Is H5 actually a sampler?

That would be great, but for now it seems that H5 is still just a sample player, much like Halion Sonic, but with a few more bells and whistles I guess.

No !

Halion 5 is a sophisticated professional sampler, and sample player. Halion 5 imports the samples from your system files, or directly from Cubase 7.

Halion Sonic 2 is a sample player.

What I’m referring to in my post is that Halion 5 can not sample directly from a sound source, i.e. a Mic, or your Keyboard/Synth. ‘Directly’ is the keyword. The samples need to be recorded via Cubase, or any other DAW, or any digital recorder first. Halion 5, can then import these sound files, where you can start editing them, and construct your playable instrument. So it is a 2-Step process to get your samples into Halion 5. It would be very cool it that was a 1-step process.

Cheers,
Muziksculp

How is H5 a ‘sophisticated professional sampler’ when, as you say, ít can not sample directly from a sound source’? - If that is the case, it must be playing samples ‘recorded via Cubase, or any other DAW, or any digital recorder first’ as you also say.

Calling H5 a ‘sampler’ seems to be a misnomer when it can not actually sample anything. An Akai S6000 is a sampler in the correct usage of the word - plug a mic in and it will sample a sound.

I guess the word ‘sampler’ no longer means what it did a few years ago!

I’ve been saying this for years… How the hell can you call something that doesn’t sample, a sampler? Mind boggling.

When the type of input is the only difference between a sampler and sample player for you, Halion 5 isn’t a sampler indeed.

It’s not about the type of input … samplers allow you to “TAKE A SAMPLE”. The name of the device is taken from the ability to record snippets of audio to be edited. Halion and rest don’t sample audio data. They are simply editors.

Here we go again … same discussion, different version.
Sampling with Halion 4

I just wanted to know if recording a sound into H5 like a real sampler was now possible as this would make me more interested in upgrading from H3 to H5. (I never use H3 anymore). H4 took so long to arrive that I gave up and bought Kontakt.

It seems that there are other ‘real’ software samplers around now so the choice has widened.

I’m amazed at how excited people get at the suggestion that something that can not actually sample anything should not really be called a sampler.

I’m not really excited about it, I just find it odd. Especially if you buy it thinking you are going to run it stand alone and build samples.

But, besides that, I’d really like to have the ability to sample in H5.

You can load/save samples from H5, but you can also drag and drop one or more samples directly from within Cubase. Maybe a slightly less inaccurate term would be to call H5 an “integrated sampler”.

I think that the term sampler, is more geared towards the option to mangle (with) samples, as was possible in traditional samplers besides their ability to record. Recording really was more essential in those days too though since communication to the outside was fairly limited.

I think that most plugin samplers on the market do not “sample” on their own, or in its own environment. (Or maybe that’s old information, but that certainly used to be the “norm” for software samplers.)

It would be cool if Steinberg made a set of inputs available in H5 (via a simple side chain or whatever) that H6 :wink: could then record to a sample. Nothing more though (if even), just a simple routing choice directly from Cubase (or other host).

I mean, how could (or should, maybe the question should be) a record feature in a sampler compare to the recording features available in a recording suite such as Cubase? I mean, why have two sets of recorders, of which one can only be used in a single application?

Quite right.

That all makes sense too.

… and what’s this about amp sims? They don’t actually amplify, then, do they? :stuck_out_tongue:

But they do say they SIMULATE the behavior of an amplifier. That’s far more accurate.

Maybe HALion is a “samp sim”?

Except it doesn’t simulate the process of sampling at all.

Just so no one misunderstands my viewpoint here … I love H5, it is an awesome sound design tool. It isn’t a sampler though. It really doesn’t matter what they call it though. I just think its weird how the meaning has drifted. Might as well call a truck a boat because you can get people in it. Although I guess we called my grandmas Olds Delta 88 a land yacht.

It’s all semantics, really. If the first users of the Fairlight CMI had been given a choice of that or HALion 5, there’s no doubt in my mind that they would have chosen the latter. They would then, of course, have been faced with the problem of how to get sound into it, given that there were no soundcards back then, no internet to download from, no cover discs with gigabytes of samples, well … pretty much nothing in the digital domain.

The bottom line is, old hardware samplers had the capability to “sample” audio because they would have been almost useless otherwise (as an aside, the cost of providing that capability was significant!); now, there’s so much audio in “the cloud”, and so many other ways to get audio into the machine that adding that capability to software “samplers” would be redundant. The only software “sampler” I’ve used that could actually sample was E-MU’s Emulator X – and in the end, I hardly ever (read: never) used that feature.

BUT (as I was made aware by forum user ansolas) if you think of HALion 5 as a performance tool, you want to be able to sample back snippets of what you’re currently playing and use it as the basis for further evolution in realtime; I’m also thinking about how guitarists are currently using loop pedals …

well said- I wonder how many would have the patience of sampling with an Akai S900/950.

the world of sampling has changed! even websites are offering me “cookies” - go figure!

Very likely one will use HALion with a DAW, which generally has extensive digital recording (i.e. “sampling”) and mixing capabilities, rendering a second and the much simpler traditional “sampler” virtually useless. This is probably an important reason why many “sampler” (it felt weird writing it just then, LOL) plugins do not have the actual capability of sampling.

This brings up a very good reason for getting a portable digital recorder for traditional sampling. Nowadays, the portable recorders are much better at recording stuff, than any old sampler. Looking at it this way, IMO, shows what that much sought after sampler part of those workstations really were, a basic recorder!

Like others pointed out, those old samplers needed sampling, because they would have nothing to play otherwise. The complexities of actually sampling and editing on them triggered the birth of straight ROMplers, which also did not have any capability of sampling. Again showing that sampling is not needed per se, as long as source material is available in some way.

In the end, what is truly important with an instrument is the ability to produce sounds that one (and possibly others) like to hear. Most traditional samplers would have a hard time competing with HALion in that respect. :slight_smile: