness that you get in PadShop. The are different.
There’s a spectral filter – a hand drawn complex frequency graph which sounds very sweet – all combs and sharp peaks – but only one filter so no Z-Planes.
The new 8 op FM synthesis includes Ops and Algorithms from the DX7, TX81z and Montage – and unusually the SY77 -but- does not include the sampled waveforms that the real SY77 can mutate (why?!). FM only and doesn’t go near the flexibility of the Korg OpSix. There’s now also wavetables in stereo – or 5.1 which is cool – but none of the wave manipulations you get in Vital.
I can understand how it would be great to stack Spectral with FM and samples … but you can also do this in a DAW like Nuendo. HALion is simply too deep for me to use daily but I am working at understanding how to make and share my sounds with others.
The Verdict
The less meticulous probably should stick with Kontakt and Padshop2 etc., which do one thing well at a time. If you admire the extensive Yamaha library or the Montage, you can go for HALion Sonic Collection. But if you have dreams of being a paid sound designer, and given that HALion Sonic is free to all, you could master the full HALion and come up with some impressive synthesisers that others may buy.
Last update 16 July 2024.