Missing samples in Halion 5-Please confirm

Hello,

I have been browsing the presets of Halion 5 and I noticed that in some patches I get a “missing samples” message and the sound does not load. [Please see attached screenshot].


The patches I have noticed up to now to give this message are:

Nice Chorus Bells
Asian Temple Bells

My Halion 5 was installed fresh from the DVD iso provided by Steinberg.
Anyone else who can replicate?
I wanted to ask here you people before I contact support.

Thanks

Anyone who can replicate or not?

Yeah, I can replicate it but I’m afraid that I can’t be much help. I have been suffering with the poor design of Halion’s patch organization practically since I started using it a couple of years ago. My problems come from three sources:

  1. Some of these patches came installed with older versions of some form of Halion, perhaps as a demo when I installed an early version of Cubase, like Cubase 5. Since then I have upgraded, via online download to Cubase 6 and then Cubase 7. When my hard drive died earlier this year, I reinstalled Cubase 7 (and Halion of course) and noticed that there were missing samples in Halion. Then I realized that some of those samples came with the earlier install of Cubase 5. So I had to find those discs and try to load those samples without having to install the earlier version of Cubase. PITA

  2. The whole reason that I purchased Halion in the first place was that it would import my multitude of Gigastudio (a program that no longer exists) samples. But the organization of those samples is poor as well. The problem is that I use Cubase and Halion on two different machines, a desktop in my studio and a laptop for remote recording and composing. I have imported the Giga samples to an external drive to be able to use them on both machines. BUT. Halion imports the AUDIO to the external drive but not the patch file that tells it what to do with the audio. That gets stored on the machine. Which means that when you go to load a Cubase project on the machine that you DIDN’T import the Giga sample into, Halion won’t be able to find it because the patch file is stored on the other machine (in some endless mysterious series of system folders that even the Steinberg techs have a hard time identifying).

  3. Having two machines has compounded the problem in another way too. I have tried to keep both machines current and duplicated so the same identical software is on both to make loading a project in either machine go smoothly. All other software but Halion works in this way. Because of the issue in #1 above, there are some Factory Content samples that seem to be installed on one machine but not the other. So even when I load a Cubase project with Halion Factory samples in it, some of the Factory Patches turn up missing and no amount of “rescanning” seems to help.

There IS a “rescan disc” button on the “Load > Media Bay” page in the bar in the middle on the right (hover over it to see it say “rescan disc”) but I have had limited success with it.

I have worked with a tech via email a couple of times on this issue and haven’t really had any success.

As I said, I really haven’t experienced this kind of software data problems with any other aspects of my digital audio software. It is frustrating.

I wish you luck. I’d love it if Steinberg could redesign this aspect of Halion in some way.

Thank you for the thorough reply Timmy. I guess I should bring this to support then. :frowning:

That’s what these forums are for. Glad to be able to have these conversations.

I noticed that you have Halion Symphonic Orchestra in your signature. That’s another issue that I have. A couple of years ago I purchased the HSO special 16 bit edition. Somehow over the years I acquired the regular HSO (maybe it came with Halion 5?) and now one of my machines has the 16 bit version and the other has the regular version and when you load a HSO patch on one machine and save the project, that patch is not recognized when loading it on the other machine. Infuriating. And I can’t get any kind of solid answer from Steinberg on how to make all the patches the same on both machines.

And I have never got an answer when asking the techs what the bit rate on the “regular” version of HSO is. 24bit? Less than 16?

Ah well.

Well, I sympathize with you. To be perfectly honest, I liked HSO when it came out, then I kept using it for teaching purposes but it became so complicated to use it reliably with the Halion/HalionSonic confusion and expression maps that I have given up on it altogether. I am sorry to see it go though.
I will contact support about the missing samples issue. Hopefully they will have a good solution to the problem.

Does your Halion content folder contain the file: FCP_SMT_079_HSSE_Pro.vstsound? The SY_DGW_*.wav layers (both used by the two patches you mention) are part of that vstsound container.

I just realized that many of the Drum Kits also load with missing samples. It’s not only the bells patches. Who knows how many more patches are corrupted…
I will email support on Monday. Hope they have a resolution for this one.

