Software samplers are not new, but until now they have only existed as stand‑alone applications or sequencer‑specific plug‑ins. Paul Sellars investigates Steinberg's HALion, which offers close integration with Cubase VST, but can also be used as a VST‑format plug‑in from other sequencers.
HALion is a sampler. 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. 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. 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.
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). However, HALion is the first really convincing professional sampler built specifically for Cubase VST. 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.
Installation & User Interface
The Channel/Program pages. 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. 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. In 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. Mac users need OS 9 on at least a 250MHz 604e with 128Mb of RAM, though a G3 or better is recommended.
Before getting started, it's advisable to make sure you're running the very latest version of Cubase (updaters are supplied on the HALion CD), or you may find you have problems accessing a few of the plug‑in's features.
Once installed, HALion can be selected from the VST instruments panel and assigned as a MIDI track output just like any other VST instrument. Clicking the Edit button on the VST instrument 'rack' brings up HALion's graphical user interface, which by default opens on the Macro page.
Edit Pages
HALion's well‑designed Keyzone page allows the easy creation of multisamples. The 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. Twelve knobs and eight sliders allow for simple 'hands‑on' alterations of tuning, filter and LFO settings and amp and filter envelopes, amongst other parameters. There's also the familiar virtual keyboard for auditioning sounds. 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. 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). 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. 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. An ingenious grid of vertical and horizontal lines is intended to make Keyzone editing an intuitive, 'visual' process. The horizontal lines represent the velocity range to which each sample is assigned, while the vertical lines correspond with the pitch range across the keyboard. 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. 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. 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. 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. It is not possible, however, to make conventional 'destructive' waveform edits (cut, paste, delete, and so on) from here, and nor is it possible to record new samples. 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). 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. The amount of crossfade applied is controlled by how far you drag.
The comprehensive Envelope/Filter page is next. 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. straight or curved). 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). Settings of either 12 or 24dB are possible, and there are Cutoff and Resonance controls. The latter sounds great about three‑quarters of the way up, but perhaps a little thin and unconvincing when flat out. 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. 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. 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. Additionally 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. There are also basic controls to adjust Program tuning; any settings here can be made to affect either all samples in a Program, or selected samples only.
The modulation section displays six rows (there are 12 in total, but only six are displayed at a time), with each row showing one modulation routing. 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. 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. 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. The options are not so much flexible as mind‑boggling.
The Tune section provides controls for tuning all or selected samples in a Program in either octave, semitone or cent increments, and a 'No Transpose' option can be used to disable program tuning, so that all samples play across the keyboard at their original pitch (useful for creating drum kits). There's also a Glide control.
Finally, there is the Options page. Amongst other things, here you can choose to import samples in a variety of popular formats (see the 'HALion And Sample Libraries' box), adjust the 'Pre‑load Into RAM' setting (see the 'Stream If You Want To Go Faster' box) and set the number of simultaneous voices you want to use (a range of 16 to 256 is available).
The Options page is also where you can access what is perhaps one of HALion's most important parameters: the Quality control. As its name suggests, this can be used to alter, more specifically reduce, the quality of HALion's audio output. You might be wondering why on earth you should want to, but the reason is simple: by reducing the sound quality, you correspondingly reduce the load that the plug‑in places on your computer's CPU, and this is essential if your system is having trouble with the demands placed on it by HALion and any other VST plug‑ins that require lots of real‑time attention.
The Quality control is a slider ranging from 100 percent (pristine, full‑bandwidth audio, but with a tendency to fry slower CPUs when things get busy) to 0 percent (noisy, crunchy, like an eight‑bit sample cartridge, but much less taxing even on slow machines). Depending on what kind of samples you're playing, you'll sometimes find that a reduction from 100 percent to 75 percent makes little noticeable difference to sound quality, while still providing a some extra headroom for the CPU.
It's important to bear in mind that the reduction in sound quality is intended only to affect real‑time playback. When, as at some point you are bound to, you mix HALion's output down to an audio track, the Quality control setting will be over‑ridden, and the audio will be rendered at the highest possible quality (unless you intentionally un‑check the 'Full Quality during Export' option box — which is incidentally a great way to create 'lo‑fi' effects).
