HALion Sonic Play

What it does

A sample-based workstation instrument with close to 2,000 presets across piano, strings, brass, choir, guitar, drums, synths and General MIDI sets, plus expansion packs. Many presets stack up to four layers, each with its own volume, tuning and filter, and every sound gets Quick Controls, ADSR and an arpeggiator. It replaces the older non-AUv3 HALion Sonic pack in Cubasis.

In the demo

Jade runs it in AUM and plays through the Top Picks list, showing how the front-page controls change per preset, how VX presets expose key switches, and how the arpeggiator’s copy and paste moves a pattern onto a different sound. She also covers the new keyboard with scrolling and chord pads.

Worth knowing

There is no way to add your own layers to a preset, so it suits people who want ready-made sounds over deep sound design. Expect a 300 to 400 MB download on install.