HALion Sonic user review

[Rabanga]

Hello everybody. HALion Sonic has been ordered by me this day and it should be delivered to my post box in next 5 days. I'm from Czech Republic and I'm professional music composer. I was just wondering why people discuss about this kind of a software when they do not own it personally. Why somebody judges the whole thing just from some demo previews on Steinberg's website? That is a crazy and non-fair thing. So I've decided to order the stuff and let's check out the reality. I'm going to test it on my two computer systems:

System 1

Windows 7 - 64 bit
8 GB RAM
Intel Core 2 Quad ( 3,00 Ghz)

System 2

Mac Book Pro
Mac os X Snow Leopard 10.6.4
4 GB RAM
Intel Core Duo ( 2,53 Ghz )

I'm going to post my review immediately after installing and deep testing.

RB

[JacoPark83]

Agreed. I ranted about this in another thread. The only way to know is to hear and use it for yourself. How much more simple can that be? Best of luck with HS!
_________________
James G. - XP Home, HP a1210n w/ Athlon 64 3500+, 2Gig RAM, Presonus Inspire 1394 interface, Cubase Studio 5

About Jaco Pastorius Park: http://www.ilovejaco.org/ About Jaco Pastorious: http://www.jacopastorius.com or http://www.jacop.net/

[chemaf]

I don't agree. It's not crazy and it's fair for people who doesn't have much money to buy all products that seems to be good in advertising. You can hear the demos and make an evaluation (maybe incomplete) before you spend your money in a product that doesn't fit your requirements or isn't as good as they anounced it. How else? Sometimes the company allows you to download a demo of the product so you can test it, but this is not the case. It happened to me with Virtual Bassist and I don't want to throw away my money again. I'm not going to buy it now and then complain about it, that would be crazy and unfair to loyal users. Maybe I'll wait for HAlion Sonic 2.
_________________
PPC G5 2.5 DUAL, OS 10.4.11, CUBASE 4.5.2, MOTU 2408 MKII, YAMAHA 01V, lots of vst instruments, Roland XP10 controller, Alesis QS8,...
MacBookPro 2.33 Intel core 2 duo, OS 10.5.8, Cubase Studio 4.5.2, MOTU Ultralite, Oxigen 8 controller, lots of vst instruments....

[danbroad]

I disagree also. You are prepared to stake a £200/$300 'risk' on a product with [as yet] incomplete audio examples, and which you have probably not been able to demo yourself. I have no doubt Halion Sonic will be awesome, a fine instrument, but many on this forum have some simple questions to be answered before they make the same financial outlay.

There is no demo, and no 'opened box refund', which has huge implication if it doesn't meet your requirements. Isn't the old proverb "look before you leap"?

[muziksculp]

If steinberg's audio demos sounded great, and had a good selection of both acoustic, synthetic, plus a healthy selection of great sounding drum/percussion sounds, no one would be complaining, or questioning HS's capabilities, or quality of sounds, but would rather be rushing to buy HS.

Audio Demos are an extremely important component of marketing a VST Instruments, especially a brand new product. It is the best way to evaluate a VST instrument before spending the money, and then be unhappy with it. So far, this is something that Steinberg has not been successful at, but they can still fix this by posting some fantastic audio demos, that will enlighten us, and make us want to buy HS now. Unless, there is nothing that is truly enlightening about HS in the first place.
_________________
Cubase 5.1.1, Mac Pro 8 Core 3.0 Ghz., Mac OSX (10.6.3), 20 GB RAM, Apogee Rosetta 800, Apogee Symphony-64, Yamaha Motif XS7, Access Virus Ti.
muziksculp*studio

[haraldsson]

Take a look at this:

http://forum.cubase.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=136893


_________________
Hjörtur Blöndal

Cubase 5 Version 5.5.2 • Pro Tools 9 • Tascam M-164UF USB Audio Interface • iMac 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. 4 GB Ram • OSX 10.6.4
• Software: http://www.hjortur.dk/hjortur/index3-the-studio.html

[chemaf]

I have read it before but I still don't like the demo sounds and songs. A matter of taste? The brass and strings shown there sound horrible to me. The songs lack of inspiration. Maybe for starters it wiil look awsome but I would tell them there's a lot of VST'is that seems better to me in price and quality. Waiting for objective reviews.
_________________
PPC G5 2.5 DUAL, OS 10.4.11, CUBASE 4.5.2, MOTU 2408 MKII, YAMAHA 01V, lots of vst instruments, Roland XP10 controller, Alesis QS8,...
MacBookPro 2.33 Intel core 2 duo, OS 10.5.8, Cubase Studio 4.5.2, MOTU Ultralite, Oxigen 8 controller, lots of vst instruments....

[JacoPark83]

Audio demos have their place, but they don't tell in any way how an instrument will perform (i.e. CPU usage) or feel to a live player. I've made a few bad purchasing decisions after being too swayed by MP3 demos.
_________________
James G. - XP Home, HP a1210n w/ Athlon 64 3500+, 2Gig RAM, Presonus Inspire 1394 interface, Cubase Studio 5

About Jaco Pastorius Park: http://www.ilovejaco.org/ About Jaco Pastorious: http://www.jacopastorius.com or http://www.jacop.net/

[chemaf]

C'mon! There's been some complains about HS CPU usage and most of us have enough knowledge and experience to know that even a bad patch can be used fine in a right musical context. What I want is a good VSTi that I can use easily with less CPU usage and sounds that rock by themselves without having to tweak a lot of parameters. If I were a sound designer maybe I wouldn't mind but I'm a musician and composer and I want to make music and good songs. A good acoustic and electric guitar, good brass, good strings, good ethnic instruments, drums that really rocks... inspiring synths... well my list could be for Xmas but as a Steinberg user since 1995, the expectations about HS were so high. I love Virtual Guitarist and Groove Agent; I loved XPhraze, Dakota and Hypersonic; I still use (ocasionally) HAlion 3; but I hated Virtual Bassist and I feel HS is not what I expected. This is a my subjective opinion. It's simple: if I don't like it I don't buy it.
_________________
PPC G5 2.5 DUAL, OS 10.4.11, CUBASE 4.5.2, MOTU 2408 MKII, YAMAHA 01V, lots of vst instruments, Roland XP10 controller, Alesis QS8,...
MacBookPro 2.33 Intel core 2 duo, OS 10.5.8, Cubase Studio 4.5.2, MOTU Ultralite, Oxigen 8 controller, lots of vst instruments....

[Rabanga]

Hi guys,

yeah, maybe it sounds crazy to you all, but my possibilities are advanced then others. I can still return Halion Sonic back till next 14 days without any reason ( the guys in the shop are my friends, so it won't be a problem ). So when I'll like it, I'm gonna keep it home and when I won't? What the hell, just sending it back where it came from All I just want is to let everybody knows about Halion Sonic. And trust me I'm gonna be as pragmatic as possiblle. I'll be objective, critical and Mr. Not Nice!! So just wait for my review..soon here directly on this forum..

RB

[hasseg]

Hi! Have had HALion Sonic for a couple of days and my first impression is that having all these awsome sounds
at one place is really nice and the flexphraser is really useful. My main complain is the manual. It describes in
detail all components but without any examples of when to use different pieces. Other things i miss are drum
fills, more key commands (there are only 14) and the possibility to create midi files from phrases and edit
phrases. But, my overall impression is that you get a lot for the money. I need to do some more practical work
and have the feeling that it will a number one workhorse for composing and producing songs.
To Steinberg - please add a manual or videos with examples of how to use the power from HALion Sonic.
I think that will reward your sales quickly because today the information is rather foggy with quite dull demos.

Good luck
Hans

[Rabanga]

Hi Hanz!

That's a really gooooood new. My HALion Sonic should be here at monday so I'm glad there's some first good check. Hope the quality of sound banks is that good you say..

