SeriesSteinberg HALion

Steinberg Halion Sonic is affordable and runs at a high level. It installs quickly and does not take up much disk space. You can also run other programs on your computer at the same time because it does not take up much CPU. It comes with a tone of sounds and patterns and you can even integrate it with Cubase 5 very easily. That was one of the key decisions for me because I use Cubase a lot. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE The layout of Sonic is easy to work with, it makes everything faster because it seems like all the options are right in front of you on the main screen. You will have infinite possibilities to edit and shape your sounds in this program because it gives you all of the parameters, and you can even tweak those using a MIDI controller or keyboard. OVERALL OPINION You will get over a thousand different instrument sounds with this program and a ton of effects to use with those sounds. Now not all of the effects are that great, but they are useable and better than a lot of effects that come standard with most DAW’s. You can use this software on a Mac or a PC, you will need to have at least 2 GB of RAM, if you have that much you will be fine and it will run great. Another thing to take note is that the activation process can get daunting because you need to have internet connections to do proper activation. For me that was an issue because my studio computer has no internet connectivity (on purpose) to keep all viruses and malware away from it. I thought I would be able to activate right out of the box but boy was I wrong. It was a headache trying to get it activated online but we figured it out. It does also require an eLicenser key and that is not included

Installing the Steinberg Halion virtual symphony orchestra software wasn't a problem at all and only took a short while. I didn't have any compatibility problems as I ran this within Steinberg Cubase, so everything was compatible. The interface of the software is quite user friendly as it isn't hard to choose between the different instruments and even to change specifics about the sounds and to change the effects. After playing around with the software for a little while I was able to understand pretty much everything going on with it and I have little doubt that most of you out there will be able to do the same and for this reason I don't think that a manual is necessary. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE I am no longer running Steinberg Halion as I no longer use Cubase SX, but when I did I ran it on a Hewlett Packard lap top with a 3.0 Ghz processor and 2 GB of RAM. The only reason I no longer use it is because I have switched to Pro Tools and this isn't a compatible piece of software with Pro Tools. While I was running this in Cubase I was able to run it quite well without any processing power problems. As long as you have a decent system I think you'll be okay with running this software. OVERALL OPINION I first used Steinberg Halion about four or five years ago as it was one of the first virtual orchestras that I used and used it a lot as I was always impressed with the sounds. While they aren't the most realistic looking back, they do get the job done if you want to get some orchestra sound in your songs at a cheap price. It is versatile software which definitely adds to the reasons that this is a good piece of software. The price is reasonable, but I would probably recommend looking into the newer versions of this software as it probably sounds better and is more up to date...