Owners of slow‑to‑middling computers will find that careful adjustment of the Quality control during real‑time playback, coupled with periodic mixdowns to audio tracks, is the best strategy for getting the most out of HALion. Owners of more high‑powered machines, on the other hand, may only need to resort to the Quality control when using many simultaneous voices, or even multiple active instances of HALion.
Performance
As you'll have noticed, HALion has no shortage of features and Program editing functions, and it would be impossible to list every single button and context menu item in an article of this length. Instead, let's concentrate on the more important question of how well or badly it actually works in practice. I'll admit that I had some doubts before I installed the plug‑in as to how well it would perform on my now somewhat less than cutting‑edge 'Blue and White' G3 Mac (400MHz, 192Mb RAM).
So, were my fears justified? The short answer is "no". However, the longer but more accurate answer is "no, but this may have something to do with the way I use a sampler". What do I mean by this? Well, I use a sampler in a way which will probably be familiar to many dance producers. I rarely use samples much longer than a one‑bar loop, and I frequently chop sampled phrases up into individual hits or notes, and program parts out of these small pieces. When I experimented in this way, HALion performed well and was reassuringly stable on my machine, seemingly not making much greater demands on the CPU than other VST instruments.
However, HALion has also been designed to meet the needs of sampler users who approach things rather differently. The sample libraries supplied in the box, which feature single instrument programs hundreds of megabytes in size, are a clear indication that Steinberg want HALion to appeal to those people who use a sampler primarily as a way to gain access to very high‑quality multisampled instruments from professional CD‑ROM libraries.
Without a shadow of doubt, HALion is capable of doing this, and doing it well. In fact, due to its use of hard disk streaming (see the 'Stream If You Want To Go Faster' box) HALion is probably better able to handle detailed and realistic multisamples than any RAM‑based sampler, since its effective lack of a memory limit means that acoustic instruments can be sampled from their initial attack, right through their natural decay, and into silence (rather than looping a section and using an envelope generator to simulate decay, as would be the conventional, RAM‑conserving approach).
However, if you want to use HALion primarily to play these kind of very large multisamples, you're really going to need to give it as much computing power as you possibly can. Loading up the supplied 250Mb Wizoo Acoustic Piano Program, with the Quality control set to maximum, I soon found that only a relatively short burst of enthusiastic two‑handed chord playing was enough on my machine to drive the CPU meter on the VST Performance panel past the 50 percent mark. More sustained hammering away inevitably pushed it beyond the 60 percent mark and into the danger zone — and from then on, it was only a matter of time before audio playback halted.
Reducing the Quality setting, of course, gave me more room for manoeuvre — and since it need have no effect on sound quality in the final mixdown, I would personally consider this an acceptable compromise. Nevertheless, it is a compromise, and you will have to decide whether you consider the somewhat reduced sound quality of very large multisamples during real‑time playback a price worth paying for the many benefits HALion offers.
No doubt owners of memory‑loaded top‑of‑the‑range G4s and GHz Pentiums will have more headroom available to them, and may find that a much smaller compromise is required, less often. However, with a possible 256 voices of polyphony available to each instance of HALion, and a possible maximum eight instances of HALion running simultaneously, it's probably fair to say that the computer capable of taking full advantage of HALion's potential hasn't been built... yet.
Conclusion
HALion is impressive. Its extensive features rival even the best hardware (and software) samplers on the market, it offers peerless convenience and seamless integration with Cubase VST, and its well‑thought‑out design makes programming easy. At £250, it's one of the more expensive VST plug‑ins available, but compare its price with the cost of any other professional sampler and it begins to look like good value for money.
I've been racking my brain to come up with things to complain about, but it's not easy. Sure, the manual isn't terribly well‑written, and would benefit from a few step‑by‑step examples. Integration with non‑Cubase hosts seems less than perfect at present, as Mark Wherry points out in his box, but I imagine developers will come up with patches to fix this with time. Also, Program parameters are perhaps spread across more edit pages than people might like. To be honest, though, that's about it.
Provided you're willing to accept that HALion, like any other VST instrument, is limited in its real‑time performance by the speed and power of the computer that hosts it, and that at present, it works much better under Cubase than anything else, you won't be disappointed. The bottom line is that it's what many of us have been waiting for — a professional sampler in plug‑in form.
Stream If You Want To Go Faster
Most samplers, be they built in software or hardware, work by storing sample data in RAM, so that sounds can be instantaneously triggered from a MIDI controller and played in 'real time'. HALion, like Nemesys' Gigasampler, adopts a different approach. Rather than loading active samples into RAM, and thereby limiting the maximum sample length to the amount of free memory available, HALion works by 'streaming' sample data directly from your hard drive whenever it's required.
In this way, the plug‑in uses up remarkably little RAM, and the maximum sample length is theoretically only limited by the amount of free space you have on your hard drive. The supplied sound libraries take full advantage of this freedom, offering (for example) extremely detailed Acoustic Piano and Electric Bass multisamples which weigh in at 250 and 370Mb respectively.
In actual fact, however, HALion does not work entirely by hard disk streaming alone. To do so would be impractical, since it would almost inevitably result in an unacceptable delay between a MIDI note‑on and the beginning of sample playback. To prevent this from happening, HALion pre‑loads a small section from the start of each active sample into RAM, providing a kind of safe 'lead‑in' to the streaming process, and ensuring reliable, responsive performance.
A slider control on the Options page allows you to dictate how much of each active sample will be pre‑loaded into RAM (one second is the minimum, 'Always' the maximum), and this can be used to reduce the load on your hard drive. Streaming samples inevitably involves a fair amount of disk activity and, since recording audio tracks in Cubase also makes considerable demands of the hard disk, there's always the danger that problems may arise when attempting to do both simultaneously. By pre‑loading more of each sample into RAM, you should be able to reduce the frequency with which HALion has to read from the hard drive — an aid to stability when recording.
Using HALion with Emagic's Logic Audio
If you're a Logic Audio user tempted by HALion, the good news is that, like most VST Instruments, HALion will work with Logic on both Mac and Windows platforms. The bad news, however, is that there are some serious file management issues, and because Logic's Bounce function works differently to Cubase's Audio Mixdown, the 'Full Quality during Export' feature won't have any effect, so watch where you set the Quality slider.
Although Logic's plug‑in window 'Load setting' command is capable of importing Cubase FXP plug‑in settings files, loading a HALion Program from an external source, such as the included factory library, will produce an error because HALion won't be able to find the sample files used for this instrument under Logic. The reason is that the flexible path handling is implemented on the side of the VST host, and Logic currently lacks this ability.
You can, however, tell HALion manually where the samples are by switching to the Keyzone page, clicking a keyzone while holding down the right mouse button (or the Control key on a Mac) and choosing 'Search in Directories'. A file selector will appear for you to select the appropriate Samples directory for the instrument you're loading, and the missing sample files will be found.
Since Logic won't export plug‑in settings to the FXP format, it's not always possible to re‑save the Program with the updated path information, and settings often get corrupted when saved in Logic's own format. To make matters worse, there also seem to be problems when retrieving used instruments when reloading a song.
These issues mean you have to manually load and find the instruments and samples every time you reload a song that uses HALion. It also means that authoring your own instruments with the HALion/Logic combination is going to be problematic too, and you'll be unable to share your efforts with Cubase users.
As most Logic users are aware, the current version (v4.7.2 at the time of writing) doesn't support multiple outputs for VST Instruments, although this feature is due to be added in the forthcoming version 5 update. However, you'll still be able to use HALion as a multi‑channel instrument by setting the 'MIDI Cha' parameter to All on the audio instrument running HALion. It's then possible to create some ordinary MIDI instruments set to different MIDI channels on the Environment window and cable these into the audio instrument running HALion. You will then be able to play 16 different instruments at once in HALion. And because Logic can now send Program Change commands to VST Instruments, you can even choose which Program you want on each channel, just as you would any other MIDI instrument in Logic.
To summarise, if you're a user of both Logic and Cubase, the fact that HALion can at least run and import Cubase instrument Banks in Logic is very useful. However, if you only use Logic, Emagic's own EXS24 might be better for everyday use (at least until the file‑handling issues are resolved). You can, of course, still use HALion if you need specific instruments, such as those taking advantage of streaming facilities. Mark Wherry
HALion — Second Opinion
HALion has been a long time coming, but for those Cubase VST users who don't want the hassle of running several applications simultaneously, it would seem to be the perfect software sampler. As an enthusiastic user of the PC‑only Nemesys (now owned by Tascam) Gigastudio 160, I was particularly interested in seeing how HALion performed, especially as I've had quite a few teething troubles getting Gigastudio and Cubase VST to run smoothly alongside each other.
This is mainly because when both Cubase and Gigastudio are streaming data from the hard drive, they can end up fighting each other. HALion is the first integrated software sampler to offer sample streaming from the hard drive, and thus bypasses any possible conflicts, as well as being the only such product currently available for the Mac.
Sadly, this has caused rumblings behind the scenes about possible patent infringement, since Nemesys are "the exclusive MI licensee of Conexant Systems Inc", whose Endless Streaming technology has "US and International Patents related to utilisation of mass storage devices for real‑time, low‑latency access of musical instrument digital samples". As a licensee, Nemesys themselves don't own the patent, but Conexant will no doubt be taking a close look at how HALion streams its data. I've also heard several industry rumours suggesting that Emagic's promised EXS24 disk streaming, originally slated for inclusion in the Logic Audio v4.7 update, was postponed for a similar reason. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
Although HALion is bundled with four CD‑ROMs stuffed with long samples from Wizoo to get you started, these are only really a taster for what's to come, as existing Giga libraries are relaunched in HALion format by third‑party developers. Steinberg are now also actively involved in library creation, having a 60 percent controlling stake in the new Wizoo Sound Design company (partners Wizoo Publishing have the other 40 percent).
Happily for those with existing sample libraries, HALion incorporates a licensed version of CDxtract to allow it to import a wide range of non‑standard CD‑ROM formats including Akai and Emu. No doubt someone will eventually write a Gigasampler‑to‑HALion library converter as well, although curiously Chicken Systems, who make the conversion software Translator, have already publicly announced that it would be unfair to Nemesys/Tascam for them to write a Giga‑HALion translation in the immediate future! Also, HALion doesn't currently support the 'dimensions' that allow Gigastudio libraries to switch between multiple sample layers 'on the fly' using key‑switching or MIDI controllers.
Overall, I thought HALion looked and sounded good, was very intuitive to edit, and seemed ideal for any Cubase VST user who needs a comprehensive software sampler with the obvious advantage of being able to use VST and DirectX plug‑ins. However, my rough‑and‑ready performance comparisons showed that when consuming about 50 percent of the available CPU of my Pentium II 450MHz PC, Gigastudio managed 90 mono voices, while HALion only managed about 40 mono voices for the same overhead, even with its filters bypassed. However, HALion did manage about 80 voices before it ran out of CPU steam, and this won't stop those with more powerful PIII/4 or G3/4 machines achieving far greater polyphony than me — although it does seem to suggest that the Nemesys engine is somewhat more efficient. Martin Walker
HALion & Sample Libraries
One of HALion's strengths is that it already offers comprehensive support for all the major sample library formats. Akai and Emu CD‑ROMs, Soundfonts, WAV and AIFF files, Sound Designer II and Recycle REX files can all be imported directly into HALion with relative ease. However, you can be sure that, as HALion's popularity grows, more and more manufacturers will begin creating sample libraries using Cubase's FXB and FXP plug‑in Bank and Program settings files (which is, logically, also what HALion uses to store its settings). French company Mididoc Productions (www.mididoc.com) were putting the finishing touches to the first of their HALion libraries as this issue went to press, and you can expect many of the better‑known manufacturers to follow suit shortly.information £ £249.99 including VAT.
Pros
- Seamless integration with Cubase VST.
- Hard disk streaming allows for almost unlimited sample length.
- Good value compared to the cost of a hardware sampler.
Cons
- Less‑than‑perfect compatibility with Logic at present.
- Older, slower computers will struggle with real‑time playback.
Summary
HALion is impressive. Provided your computer can cope with the CPU load it imposes, it provides a truly professional sampler in VST plug‑in format.