Sampler? Synth? Workstation? Or just big bucket of sound? There are some impressive rabbit holes for sound designers out there, and Steinberg’s offering just got a big refresh.

While looking at the latest flagship from a music hardware giant (Roland’s Jupiter-80), it’s revealing to compare the software side of the fence. Computer software instruments may not be directly equivalent to all-in-one keyboards, but they do each embody the latest thinking in how to build expressive instruments and new sounds. German maker Steinberg is at home at this week’s giant Messe trade show, and they’ve taken the wraps off the upcoming landmark release of their own flagship synthesizer sampler workstation. It does … a lot.

HALion is really two instruments combined, both a virtual analog synthesizer and a sampler and sample playback workstation. The new version has dockable, movable, and resizable windows, function tabs, and screen sets – UI features generally associated with hosts, but necessary here to navigate HALion’s complex interface. There’s even a full-blown mixer desk inside.

The big change, though, is an expected one, bringing HALion in line with Steinberg’s latest ideas on what to do with VST plug-ins and sequencing. I looked at these features in my preview of Cubase 6′s note-by-note expression editing and VST 3.5. New features for adding expression to individual musical notes and sequences require updates to the associated plug-in software and sound content, so that’s where HALion comes in. Put the two together, and you have a better way of coupling stored sequence information with musical-style expression, whether modeling real instruments or storing transformations of sound parameters with synth sounds. The idea is to give sequenced music the same sorts of information about how sounds change across a note that a musical score might.

With or without those features, HALion 4 is full of sound design tools:

• A mixing engine with unlimited buses per program and layer and free routing – think DAW-like mixing inside each sound patch. Then route those to 32 stereo output channels or 6-channel surround. (Ow! My head!)
• Some 44 effect processors – this is before you drop HALion inside a DAW and add effects – including convolution reverbs, studio EQs, rotary cabinet emulation, morphing filters.
• Internal phrase arpeggiator.
• A new version of MegaTrig, which allows you to create series of conditions for triggers – basically, a graphical interface in place of the textual scripting in tools like rival sampler Kontakt.
• “Quick Controls” for mapping parameters to macro knobs, as we’ve seen in … well, many places. Your brain can keep track of 8 things more easily than it can 80.
• 15 GB of sound content.
• 32-bit and 64-bit versions for both Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6.

More images (click any of these for larger versions), all courtesy Steinberg:

And all of this costs you EUR349/GBP295, including VAT. US$329.99 retail in the US. (It’s cheaper because we’re less tax-y, folks.)

And that’s, really, kind of ridiculously cheap for a synth, a sampler, a mixer, a sound design toolset, and gigs of sounds, if you think about it. Lots more HALion here:
http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/vst/preview_halion_4.htm

Updated: Here’s a photo of MegaTrig – think Kontakt’s KSP scripting environment as a GUI. Which is more powerful? We’ll find out when HALion ships.

MOTU has a comprehensive update page, and I’ve added the news to the http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard round-up page.

That said, while MOTU has the greatest level of out-of-the-gate support I’ve seen from any vendor for 10.6, even they have run into a showstopper issue. Their Ethno Instrument isn’t yet compatible; an update is expected. Sure, that’s just one instrument. But the lesson here? If you don’t mind the occasional wrinkle, you can live on the bleeding edge. But if you want to keep your software up and running, your best bet is to be patient and wait to upgrade. That’s not to discourage you from testing the latest-and-greatest, it just means you need to have the expectations to match.

The news remains, though: MOTU does have updated drivers for those of you with MOTU hardware or software who want to get a head start on setting up Snow Leopard.

That does not seem to be the case with other hardware vendors (Pro Tools, M-Audio, Tascam, and PreSonus all suggest waiting), and even some of the drivers that will initially become available should be considered “beta.” That is, they may even be designed to work with 10.6, but could use additional testing. I think that could probably generally be said of this update for musicians – just as with any significant operating system update on any platform.

Okay, that’s technically not a snow leopard, but I came pretty close, right? Photo (CC) Mark Kenny.

For the latest on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), be sure to check out our full round-up. It’ll be regularly updated through the coming days.

We have updates from Propellerhead and Ableton. Basically, the message is what we’re hearing across the board – developers have been testing their software, but you should be cautious about updating and ensure all the hardware, software, and plug-ins you want to use work. More details on the state of development from these favorites to follow… notably, including an expected update to Live 8 that will bring full, official support to 10.6.

Updated: More news coming in and added to the round-up page. Antares reports their software works — good news. But the big news is that many Tascam hardware products will need driver updates. That is suggestive of changes to the OS that could impact other audio interfaces from other vendors. I’m going to keep saying this – upgrade on launch day at your own risk. Writing and testing audio drivers is tremendously time-intensive, so if you want everything to work, you’ll need to verify compatibility before you upgrade. Snow Leopard’s improvements will only be cool if your audio box works, too.