Here is another screenshot:

When trying to load Acid Jazzz Kit :

It does exist on the Mac (where the regular version of HSO is showing up in Halion) but not on the PC where the 16 bit version only exists.

Another thing to note: even though the 16 bit “special edition” patches exist on the PC machine, there is no HSO instrument in the list (with big icons for each instrument) In the “instrument sets” list in Halion 5. On the Mac, in the “instrument sets” list there IS an icon for HSO)

I tried copying the file that you mention (FCP…) from the Mac to the Halion/ VST sound folder on the PC but when I opened Halion 5 on the PC the only HSO patches available were the 16bit special edition patches

I’m confused. Niles, if you have any suggestions, I appreciated it.

Thanks.

Sorry timmyboylad, I don’t own Halion Symphonic Orchestra, so I’m not sure what’s happening there.
I was revering to the OP’s question about the Halion 5 missing content.

I’m having the same problem with missing samples. Fresh install of everything on a new Win 7 PC. I have the download version, but it is supposed to be a full version. One obvious missing sample sets for me is the acoustic guitars. About half of them do not load. I tried downloading the software twice to make sure it was not a corrupt download but no change. I emailed tech support and will wait for a reply, I guess because I can’t find a solution on this forum.

OK I figured it out. At least for me. I went back and found the Halion Sonic ver 1 demo discs that came with my Cubase 6 box and installed just the content to the same folder as my Halion 5 content. Now everything works. If you don’t have the old discs maybe that content is available on Steinbergs ftp archives? Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info, McBass. How did you install the content? Manually? Run an installer? Could you tell us the Windows path to your Halion 5 content?

Thanks!

Hi

I’m having the same problem on PC a path would be very useful.

Regards

Vantage

I had the same issue and fixed it by doing this:

I copied the contents from my cubase 6.x DVDs (both of them have content) into the proper path on my user profile:

In my case, F:\ is the drive letter for my DVDplayer, and C:\ is my system drive letter.
%USERID% would be the name of you user profle. You would obviously need to replace that with the correct folder name.

So…copy the contents from both installation disks:
F:\HALion Sonic for Windows\Additional Content\VST Sound
to
C:\Users%USERID%\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Content\HALion\VST Sound
When prompted about duplicate files, I just “skipped” copying those files so I wouldnt overwrite a newer version from Halion 4.x and 5.x installs I did over Cubase 7.5.

I find it kind of annoying that I had to do something so dumb, just to get my stuff to work, but it seems to have solved all the issues with missing files and presets.

Hope that helps.

I reinstalled my whole OS, etc, changed to the 64-bit DAW path and faced with the “sample missing” problem in HALion 5 after the re-install.

After running the HALion_5_Update_Installer_win.exe I got lots of missing samples, so first I copied the missing vstsounds from the HALion Sonic 2 trial DVDs of Cubase 6 package. This worked partially.

Also run the HALion Sonic SE for Windows installer that came with Cubase 7.5 update.

Still getting “missing samples” errors, as these vstsound containers below were simply missing:
076
077
078
080
082
084
086
088
089
090
091
099

Then I manually copied these from the installer HALion Sonic SE\HALion Sonic SE for Windows\Additional Content\VST Sound. The 099 was not there.

Then I found also some .vstpresets on the HALion 4 DVD which were still missing: FCP_SMT_103_HAL_StraightNylonGuitar.vstsound
FCP_SMT_104_HAL_ChurchOrgan51.vstsound
FCP_SMT_105_HAL_Ethno.vstsound

Now all seems to be working (as I gathered all missing numbered vstsound containers in sequence), but this is quite a mess.

Please SB provide a solution that works, e.g. a complete set of downloadable ISO installers containing all .vstsound and program files.

I had missing samples using Halion 5 within Cubase 7.5 on my iMac. I just installed the “DVD 2 - HALion Sonic SE 2…” link under Cubase 7.5 downloads and I am now missing no samples. :slight_smile:

http://download.steinberg.net/downloads_software/Cubase_7_and_Cubase_Artist_7/7.5.0/ISO/45201_DVD5_HALSonic_SE_Content_2.iso

About time someone had a decent link & reply post!

:smiley: