Steinberg HALion Symphonic Orchestra Operation Manual

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The Preferences dialog
When running HALion Symphonic Orchestra as a stand-alone appli-
cation, you will find a Preferences item in the File menu in the top left 
corner of the application window (Win) or in the HALion Symphonic 
Orchestra menu in the top left of the display (Mac). When selected, a 
dialog with a number of options opens. 
 This dialog is opened automatically when you launch HALion Sym-
phonic Orchestra as a stand-alone application for the first time....

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 When the “Enable Hybrid Rewire Mode (requires restart!)” option is 
activated (it is deactivated by default), you will directly access the sys-
tem MIDI ports while in ReWire slave mode. Incoming MIDI data from 
the selected system port will be merged with the MIDI input from the 
host sequencer received via ReWire. 
Note that when you change this setting you must restart HALion Symphonic Orchestra 
in stand-alone mode for the change to take effect.
 Use the MIDI Input...

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HALion Symphonic Orchestra details
About programs, banks and .hsb files
HALion Symphonic Orchestra plays back the samples of the content 
files supplied with your HALion Symphonic Orchestra DVDs. The 
content files are saved as HALion Sound Bank (.hsb) files. To play the 
content, HALion Symphonic Orchestra provides 16 so-called “pro-
gram slots” which are used to access “programs”. The idea behind 
programs is outlined below:
 A Program file (.fxp) can be loaded...

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The 16 program slots
A program is loaded into one of the 16 program slots of HALion Sym-
phonic Orchestra.
The first program slot in HALion Symphonic Orchestra.
The 16 program slots in HALion Symphonic Orchestra provide a 
number of settings. 
Column Description
Ins. Click here to select the corresponding program slot.
Category The two category pop-ups are used as filter criteria when browsing for a 
particular program: when you want to load a new program into a pro-
gram...

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Sound editing
HALion Symphonic Orchestra is not limited to playing back programs 
“as they are” – you can change some of the program parameters and 
thus change the sound. 
The Bypass button, the FX LED, the Q controls and the Options button.
Q controls
In the sound edit section below the program slots you find eight quick 
control knobs (or “Q controls”) allowing you to control up to eight pa-
rameters of the selected program. 
To change a parameter setting, simply...

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Player Options
The Player Options dialog opens when you click on the “ball” icon to 
the right of the Q controls. 
The Player Options dialog
The settings in the Player Options dialog affect the overall behavior of 
HALion Symphonic Orchestra. These are described below.
Disk Streaming – Memory
 The setting for Preload into RAM determines how many seconds of 
each sample are loaded into RAM.
It should be set depending on the number of samples that you intend to use, and the...

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 The Cache Size value determines the total size of the cache, i. e. the 
amount of RAM available for disk streaming. 
The Disk LED in the bottom left corner of the HALion Symphonic Orchestra window will 
light up red when samples cannot be loaded from disk in time. In such a case you can 
increase the cache size and/or the preload time of the samples. The bigger the cache 
size, the less disk streaming is required, however, a large value may mean that you are...

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Crescendo Control
This controller is exclusive to Xfade and Xswitch programs.
In the Crescendo Control menu, you can select either of the four fol-
lowing controllers to control the crescendo function described later:
 Modulation wheel (CC 1)
 Breath Controller (CC 2)
 Foot Controller (CC 4)

 To hear the Xfade programs, you have to move the set controller up af-
ter loading the program. This is because the controller’s initial value is 0.
This setting is global for all...

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The MIDI controller list
The MIDI controller list is a two-column table. The column on the left 
shows entries for the eight Q control knobs, while the column on the 
right lists MIDI controllers assigned to each of the Q controls. Clicking 
in the MIDI controller column for a Q control entry opens a pop-up 
menu where you can pick one of the 128 MIDI controllers. There is 
also a “Not assigned” entry.
To assign a MIDI controller to a Q control so that you can remote...

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Locate Content
The Locate Content function is used to “show” HALion Symphonic 
Orchestra where the .hsb files are stored. Once the content has been 
located, it is displayed as a list in the Load Program pop-up menu.
To use the Locate Content feature, proceed as follows:
1. In the Player Options dialog, select “Locate content…”.
A file dialog appears. By default, the function looks for .hsb files.
2. Locate and select the desired file(s) and click “Open”.
When you now open...