Ableton’s Dom Wilms, Manager – Technical Support, writes CDM:

10.6 is not officially supported yet, as we’re currently testing it with Live 8 and based on the results we will release a free bugfix update during the next weeks that will officially support 10.6.

It’s likely that Live 7 will also be just fine with 10.6 – but we don’t want to promise this right now before the tests are all finished and us being sure that we can achieve 100% compatibility.

And yes, we also do not recommend upgrading yet if stability is crucial for the used system. In this case customers should wait until all third party software and hardware products are confirmed to work with the new cat…

We will come up with a little FAQ regarding those questions in our forum today or tomorrow.

Note that reader Jae sent in a thread from the Ableton forums with some testers, but I wouldn’t take it as scientific evidence. It begins with a user finds a reduction in CPU usage that’s actually too large – that is, it seems there’s some significant variable that’s not controlled.

None other than CEO Ernst Nathorst-Böös writes in with the official statement from Propellerhead. So far, so good – just, again, approach this new OS with caution.

Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Compatibility Statement

Apple have released a new operating system, Mac OS X 10.6 also known as Snow Leopard. Our products have been tested on this new OS X version and we are happy to report that all our applications are fully functional.

Please note the following non-critical issues:

ReCycle – You need to activate Rosetta to make ReCycle work. This is similar to what happened if you ran ReCycle on a Intel-based Mac under Mac OS X 10.5.

Reason and Record – The text in the device patch selector has a display bug. The characters O, o and 8 have filled rather than hollow circles.

Record – The Record installer reports an (actually non-existing) problem after installation, but Record runs fine. You can safely use Record without any problems.

Hardware Note

Your music system does not consist of software alone. Please be aware that you may need to update the installation of your audio hardware, keyboard controller or other controller when upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6. We recommend that you consult the hardware manufacturer for more information about compatibility, before you upgrade your operating system.

Disclaimer

While Propellerhead Software has gone to great lengths to verify the information above, please note that it is based on early versions of Mac OS X 10.6 and that the testing performed is by definition limited. This information does not constitute any warranty, express or implied.

By the way, I want to thank developers who do post frank information on the forums and who have helped us out with this series – at a time when they don’t have all their testing data yet.

The changes may be subtle, and you may not notice a thing. But if you upgrade your OS – any OS – the day it comes out for the ever-delicate work of live music and visuals, you should think of yourself as a tester. There’s a good chance you’re going to find some issue somewhere. Guess what: griping about it gets you nowhere. If you find a problem, fill out a detailed bug report with the vendor. And be patient. Anyone who’s tried developing software or drivers knows what I mean: stuff breaks. The advantage now is, we can arm ourselves with information through the power of the Web.

I’ve created a page for tracking Snow Leopard compatibility, changes, and other information, with a visual equivalent to follow after launch. (Right now, most of the visual information we want to talk about is still under NDA.)

Bookmark it at:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard/

What kind of updates? Well, this just in: Iced Audio writes us to let us know they’ve successfully tested their awesome AudioFinder under 10.6.

This is information that’s constantly changing, and it’s an unscientific compilation – just think of it as a place to start your research and testing process if you do want to hop onboard 10.6 early.

As we get closer to Windows 7′s launch, we’ll give Windows a page, too, and I hope to have some centralized info for Linux, too.

Word from developers confirms what I had suspected: developers were as surprised as we were to learn Apple was shipping a new operating system on August 30.

If you have to ask yourself whether you want to upgrade, then the simple answer is – don’t, not yet. And via Christopher Wimbrow on Twitter, here’s the first tool that we can confirm will outright break if you jump too soon – PreSonus hardware. From their forum, earlier today, PreSonus’ Nick RICK Naqvi tells a user (unofficially):

Right now, we are planning to have support for Snow Leopard by the end of October. We had originally heard they were going to release it in September, so our plan was to test it thoroughly and then release a new driver about 30 days later. They moved up the date to August 28 so it looks like we will be a little more than a week later than we expected.

Please note, if you update your OS, your PreSonus hardware will not work.

If you have to install it to play with, I’d recommend doing a partition. But leave Leopard on it so that you can continue to record.

Ouch. I’ll let you know if this gets fixed sooner. And remember, this is an operating system that is being tested under a Non-Disclosure Agreement; more incompatibilities are likely to appear next week.

This illustrates a problem, too. Shipping an application early is great news. Shipping an operating system early – with countless hardware and software vendors pulling time from other work (like new features) to keep their stuff working – not so great news.

Fortunately, you have power over your computer. Ignore that Apple email that appeared on Monday saying Snow Leopard is “In store or at your door Friday,” and consider it a bleeding-edge operating system. Assume that for most users, the current build of 10.5 represents the best compromise of Mac stability, compatibility, and features – at least for the time being.

UPDATE – PreSonus WILL have beta drivers. And like the vast majority of vendors, real stable versions are expected in a few weeks.

Earlier in the week, I was told that we weren’t going to have Snow Leopard driver until October, but our engineers worked overtime the last week or so to release a beta driver that is fully functional. We have tested it internally and it is working well and allows for daisychaining of interfaces and full feature functionality. This driver will work with all of our Firestudio Family Interfaces including:

Firestudio 2626
Firestudio Project
Firestudio Lightpipe
Firestudio Tube
Firestudio Mobile
StudioLive1642

Our other interfaces are class compliant and are going to be immediately supported on Snow Leopard:

Firebox
Inspire1394
FP10 / Firepod
AudioboxUSB

Lastly, our new recording software, StudioOne is also ready for Snow Leopard. Here’s a link to the StudioOne page: http://www.presonus.com/products/SoftwareDetail.aspx?SoftwareId=11

If you are an early adopter, let us know your experiences.

Updated: See http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard for a running report.

Apple’s “Snow Leopard” 10.6 ships Friday, which means it’s time to start compiling information about the new OS flavor. Just don’t upgrade too fast, as always.

Want to push an operating system to the breaking point? Ask a musician. Between the demands of real-time performance and the complex ecosystem of mix-and-match hardware, software, and plug-ins, odds are your local audio geek will break an OS faster than anyone else. Not every operating system upgrade is going to have a big impact on music software, but keep in mind that even subtle changes can cause issues that may interfere with your work.

Of course, all of this means music users should treat any OS update with caution. :

• If you’ve got a critical, primary production machine, your best bet is often simply to wait. Confirm that software works before you upgrade rather than after.
• If you’ve got some time to invest in an upgrade or have more than one machine, be sure to do a full backup and system image so you can revert to the previous, known working OS.
• Best solution: Boot off an external hard drive. Don’t commit to installing internally until you’re sure everything is working. Once you are, go enjoy. (as noted in comments, and yes, I should have said this initially… still, the latest 10.5 build is still the preferred OS for now.)

So, sit back. Enjoy life. Go for a walk on a beach. Recline in your favorite chair with your MacBook running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Isn’t it great? Need to waste time? Plants vs. Zombies is out for Mac.

What? Still want to upgrade?

Fair enough. We’ll be tracking changes to Snow Leopard and which of them may impact audio.

The short version: Snow Leopard introduces only small changes, but if a developer hasn’t been on top of those changes, you could see issues. And as for the 64-bit mode that’s attracting most of the attention, the short answer is, you can’t use it for music yet.

Native Instruments and Plogue have each responded to CDM with information on their software.

Executive Summary

• NI and Plogue have tested their software as functioning on 10.6
• Neither NI nor Plogue recommends you upgrade your OS yet – Plogue uses stronger language to discourage you
• 64-bit support, expanded in Mac OS 10.6, is not yet relevant to music use because nothing (not even from Apple) supports it yet, but don’t worry – you can get more RAM through other methods
• Audio MIDI Setup gets a tune-up, and built-in audio support appears to be improved

Native Instruments

If you’re a Mac user who uses NI products on any version of the operating system, you should stay tuned to this URL:

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/support/compatibility/mac-os-x-compatibility/

NI tells CDM they’ve just updated it today with Snow Leopard information:

Native Instruments has conducted initial compatibility tests with Mac OS X 10.6, which have shown all current NI products to work without any specific issues under standard installations of this operating system.

However, users involved in professional audio production or live performance should be cautious about upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 until compatibility with third-party audio software and hardware has been widely confirmed by the relevant manufacturers.

Native Instruments is currently conducting further systematic compatibility and performance tests with Snow Leopard, and will provide additional information on this page as it becomes available.

The second paragraph sounds like what I just wrote, huh?

Plogue

Plogue, an independent developer of a variety of software ranging from the awesome modular environment Bidule to sampling engines for Garritan’s orchestra and piano products and an upcoming library of vintage chip sounds have been doing their own work. Privately, I talked with them about some of the work they had to do after Apple rewrote underlying operating system plumbing with Objective-C (from C and Carbon). Here’s their official statement to CDM on Snow Leopard and, in the parallel Windows dimension, Windows 7:

10.6 and W7 each caused only minor modifications to our code base, however these mods are necessary for proper functioning of our products on those platforms. Most of our transition efforts as a company will be of a user support nature.

Any musician foolish enough to jump on new OSes without a hint of caution, inevitably makes me wish for a new kind of Darwin Award prize.

(Emphasis mine. Consider yourself warned.)

Ableton (Unofficial) and a Plug-in Warning

From the Ableton forums, via comments:

It’s currently being tested internally over here, so the current version is not officially compatible yet – on the other hand this does not mean that it doesn’t run.

