Logic user here. Ive never really spent much time with Steinberg products but I thought it might be worthwhile to give this latest gift from the sister site a trial.

Pretty weird and mixed bag in my opinion. I find the GUI's somewhat non-intuitive and disparate in their design. Some of the features in Halion are quite nice but most of the emulations are dreadful.The piano and orchestral emulations are particularly terrible.

Obviously Im a Steinberg newbie and I need to spend more time with it to better acquaint myself with the various plugins but for those for you who are longtime users - what are your thoughts on these plugs?

 

Last edited: Feb 25, 2022

Groove Agent is pretty good. I've bought it and skipped the rest from Absolute Collection.
Just my 2 cents..

 

i would agree w you, definitely choose different stuffs like `kontakt based or uvi based instead

 

it's like the developers are now tying to outdo one another's hd consumption. the last one I tried was Padshop, when it was released. it seemed fine, but really excessive for what I would make in it. There is also a good amount of overlap with of other products.

 

I like all Steinberg products since I grew up on the Steinberg Hypersonic.

 

Halion is a sampler. A real Sampler. You can record in it and use the files without Record in your DAW and Drag and Drop it.
It feels lightning fast. I used many VSTs but this a very unique feature I saw only on a couple of VSTs and never with a whole Synth section in combination . On the GUI, I have to agree, it looks and feels a bit irritating.

 

I recommend retrologue,padshop,the grand,groove agent,Halion and especially the iconica sections&player library!
But there is much more i really like. I don't understand why Steinberg instruments have such a questionable image
They are very good

 

Last edited: Feb 25, 2022

Lately Steinberg is Junk .. Period

 

Bad UI and UX design is a hallmark of Steinberg products. Even to me as a longtime Cubase user the GUIs feel odd. Take Groove Agent for example: such a great drum plugin, that could rival the best. But the GUI makes it a PITA to work with. It has all the functionality one would expect, but these functions are not immediately accessible and obvious to use.

My feeling is that Steinberg needs younger staff and developers to catch up with modern times. They feel like one of these companies stuck in the late 1990s or to be fair in the mid-2000s.

 

Exactly!

 

Fair point. I see HALion as addition to Omnisphere.
The other plugins are fine, the interface can be a little too complicated at first, but I've seen way worse so I can't really complain. They are functional, thats why a lot of professional musicians use them, just a little pain in the ass to navigate through at times, granted.

 

It's got to the point where I'm not supprised any more when people say they Tried Steinberg products and didn't like them because of a difficult GUI.

I like it but I learned on Cubase VSTi, then did alot on Cubase SX. The last one I bought and am still using is Cubase 5. it's expensive to upgrade and windows hasn't decided to force me to, yet.

The software is old fashion and the button locations have never changed, that might be why some of us like it.

The other thing is it's built for an engineer to record and mix, not an Artist to create with.

This is just my oppinion but I think the idea beehind the software is you listen to your work, decide what needs changed and go change it. its not like the newer, more moden DAW where you can play with multiple settings at the same time to find what you want to change.

it's like modern DAW are sliders for 1 to 1 million and Cubase is 6 knobs (1's, 10's, 100's, 1000's 10,000's & 100,000's). if you know what you want and know the controlls, cubase can be the fastest and cleanest way to get accurate results, but if you don't know what you want you'll get lost playing with 1 or 2 controlls.

 

I really like the instruments there. Groove Agent is an amazing tool for song starters. Halion is my second favorite sampler second to Kontakt, and Padshop has some cool libraries as well.

 

This, plus Backbone, really solid as part of a wider drum template. I don't use most of what Groove Agent does (patterns are via REAPER piano roll or HY-RPE2, sample selection is via XO) but it's a really solid drum pad sampler with great pitch stretching, transients, decent inboard effects if you want to try things quickly, great easy routing for multi-out and best of all in REAPER it reports the pad names directly to the note names, like Sitala. Obv if you use it with Cubase you get even deeper integration.

Backbone is an absurdly powerful drum processor that can be modulated, has surprisingly minimal CPU hit, and actually looks attractive and invites playing with it (unlike Groove Agent with it's weird stock colours).

The rest of the collection seems fine but nothing compelling for me over other instruments.