Effect suggestions and additions

Halion’s effects are pretty nice! Here’s a few more that could be useful. I’ll ignore Legacy effects.

-Harmonic Enhancer:
A high passed signal is sent to a dynamic expander, then boosted and mixed with the dry signal. Quieter signals are boosted less thanks to the expander (controlled by a sensitivity knob), making this work more or less like a simple dynamic EQ. Useful for naturally adding brightness to muffled recordings, like old 32kHz samples.

-Harmonic Exciter:
A high passed signal is distorted, creating harmonics, then mixed with the dry signal, like an Aphex Aural Exciter. Different sound than the Enhancer, and works with stuff with barely any/no high harmonics.

-Multi-Chorus:
More Chorus voices can produce a more transparent stereo widening/thickening effect, Roland Dimension D style. Hypersonic 2 had something similar (Quad Chorus), it’s strange to see this being omitted.

-Multi-Voice Pitch Shifter:
With control over fine/coarse pitch, pan, pre-delay, feedback and level of each voice, and a mix knob. This has MANY uses, from sound sweetening to producing unusual sounds. Cubase’s Cloner effect is almost there, just missing a few features.

-Spring/Plate Reverb:
Halion’s reverb is great, but it doesn’t always do the job for these kinds of reverbs. A separate optimized algorithm or impulse responses would be nice.

-Multiband Dynamics:
Applies upward or downward expansion or compression, like the Ableton Live plugin. Very useful for both sound design and mixing, and very popular in EDM.

-1176 emulation:
Essential sound for many genres. The Vintage Compressor doesn’t quite provide a similar sound. Groove Agent would also benefit greatly from a decent 1176.

-Convolver:
Simpler version of Reverence with IR import. For cabinet impulse reponses and sampled EQ curves, for example.

-Mod Delay:
Simple chorused delay.

-Distorted Delay:
Delay with distortions in the feedback loop. Something similar to the popular Radio Delay in Omnisphere.

-Channel Isolator:
Allows you to “solo” a single channel (like left or right), which is then automatically centered. The different mics in stereo and 5.1 samples often capture a different sound character. Sometimes it’s desirable to use just one of the mics in a preset, like the brighter mic of a piano sample.

-Vinyl Simulator:
Something like Cubase’s Grungelizer.

-Mono to Stereo:
The effect from Cubase. It sounds pretty good.

-----Additions:

-Distortion:
A few more variations are always welcome in synths aimed at sound design. A waveshaper would be nice.

-Chorus/Flanger:
Pre-delay knob, waveform selection from sine (smooth, the way it is now) to triangle (+1, -1, +1…). Maybe a random waveform.

-WahWah:
Auto Wah.

-Reverence:
Impulse response import. Absolute must for a sampler.

Feel free to suggest your own.

1 Like

+1

These are good ideas. A lot of these can be made via scripting.

+1 on Dynamic EQ

i’d like to be able to implement impulse responses into the background topology of my designs, not being limited to loading an impulse response into a reverence module.

ie, I want to take an impulse reponse of an analog compressor, which would appear as just a tone switch on my instruments GUI.

That IS an excellent list of effects. There seems some type of “movement” in the Halion engine which does make it sound more “alive” but I wish we could control this or turn it off.

SpiderMix