RB

[hologram]

Rabanga,
We hope you can include some audio demo's to with your review
_________________
Hardware:Intel Q6600|3.0ghz|P45 Asus P5Q|8Gbs Corsair |BFG 8800 GT 512mb
Win7x64|Wd Raptors|Great River Me1nv+Rnc1773|Sm7b|U-87 Clone|Lavry DA10|E-Mu 1820m|Motu 896 HD
Roland A-50 Polyphonic AT|Akai Mpc 5000|Novation SL Remote Zero|LexiconMPX100|Central Station w/Remote
Dynaudio Bm5a|Event8

Software:Sylenth.v2.21|Halion Sonic|Hypersonic 2|Maschine|Motu BPM 1.5|Emulator X3|Symphobia|Superior v2|Sampletank2|K4||Uad1|Waves Api+Ssl V-Series|Tritone|Sonnox|Altiverb6
Studio One Pro

[mroekalea]

Yep, very very interrested!
_________________
Menoj,

Asus p5WD deluxe + Q6600 (not overclocked), 4GB, SonicCore luna 2 + 2496i/o Box, focusrite Saffire 26 pro i/o + Behringer ADA8000, Yamaha CSX2 + Roland MC303, VG2, Halion3.5, Cubase 5.5.1, XP proff + Vista 64, ADAM P22A + ADAM SUB 8, SoundCraft Compact 10, obsolete MIDEX-3, Focusrite Liquid Mix, Steinberg CC121, Arturia Analog Experience w. player32.

[Rabanga]

Hi guys,

HALion Sonic coming tomorrow! My big review is going to include audio renders, especially acoustic instruments like piano, guitar, bass atd. When there'll be enough of interest, I'm going to upload video with full review on YouTube, but maybe it won't be necesarry.. I'm going to test it also with last version of Cubase 5.5 64 bit on Windows 7, so check out my review soon!!

RB

[Rabanga]

Yes, my dear Steinberg friends, right now I'm opening and installing HALion Sonic. First bad new - the box is really poor. No manual inlcluded - that's a pitty. Only quick start guide. 2 DVDs here, licence and that's it..

[Rabanga]

HALion Sonic User review PART 1 - Acoustics ( by Radoslav Banga )

After upgrading my Cubase 4 on version 5 I was quiet disappointed with HALion-One Vst instrument included in upgrade. Steinberg was trying hard to make HALion-One sound better with new Vst sound collection by version 5.1., but for such a great sampler like Kontakt 4 from Native Instruments this was no match. I could still imagine some better sound module than Kontakt. I’ve still believed in Steinberg’s and Yamaha’s cooperation. So when I’ve seen the article about upcoming HALion Sonic sound module, I was praying „God, please finally make my wish reality.“
Today finally it’s here..I have installed my new HALion Sonic..

So what’s in the box?

The box itself’s looking really poor. It’s just a white screen with a name HALion Sonic. On the otherside so can see some words about it like „eazy to use“ and whatever.. Really non-represenative. That’s a pitty. I like to make my boxes of legal softwares beeing seemed, but this is just a „white box.“ Really really small box. When we open the box, there is just 2 dvds in the cover, product licence code document and quick start guide. I’m very disappointed. Where is the manual? 200€ for a box is not enough to give me a stupid manual? Why? HALion Sonic is not „that simple“ as you say. There is a hundred possibilities and I want to know them all, but you just give me this PDF online version? We have a right to own printed manual, almost every company is automatically selling their software WITH MANUAL. It’s a pitty, Steinberg. This is just a supermarket box, not a „revolutionary represent.“

After white box upcoming fear

When you see such a box like this, you are getting really scared. Maybe you’ve paid for a deep s**t. While I was installing HALion Sonic, my thoughts turn to horror. After installing the moment of truth was here – the first running on my Windows 7 64 bit. Surprisely no problem with installation!! In few seconds the software was running, it has founded all sound content and it was ready to flow..

WHAT EVERYBODY CARES FOR – SOUND QUALITY

Part 1 – Piano

So what do we have here? I’m loading the piano named „Natural grand.“ What a great sound! Incredible real piano.. that was a shock! I’m comparing this sound bank with my Clavinova CLP-340 piano and this is really fantastic piano! Congratulations, Steinberg you’ve got my first approbation. You can find some other good pianos here, jazz piano, warm grand, bright concert, blues radio..

The samples can be found here..

