Sonic Control.TV

HALion Symphonic Orchestra
Street Price- $499.00

While buzz on the HSO is virtually non-existent, Yamaha/Steinberg have produced a quality sounding orchestral library whose great strengths are in its design to operate easily within Cubase or Sonar as a virtual instrument, to blend well with other libraries, and to stand on its own merit as an orchestral library. The library size is 27GB and you can select from using either 16bit or 24bit samples.

Demos
You can find the demos here: http://steinberg.net/687_1.html

For those used to listening to various film score type demos, or orchestral replications, these demos stand out on their own merit as well written 20th compositions and arrangements with electronic realizations. There are no other demos like these, but kudos for originality and not following the common demo trend.

Installation
Once I saw there was a Synchrosoft key involved, I groaned, because I’m not a fan of this company and their procedures, having been first introduced to them with Cubase SX. However, for HSO, I was pleasantly surprised that setting up with HSO went very smoothly. I have to mark down the HSO manual because the instructions conflict with what appears on screen, and the manual writers assume the reader understands what LPT means, which I don’t.

One note on the Synchrosoft key, it doesn’t come in the box. Again, there’s an erroneous assumption here that only Cubase SX or Nuendo owners will get this library, and therefore already have the Synchrosoft key. The advertising, and the box, needs to clearly state that the key isn’t included, that it must be bought separately for $29US. Not a big price, but if I was a Sonar customer, or as a composer sequencing on the Mac, I would be irritated to discover that after $499 plus shipping, I had to order another item and wait a few more days before I could install it.

An installation point for Mac users on Digital Performer or Logic, is that the instructions didn’t make me feel confident in installing it on the Mac (Logic 7.1.1 on OS 10.4.2) which I would really like to do.

The Manual
The manual is better than most. Really in two parts, one part covers basic operations while the second part acts as a mini-instrumentation guide, which I thought was pretty good.

My Setup
I set this up on a Truespec shuttle with 1GB of RAM, P4 3.2, also running the Vienna Instruments for Strings and V-Stack. I’m using an E-MU 0404 PCI card with one pair of audio outs.

First Opening
In your browser, open up a new window, go to this link, scroll down and click once on the HSO player: http://steinberg.net/667+M52087573ab0.html

You now have a nice screen-sized shot, so you can go back and forth between my review and the screen.

Going left to right, you see Category. Click this once and you’ll get a list of all the programs available. To just work with a specific section, scroll down and click on the section name. When you move to Program, you’ll only see those programs listed for that section. Channel is where you decide which MIDI channel will receive the data. Volume is volume. However, the manual on page 23 (English version) says that Volume controls the volume of the slot not the instrument.

Say what?

Pan lets you place the sound left to right in the stereo spectrum.

Out is a little funky to me. When you press the down arrow under OUT, you see in descending order, Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass, then the rest of the “orchestra” following the order on a traditional scorepad. When you look at the mixing board in V-Stack, the mixing board follows that order. So in my test example, I have FLUTE Solo Combi Velocity KeySwitch. If I select Program, it’s automatically assigned to audio channel 5. If I want the Flute to sound on audio channel 1, I click on Out and select Hso1 Violin.

HSO responds to volume change commands from Logic, but in V-Stack, you don’t see fader movement. So what you’ll need to do is set Unity Gain, then adjust the volume within your sequencing program. Now, this may work completely different in Cubase and Sonar, but for me on Logic with HSO on a separate system, this is what happened.

The Q Controls

This is a very sharp way to “program” individual programs. Ambience controls the reverb built into the program. Click it once, and it’s muted. Body is where you can manipulate the sound to match most any library.

Where this gets confusing is that you have another Pan control and no explanation in the manual of it. In fact, except for a brief paragraph on page 24, there’s no explanation of the Q controls at all.

The Q controls is a great tool. But whoever decided that the end user should be able to figure it out without any written instruction, should be shot. Not having this info completely wastes the customer’s time in having to sit and experiment to define what feature does. The manual does say that depending on the sound selected, the list of options will change. But where’s the complete list of options?

I expect to experiment to create or alter a specific sound. That goes without saying. But to experiment to come up with your own definitions is ridiculous. Here, Steinberg should learn from the folks at Vienna with their videos on how the Vienna Instrument works.

Key Switches
There are two kinds of key switches, kr, and ks. With kr, you press and hold down the key to achieve the effect desired. This is a great feature for live playing. With ks, once you tap the key, that’s the articulation you’ll use until you tap another key.

My only complaint is where the key switches were located. Many start on A-1 and work up to C0, while Vienna and others start on C0 (or C1 depending on which system has been selected to define where middle C is, C3 or C4).

Playing Types
You get Velocity, XFade and XSwitch. Velocity is for the keyboardist used to playing and hearing dynamic changes as you play. Cross Fade (XFade), uses the Mod Wheel (default) or one of three different MIDI controllers to musically move between dynamic levels. So you have the option of playing the changes in live, or drawing them in within the sequencer. XSwitch works similar to XFade, but the changes are abrupt rather than having the smoother XFade. Not all the instruments have cross fades. These seem to be reserved mostly for the strings. To compensate, Steinberg created VelPB. Here, you play as normal with the velocity program but use the Pitch Bend wheel not to “bend” the pitch but to add or take away expression.

Read more about it here: http://steinberg.net/668_1.html

Your HSO Orchestra
This is really a very generous setup. You get the complete woodwinds except for the contrabassoon, but you do get a bass clarinet. There are the standard trumpets, trombones, French horns and tubas (Solo and Sectional, plus pre-set ensembles), plus the strings: Solo, Section, Ensemble, Pads, and a collected String Quartet in one program. For Percussion, there’s pitched, skinned, metal and wood. There’s a lot of good stuff, unfortunately, no harp, and no celeste.

How It Sounds
Overall, I think this is a great sounding library. The sound isn’t big like QLSO or VSL, but more close to Sonic Implants (SONiVOX). Like the original Miroslav Vitous Orchestral Library, HSO can be a little “too polite” in areas, lacking a more aggressive playing style.