On the MIDI front there’s a new MIDI Player and Drum Player both of which can be edited and triggered remotely with a Trigger Pad and the FlexPhraser has a new user mode with faders for setting velocity and pitch in up to 32 steps, plus two controller lanes for filters and effects. Steinberg offers a variety of sound libraries for Cubase, Sequel and plug-ins like HALion, HALion Sonic (SE), Padshop (Pro), Retrologue and Groove Agent (SE). That said, most DAWs provide decent audio editing, especially Cubase 7, which integrates very well with HALion 5.
Sample manipulation remains excellent, of course, but destructive editing facilities are still missing, which means using an offline external editor such as WaveLab.
#HALION 5 LIBRARY MANUAL#
It’s well implemented with two detection modes (transient and grid) manual marking and a selection of filters. Loop slicing was notably absent in version 4 and we’re pleased to see the inclusion of this vital production tool in version 5, bringing it in line with Kontakt and Mach Five. Both offer new sound creation possibilities, perhaps the most useful from a sound designer’s point of view being the sophisticated grain oscillator section. More Power Two new sound engines have been added to the existing combination of analogue synthesis with sampling granular synthesis and an authentic tone-wheel organ simulation. HALion instruments are libraries that can include sound files, presets and an own graphical user interface to turn HALion, HALion Sonic and HALion Sonic SE.