Bright concert piano
Bright natural grand
Warm Grand
Blues radio Piano


Part 2 – Eletric Piano

You can find here some pretty nice el.piano classics like mk1, Wurli, Ampeg suitace and others. Of course there is a couple of bad el.pianos, but you never know when you’re gonna need just right these stupid ones.. ☺ What I really really love is Ambient harpischord. What a great sound! Check out the sample!

The samples can be found here..

Wintage Phaser
Phaser Suitcase
Mk1 Dist 1
Chorus Suitcase
Flex piano
Ambient Harpischord

Part 3 – Acoustic guitars

Well I’m starting with really poor one named Simple steel string. This kind of a guitar can be maybe used just in some ballads, but totally missing some life feeling of a hand player. Maybe the worst guitar in my life is named R&B nylon Gtr. Ugly and max syntetic. It really even doesn’t sound like guitar! Another guitar is named Bright acoustic steel. Not bad. I can really feel some difference. For ballads it is a cool and strong stuff. This is the first time I’m trying to use the FLEX PLAYER. It is a useful thing, arpeggios are amazing, but still not a real hand. You have to understand, that there is no any software instruments, which could match to the real playing guitarist. So my advice – if you want to have a really useful guitar, record your own. But for a hip-hop producers, pop songwriters, dance-music stuff, HALion Sonic is an excellent VSTi guitarist. For a real guitarist like me it's still "computer guitar" ( even if it's good one ). For some eazy rhytms it's very good..

The samples can be found here..

Simple steel string
Bright Acoustic Steel Guitar FLEXED 1


Part 4 – Electric guitars

Yes! This is the zone where HALion Sonic simply rocks! Great excellent eletric guitars, distorted, warm or jazzy, every of these is simply perfect. Nice job!

The samples can be found here..

Voodoo Guitar
Rock Guitar Expression Vel FLEXED
One Finger Let Us Rock
2 Coil Clean Tremolo


Part 5 – Strings

Awesome strings, really great sections, some of solo strings are also very good, but HALion Sonic could have more of these. I’m missing here some solo string instruments with more articulations, tremolos and others. Maybe 3rd party contents are gonna fix it. I think here is some potencial bussiness reason. Steinberg’s got HALion Symphonic Orchestra and they don’t want to loose potencial buyers, I can understand it, but having just a single solo version for every string instrument? That is really too much – it smells like s**t. Steinberg you can’t be that tight-fisted, come on.. But sections are really fantastic. I’ve chosen section named Big and Silky. Fantastic quality..check it out. My favourite one is Cathedral Strings, dark and silly like in Harry Pooooootter full of blood! ☺ The other side of this coin are strings like Quartet strings – average, still very tight, so far from live playing. But not bad used in solo.. Strings need more solo alternates, because then it looses its big potecial. What a pitty..

The samples can be found here..

Big and Silky 1
Big and Silky 2
Cathedral Strings
Quartet Strings
Quartet Strings 2 - Solo

Part 6 – Brasses

Fantastic brasses in HALion Sonic are making me happy! What a great job Steinberg! There is nothing wrong with this – brass sections and also solo brasses, trumpets, saxes, french horns, everything is brilliant top quality! Why couldn’t it be made with strings also? So many cool solo brasses and so small string solo selection.. it’s not giving me any sense.. But perfect brasses anyway.

The samples can be found here..

French Horns in Church
Brass Section Combinated
Flugelhorn Solo
French Horns in Church 2

Part 7 – Basses

My bass session has started with Mic’d upright bass. It’s not that bad, but also not that good. To make upright bass sound like a real one, that is a really hard work. I can understand it, so Steinberg can feel non-shamed for the quality. Legendary Spectrasonics Trilogy is propable the top bass vst instrument ever and if you know this excellent software, you are going to get probably disappointed with Upright basses in HALion Sonic. But if you are looking for some really good eletric basses, then Sonic can satisfy you enough. Finger JB Bass is really authentic, I like it. Some real power it gets when you combine Studio Slap Bass with FLEX PLAYER. What a amazing possibilities!! Basses get heavy and live! Very very nice bass is P-Bass RW Finger Studio. I really love a possibility to change articulations, sound, intensity and color of the bass. It is making it so live and real, good job.. You can find a couple of high quality el.basses in HALion Sonic!!

The samples can be found here..

