Hypersonic 2 included in Halion Sonic 2?

Hey, does anyone know if Hypersonic 2 can be found in newer Steinberg software products? I looked at the Halion Sonic 2 product details and there didn’t seem to be any trace of Hypersonic 2 as one of the included software instruments. Is there any way to get a version of Hypersonic 2 in one of these newer software products by Steinberg?

That’s a big negative. Hypersonic has been discontinued long ago as the company that owned the license, Wizoo, was bought by Avid and now you will know them as Air Music Technology. Halion Sonic is the successor but there’s none of the Hypersonic sounds included.

Hope this answers your question.

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Hypersonic 2 is not in Halion Sonic, however you do receive the licenses for Hypersonic 1 and 2 when you buyand register Halion Sonic.

Thanks paulevs, indeed you answered my question. But Season’s reply has raised another one.

Season, would it be possible for you (or anyone) to clarify what this means? To receive the license for Hypersonic 2 when you buy and register Halion Sonic? If Hypersonic 1 and 2 have long since been discontinued, what is the purpose of these licenses being provided in Halion Sonic? And are these licenses for Hypersonic 1/2 included in the newer Halion Sonic 2?

That’s incorrect. Almost all of the acoustic instruments from Hypersonic 2 are included with Halion Sonic in higher quality, with more samples across the keyboard, much more velocity layers and several articulations. Some of the worst sounds were replaced with samples from the Yamaha Motif XF.

The old Hypersonic strings are included in higher quality with the current version of Halion Symphonic Orchestra, which is part of Absolute 3.

A Hypersonic 2 license is included with Halion 6 and Absolute VST Collection 3. In Halion 6’s case, you’ll have to contact support and request a Halion 5 add-on license, which will allow you to use Hypersonic. (2023 update: this is no longer available.)

Completely incorrect and false. Halion Sonic come with NONE from Hypersonic 2 Wavetables or oscillators or patch/presets. Both are very different beast at all.

I have got a bunch of old tunes that used hypersonic. Thing is, when I try to open the tracks I get multiple errors, “batch cluster … something”.
Does anyone know Cubase well enough to help me look at how I can get the old tunes to open with Hypersonic?
Cheers

Halion Sonic 3, has some patched that look like Hypersonic 1 or 2 patches. But you will have to hunt them in the library and there is no to noe connection with Hypersonic. The sounds can sound the same, but you have to search the whole HalionSonic3 Library to find them piece by piece.
So there is no exact the same Hypersonic patches in HalionSonic. Alltouht some sounds might sound the same.

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I know this post is old, but a Comment: Originally HALion One was said to cover all the sounds dropped from Hypersonic 2 (never made sense to me to write out a VSTi from service, let alone for $270, in 05), yet I never could find a single title or sample edits of important patches were the same at all, after searching 1st HALion One, and then as HALion One phased out., HALion SE.

Its important that Steinberg understand axing VSTis is a horrid thing for the arranger of large symphonic or really any pieces. They are not “replaced” by name & timbre in newer platforms. Snare or tympani in another context, such as without a gleckenspeil on the same wave, or a certain perc. synth sound with built in delay (as on HALion One), or a guitar lead swell (Hypersonic 2) any such nuances, then kill the part.

The sounds used were never found to be the “same sounds” available in HE 1 etc to HE3. This seems, as much as HALion Sonic SE has many new, cool, critical features, is disruptive to a library material made over 15-20 years. As much as I’ve a MOTIF XF it’s a frustrating deal, if you write symphonic music, with 3 dozen tracks, and they swap them out every few years. I get development but always felt code could keep these products at least in function. Or a search that found the missing patches. Even if they’re just placeholders for the part.

I just dug out one of a huge # of, important projects and did searches of entire banks, of HALion SE3.5 … dozens of tracks, which I reset up in Cubase 11 and found not a single facsimile of the sounds, by name or timbre from dropped VSTis. I’ve put place holders as it’s easier to go back to the MOTIF and recreate the patches, themselves once placeholders for timbre ideas via Hypersonic2, or HALionOne.

Well said. To discontinue a VST instrument is a complete disaster for those of us with extensive numbers of songs and film cues that used Hypersonic. It was an excellent instrument with extremely useful atmospheric sounds (I write film music) and the loss is accutely felt.

It would never have occurred to me to bounce down audio tracks of every part that used Hypersonic. The reality is that SOMEONE needs to pick up the license and re-release it.

The developer of Hypersonic was Wizoo, which is now AIR Music Technology. The history of Wizoo evolving to AIR Music Technology is complex, but it involved a period under Digidesign/Avid ownership. I suspect that Steinberg or Wizoo/Digidesign used some contractual mechanism to end the relationship, meaning that Hypersonic 2 was the last version and sales eventually ceased.

Even if the licensing headaches could be overcome, there is unlikely to be sufficient interest in Hypersonic to justify the costs of updating and re-releasing a virtual instrument based on seventeen-year-old technology. The reality is that all software has a lifespan unless it continues to evolve, meaning that products that were once expensive get dropped.

It is always best to write stems before archiving old projects. Going forward, you either need to run Hypersonic on suitably old hardware, run it on a virtual machine, sample it or find a replacement.

I have licences for a couple of expensive Photoshop plugins that have been discontinued. In one case, the developer has gone out of business and the licence server is no longer online, so I cannot reactivate my licence on my current hardware. In truth, I don’t miss them any more; I have accepted the need to move on and it is now possible to carry out the tasks they did using the core functionality of Photoshop. It was better to look for a modern way forwards, rather than trying to force old and unmaintained software to keep working.

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Hi David

Thank you for your email and I very much appreciate you taking the time to go through the problem.

I think the option of setting up a legacy computer is the answer. Not because newer and possibly better sounds exist but because old recordings used specific sound from Hypersonic and can’t be reproduced now.

I appreciate it’s an antique and like yourself accept that times move on. The problem has certainly taught me to be a lot more careful labelling stems.

Thanks again

David

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You do realise we can literally see the original comment, right? I mean I know you wrote this years ago but, WOW. Talk abt being deliberately misleading…