New Gear Review: Steinberg HALion 5 and HALion Sonic 2

HALion5HALion 5 and HALion Sonic 2 are the latest releases of Steinberg’s VST sampler with its 192 kHz, 32-stereo outputs and 6-channel surround support. HALion Sonic 2 music production workstation has over 2,500 instrument sounds created by top sound experts at Steinberg and Yamaha.

HALion 5 and HALion Sonic 2 process thousands of synthesized and acoustic sounds through eight new virtual instruments: analog Trium synthesizer, Auron granular, Voltage, World Instruments and World Percussion, HALiotron, the Model C organ emulation and the B-Box step sequencer for beats and drum patterns.

Both HALion and HALion Sonic have nine new effects including VST Amp guitar and bass amp sounds and Auto Filter for sound morphing. Yamaha’s Motif technology is used in FlexPhraser, a complex arpeggiator with a phrase editor to create custom patterns and phrases.

For beat matching, HALion has a slicing mode to adjust audio material to fit any beat or track. Two new MIDI modules feature MIDI Player to load MIDI files that can be edited and triggered remotely. Drum Player is a step sequencer conceived and designed to play drum beats and rhythms.

HALion 5 is $349 and HALion Sonic 2 is $249. Visit http://steinberg.net.

By Barry Rudolph

miniBio: Barry Rudolph is a recording engineer/mixer with over 30 gold and platinum RIAA awards to his credit. He has recorded and/or mixed: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs and Robbie Nevil. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and also teaches recording engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. http://www.barryrudolph.com