Not sure where or what kind of monitors or DA/converters your listening to that on, but that statement is clearly not fact. Halion Sonic may have larger sample data, but better sounding samples? Im in disagreement with that statement, as an owner of the Montage, as well as previous Rack XS,Motif XF. I know this board is very well,and one thing Yamaha didn’t skimp on is there sample data, although it’s compressed into a little over 300 megabytes of Rom,it still sounds alot better then Halion Sonic 2.
Take for instance,if you strip down a patch from both the XS and Halion Sonic, meaning no effects. Play each note, you will notice the XS has more body to the patches, why? Why is the key,and the answer is, the XS has 8 elements or better terms (8 layers) assigned to each patch, Yamaha sound designers (who over the course of years with the Motif series) have expertly crafted the best tones they can out of each element and programmed it very well accordingly.
Halion sonic 2 has 4 options to layer a patch in their edit page. This is just one equation to it’s shortcomings on the playback level, but along with that,it doesn’t have the history in the patches that the Yamaha does. Meaning, the patches in Halion Sonic are not identical to those of the XS, so thats why the samples sound so different.
What I would like to see is Yamaha take Halion Sonic to a new sonic level, and at least give us the same sound quality of that of an XS. This would at the very minimum require adding more layers to the edit page, then perhaps Yamaha sound designers, could duplicate those XS patches in Halion Sonic.
You brought up an excellent point regarding the Effects in halion sonic, they are ridiculous in some cases, what they should do, is strip the FX program the best patches they can, and then add FX, but in the case of the current Halion sonic, I think those sound designers, were only able to work with what architecture they we’re given at the time.
Hypersonic 2 (developed by Wizoo - now AIR) had imo much better sounding Efx ( but way less modern) and a better synth (wavetables etc.) this is why the synth sounds in Hypersonic 2 even sound better then Halion Sonic 2, at close listen.
This post doesn’t mean Halion Sonic 2 isn’t a good rompler, but great, like an XS,not even close. 