Mic Upright Bass
Coliseum Bass
Finger JB Bass
Fretbuzzy Bass
Tube Pick Bass
Studio Slap Bass FLEXED
P-Bass RW Finger Studio

Part 8 – Others ( Drums, Chromatic instruments, Organs, ethnic..)

HALion Sonic is full of beats. You can choose from 186 loops, which are also sliced made to by able playing single hits. Some are really very good, some not. There is 29 Drumsets and 4 GM Drumsets. To be honest with you.. If you are looking for some new ones, forget about HALion Sonic drumsets. But it’s not a problem – there is 29 standart high quality drumsets, which can be used in acoustic music. Yes, you can get these everywhere else, but why not having them together with other HALion Sonic instruments? Drumsets offer to you brilliant hi-hats, real live snares and kick with very good percussions in the set. So is it a reason to blame Steinberg? I don’t think so. You can still choose some very good beats and you them anyhow you want. Are you looking for some actual new hip-hop beats? Just buy another instrument, HALion Sonic is not primary beat vsti like Battery 3 or others. I think Steinberg did a right thing – now we can have all these classic acoustic drumsets together in one piece. They were trying to think about newcomers, which don’t have these beats and that’s a good perspective.

Organs, chromatics and accordeons are very good. There is so many good of them that I don’t even render. It would not make any sense. But let’s be pragmatic – today nobody can create a wrong organ preset and Steinberg is not a beginner here. I would like to say, that I really love accordeons in HALion Sonic. What a great job from Steinberg! I have an accordeon player in my own band so I really know how should it sound like. Accordeons in HALion Sonic are so close to real ones and I really award it as top accordeon quality I’ve ever heard.

The last critic is for ethnic instruments – what happened Steinberg?????? Why are you creating such as a great instrument as it is and you are offering just one single ethnic instrument??? Why??? This is completly non-sense.. You should really fix it as soon as possible, that’s a pitty you have just a single one!

Final summary

There has been told so many words on this forum about HALion Sonic. Steinberg has made a brilliant vst instrument with a lot of possibilities, but promoted so horrible audio demos, that many potencial customers have lost a trust for it. I really don’t understand this perspective – Steinberg doesn’t need to be affraid of HALion Sonic, it is a great instrument with a lovely high quality sound. I’m feeling like they got knocked with Cubase 5.5 and now there is frustration, but it is really not neccesarily.
Cubase 5.5 is a good step forward, but it still can’t handle VST Bridge – we all hope Steinberg can fix it. But HALion Sonic is completly a different thing. If you are going to spend 200€ for this little big thing, you’re not gonna make a mistake – that’s my opinion. With some little minuses you can get a best acoustic sound module today with great pianos, guitars, awesome basses, top brasses and perfects strings. In combination with Cubase 5.5 it’s a top killer! Figure out that I'm still not talking about thousand of killing super synth leads, pads, vocals, woodwinds, keyboards and others.. I'm going to make review part II of course, but let's be honest here - for 200€ I think HALion Sonic is a top match..If Steinberg is going to give us some free 3rd party content with more solo strings, ethnic instruments and little better guitars, this is gonna be a revolution in VSTi world, won't it?

(reviewed by Rabanga)[/i]

Ps: I you want to hear some concrete audio samples, just write here a post and I can upload it for you..

[Chris Beuermann]

Hello Rabanga,


thank you for the nice review !

Cheers,

Chris
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[chemaf]

What an objective review and samples. Thanks. That's what we were asking for. Let me ask you: what about CPU usage? What happens if you load, let's say, six or seven patches simultaneously?
_________________
PPC G5 2.5 DUAL, OS 10.4.11, CUBASE 4.5.2, MOTU 2408 MKII, YAMAHA 01V, lots of vst instruments, Roland XP10 controller, Alesis QS8,...
MacBookPro 2.33 Intel core 2 duo, OS 10.5.8, Cubase Studio 4.5.2, MOTU Ultralite, Oxigen 8 controller, lots of vst instruments....

[hologram]

Excellent review,thanks again for taking the time to do these audio demo's.

Can't wait for my copy
_________________
Hardware:Intel Q6600|3.0ghz|P45 Asus P5Q|8Gbs Corsair |BFG 8800 GT 512mb
Win7x64|Wd Raptors|Great River Me1nv+Rnc1773|Sm7b|U-87 Clone|Lavry DA10|E-Mu 1820m|Motu 896 HD
Roland A-50 Polyphonic AT|Akai Mpc 5000|Novation SL Remote Zero|LexiconMPX100|Central Station w/Remote
Dynaudio Bm5a|Event8

Software:Sylenth.v2.21|Halion Sonic|Hypersonic 2|Maschine|Motu BPM 1.5|Emulator X3|Symphobia|Superior v2|Sampletank2|K4||Uad1|Waves Api+Ssl V-Series|Tritone|Sonnox|Altiverb6
Studio One Pro

[Rabanga]

[Rabanga]

Well today I didn't have a time to do some bigger arranges, but check this out. I've made some funk groove with layered brasses behind ( Sax, Trumpets, Sections and Trombone ) and also some orchestral arrange.. The last demo song is Intel Core Quad Test - 16 channels playing together. Demos are not perfect, but for some imagination it does take some place.

AUDIO DEMOS:

Orchestral Power 1
Funky groove demo
Cores Quad Test ( hip-hop groove )
_________________
Systems:

Windows 7 64bit, Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0 GhZ, 8 Gb RAM, UAD-1

MacBookPro 15", Intel Core Duo 2.63 GhZ, 4 GB RAM


Sound cards:

RME Fireface 400, M-Audio Fast Track Pro


Midi + controllers:

Clavinova CLP-340, NI Mashine, AKAI MPD32, Behringer UMX-25

Legal software:

Windows 7 64 bit, Mac Os X Snow Leopard

Steinberg Cubase 5.5, Steinberg HALion Sonic, Native Instruments Komplete 6, Native Instruments Mashine, UAD-1 Extreme Pack

Speakers, heaphones:

Tapcos S8, Alesis M1Active, Beyerddynamics DT990 Heaphones

Live instruments:

Acoustic Guitars ( Takamine TH-5C, Cremona 1972 ),
El.Bass ( Dean ),
Percussion Latine Percussion

[chemaf]

C'mon man! You are doing Steinberg's homework. I hope they will send you a big fat check!
_________________
PPC G5 2.5 DUAL, OS 10.4.11, CUBASE 4.5.2, MOTU 2408 MKII, YAMAHA 01V, lots of vst instruments, Roland XP10 controller, Alesis QS8,...
MacBookPro 2.33 Intel core 2 duo, OS 10.5.8, Cubase Studio 4.5.2, MOTU Ultralite, Oxigen 8 controller, lots of vst instruments....

[Rabanga]

Well today I was trying to run HALion Sonic with Cubase 5 on my Mac Book Pro. CPU level was on 100% when using all 16 channels!!!! I have 4 GB ram in my Mac and Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53 Ghz. But situation got much worse when I plugged in M-Audio Fast Track Pro - CPU went over and with Cubase 5.5 it's not possible to play more than 12 channels together. This is something Steinberg really has to fix as soon as possible, it's a horrible CPU eater.. :-/ Maybe again some problem with Asio??

RB
_________________
Systems:

Windows 7 64bit, Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0 GhZ, 8 Gb RAM, UAD-1

MacBookPro 15", Intel Core Duo 2.63 GhZ, 4 GB RAM


Sound cards:

RME Fireface 400, M-Audio Fast Track Pro


Midi + controllers:

Clavinova CLP-340, NI Mashine, AKAI MPD32, Behringer UMX-25

Legal software:

Windows 7 64 bit, Mac Os X Snow Leopard

Steinberg Cubase 5.5, Steinberg HALion Sonic, Native Instruments Komplete 6, Native Instruments Mashine, UAD-1 Extreme Pack

Speakers, heaphones:

Tapcos S8, Alesis M1Active, Beyerddynamics DT990 Heaphones

Live instruments:

Acoustic Guitars ( Takamine TH-5C, Cremona 1972 ),
El.Bass ( Dean ),
Percussion Latine Percussion

[offlinebouncer]

This VSTi does not sound much better than Hypersonic 2, has less patches (1200 vs. 1800) and is a CPU-Hogg (100% with less than 16-Tracks).
The problem seems to be Yamaha Hypersonic 2 came from a german company (Wizoo) which is now part of AVID/Digidesign (A.I.R)
Maybe the german engineers are much smarter and able to deliver code which is much more effective in producing high-quality sound with
less CPU consumption!?

just my 2 cents

PS: These days this is a comman problem - Logic EXS24, Kontakt etc. they all are massive CPU hoggs and not usable in a real-world zenario
where users have regular office-pc's or iMac's to host their DAW. The only exception is ProTools (XPand!) which sounds good and needs almost
zero CPU....and gues what this comes from the former Wizoo-Guys from germany!

[hologram]

I have heard AIR's XSPAND and Halion Sonic,and I would say Halion Sonic trumps it easily..I also own Hypersonic 2, and Halion Sonic again to my ears trumps it,and this is just by what I've heard from mp3 files scouring the net... You don't mention what your cpu specs are..
I also have Kontakt, and it's definitely not a cpu hog..

Again it's hard to know what your even talking about when you don't mention your specs...

fwiw I also have patches in hypersonic 2 - and I have combi's that can bring down a fast quad easily... it's all how you pick your instruments,right?

Certain patches will require more power.. I'm all for nice processing powered plugins,but I don't agree with your statements about Kontakt,and comparing hypersonic 2,to Halion Sonic.. I think hs sounds much better,and more modern..
_________________
Hardware:Intel Q6600|3.0ghz|P45 Asus P5Q|8Gbs Corsair |BFG 8800 GT 512mb
Win7x64|Wd Raptors|Great River Me1nv+Rnc1773|Sm7b|U-87 Clone|Lavry DA10|E-Mu 1820m|Motu 896 HD
Roland A-50 Polyphonic AT|Akai Mpc 5000|Novation SL Remote Zero|LexiconMPX100|Central Station w/Remote
Dynaudio Bm5a|Event8

Software:Sylenth.v2.21|Halion Sonic|Hypersonic 2|Maschine|Motu BPM 1.5|Emulator X3|Symphobia|Superior v2|Sampletank2|K4||Uad1|Waves Api+Ssl V-Series|Tritone|Sonnox|Altiverb6
Studio One Pro

[offlinebouncer]

My specs are:

- iMac / Intel Core2Duo 2.16 GHz
- 4 GB RAM
- OS X 10.6.4
- Logic 8
- Cubase 5.1
- ProTools 8.04
- M-Audio FastTrack Pro

[hologram]

The extra cores will always play a part in cpu hungry plugins.. The question is has steinberg optimized it enough for multi-core processing,the imac,or a similar core 2 duo, or quad,i7's - which performs best will most likely be the one with the most power,generally,but not always.. also remember it's such a new plugin, it may require a few cycles of updates to get it to perform great for all. eg: Omnisphere took awhile,but they we're persistent in updating it to run better on cpu's in general.. Though omni can still quickly bring a modern cpu to it's knee's.. so can hypersonic 2 if used without much care or thought, you have to be choosy,on what to load/when to bounce this has always and most likely will always be the name of the game, more power, more quality,more performance issues think /compose/bounce play it safe

we're asking dev's to give us quality, but at the same time great performance with our cpu's.. this may take an update, these plugins are for the most part, tweaked as they go,sadly,they test with their own set of beta testers,and cpu's,then us.. and granted it would be nice if it always worked right out of the box,perfect,but it rarely is perfect ime..
sharing resources is what cpus do, and workarounds are generally useful,so hate to be the bearer of bad news,but you may have to tweak a patch or limit it's efx,to perform better, just a fact of computing.

I've read enough reviews to know that,for a large number of folks they are doing well with it.. it's always gonna come down to your specs, some cpus will perform better,some will suffer..have a read,some are loving it's performance,but then again,they may know when to know it's enough..

stacking 16 instruments in hypersonic 2 can also be heavy on a cpu...why would halion sonic be any different,when it's of higher quality .. again.. think/compose/bounce

if only a few instruments made the cpu/asio go sky high I would be in doubt, but this seems to be normal,and may just need an update to get it to perform better for u..

fwiw I also have a fast track pro here @ the studio,unused right now,but since it's usb,it doesn't have as good as bandwith as my pci card, or even get as low as latency or as stable asio as my emu1820m for example.. but raising the buffers on your card may help you get it stable enough to play back the tracks... have you tried this?
_________________
Hardware:Intel Q6600|3.0ghz|P45 Asus P5Q|8Gbs Corsair |BFG 8800 GT 512mb
Win7x64|Wd Raptors|Great River Me1nv+Rnc1773|Sm7b|U-87 Clone|Lavry DA10|E-Mu 1820m|Motu 896 HD
Roland A-50 Polyphonic AT|Akai Mpc 5000|Novation SL Remote Zero|LexiconMPX100|Central Station w/Remote
Dynaudio Bm5a|Event8

Software:Sylenth.v2.21|Halion Sonic|Hypersonic 2|Maschine|Motu BPM 1.5|Emulator X3|Symphobia|Superior v2|Sampletank2|K4||Uad1|Waves Api+Ssl V-Series|Tritone|Sonnox|Altiverb6
Studio One Pro

[offlinebouncer]

I have 128 samples audio-buffer in all DAW's which works fine, no glitches or dropouts. I think it's a good compromise between performance and latency.
Different DAW's perform differently cause the have different audio-engines. Most conservative engine is ProTools which is great for audio and since v8 OK for MIDI,
Logic is great for MIDI and OK for Audio, Cubase is good for both audio and MIDI but is a little picky with hardware on the PC-Platform.

When you're on a mac the hardware isn't the problem, since it's clear and obvious what's inside. PC's have millions of possible configurations (Chipset, Controller, etc.)
so you never know if it works or not. That's why we use mac's...it's a no brainer - plug and play out of the box (PC is sometimes plug and pray or crash )

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter too much on which platform you're on, they should be equally stable if correctly configured.
My point was, that halion sonic sounds not really better than the much older hypersonic 2...I know this is a matter of taste and not objective
but that's what I think. My friend has halion sonic and I heard some patches like pianos, guitars, brass and strings.
To my ears Kontakt 4 has the best overall sound but it's really a CPU killer

[hologram]

128 samples works well for many things,but when introducing cpu heavy plugins, you might wanna raise the buffers... that's just a fact.. Not all plugins, are gonna allow 16 tracks from the synth at that low of latency.. Sorry that's just the truth.. To be able to do that, you'd have to have more cpu power... It's a matter of resources,mac or pc, nothing changes in that respect.


as far as kontakt - I've had 8 gb's of samples loaded in Kontakt and it performs very well.. Not sure what instruments or libraries your referring to,that makes kontakt do that on your setup,but never here.. see we have different cpu's,different soundcards,hardware etc.. performance is not the same obviously..

As far as the mac vs. pc thing,I have to disagree equal will not always happen,because they talk two different languages, and their coded differently,and the hardware makes use of their assigned resources differently.. Performance on your mac may not be as equal as a pc user with similar specs, thats just how it is,and vice versa.. Your mac may indeed perform great with certain apps,but not with others.. I'm not picking on mac here at all, I have one too but for cubase I'd rather use pc, for me it works better. Again different hardware though completely..

If the plugin doesn't perform well on your mac at 128, raise the buffers on the m-audio - trust me it will help... I have the same card and know what I'm talking about here, I'm simply trying to help you play back 16 channels better..
_________________
Hardware:Intel Q6600|3.0ghz|P45 Asus P5Q|8Gbs Corsair |BFG 8800 GT 512mb
Win7x64|Wd Raptors|Great River Me1nv+Rnc1773|Sm7b|U-87 Clone|Lavry DA10|E-Mu 1820m|Motu 896 HD
Roland A-50 Polyphonic AT|Akai Mpc 5000|Novation SL Remote Zero|LexiconMPX100|Central Station w/Remote
Dynaudio Bm5a|Event8

Software:Sylenth.v2.21|Halion Sonic|Hypersonic 2|Maschine|Motu BPM 1.5|Emulator X3|Symphobia|Superior v2|Sampletank2|K4||Uad1|Waves Api+Ssl V-Series|Tritone|Sonnox|Altiverb6
Studio One Pro