We will release an update after the tests during the next weeks that will be officially compatible, but we don’t recommend upgrading yet if stability is your main concern.

It’s likely that a few new third party plugin problems will show up due to the changes under the hood in 10.6 and experiences show that the latest 10.5 versions now are the way to go after the gfx performance problems with earlier 10.5 and 10.4 versions.

So, in other words, now is a great time to upgrade to 10.5!

More in the thread here:

Ableton Forums

Now, note, mostly what this extensive discussion reveals is that Snow Leopard is poorly understood, partly thanks to a very successful hype campaign on Apple’s part. (Ahem.)

There are not magical performance and speed improvements found by installing Snow Leopard – or, most likely, any OS. (Would that such things were true.) The presence of a set of multithreading tools, for instance, is specific only to developers for whom that set of tools is useful. Audio software already has finely-tuned multithreading implementations specific to real-time applications, and in the case of something like Ableton Live, it really needs to work across platforms.

If you install a new OS with the expectation that it’ll be “faster,” you’ll almost certainly be disappointed. If you install a new OS hoping you’ll “break things,” then you probably won’t be disappointed. I don’t mean to suggest don’t ever upgrade or live in fear of all software, just that you should imagine that, like redoing the plumbing in your basement, long-term advantages will come, but with significant effort and time.

PreSonus Hardware

See a separate post: at Snow Leopard launch, PreSonus audio interfaces are likely to be entirely incompatible.

About 64-bit (Nothing to see here…)

NI notes that the 10.6 offers significant changes to 64-bit support, including a new 64-bit kernel mode – this being the rough equivalent of the “x64” 64-bit versions of Windows (and Linux) that have been available for some time.

Here’s the bottom line: 64-bit support on Mac OS isn’t yet relevant to audio users, period. It’s not supported by Apple’s own Logic Studio, or any other major host at this time. This is a situation we’ll be watching, as it is something developers appear to be investigating.

But before we get too far into that issue, you should consider why you’re asking about 64-bit in the first place. 64-bit computing offers two potential advantage. First, running processor computation natively at 64 bits offers a marginal improvement. Second – the issue most people care about for music – 64-bit memory addressing offers access to massive amounts of memory, beyond the approximate 4 GB barrier that applies to 32-bit applications.

More memory is a very good thing. But you probably don’t want to sacrifice compatibility just to get it. Fortunately, you don’t need the 64-bit OS to get beyond that 4 GB barrier. On the Mac, some workarounds have extended the practical life of 32-bit memory addressing for music applications – thus avoiding the need to get a 64-bit native version of every driver and every piece of software you want to use.

On Windows and Linux, you can indeed get a number of audio applications (like SONAR on Windows, for instance) that have excellent 64-bit support, and a number of the drivers have followed suit. Even, then, though, many users choose to stick with 32-bit versions in order to have superior compatibility.

Note that processing “64-bit audio” – that is, digital audio represented using 64-bit data – is a completely different issues. A 32-bit processor and 32-bit operating system and 32-bit software can all do 64-bit audio processing. Whether you really need 64 bits for audio production is a whole other can of worms I won’t open here.

Getting More Memory – Without Any 64-bit Snow Leopards

When I spoke to Apple earlier this month, they downplayed the 64-bit issue and pointed out that their own EXS24 sampler in Logic Studio can access additional installed memory just fine with 32-bit – that means if you have Logic 8 or later, Pro or Express, Tiger or Leopard or Snow Leopard, you can use additional RAM. Each EXS24 sampler instance has its own memory space, so you can use as much memory as you want.

Apple even has a support doc on the subject:

Logic Pro/Express 8: How the EXS24 sampler addresses RAM in Logic 8

Last month, we looked at the situation for Native Instruments’ Kontakt. Again, using some of the flexibility of the memory architecture unique to the Mac, they’ve managed to access bigger amounts of RAM even on 32-bit OS.

Kontakt, Battery: Enhanced, More Compatible, 64-bit Memory

Kontakt is able to get up to a whopping 32 GB thanks to something called the Kontakt Memory Server. Again, you can get still more than 32 GB using 64-bit Windows, but for most users, that’s overkill.

All of this is to say, 64-bit is not a reason to upgrade to Snow Leopard for audio work – at least, not yet. Some of the built-in applications (like the Finder and Safari) get performance boosts from 64-bit optimization on 10.6, but none of that is critical to audio and music – and it’s certainly not worth upgrading too soon only to find some compatibility wrinkle we haven’t yet found.

Updates to Audio MIDI Setup

A reader tips us off to some small changes to Apple’s centralized Core Audio settings panel, Audio MIDI Setup. Audio and MIDI are now separated into separate windows, and Audio gets some nice improvements.

Note the per-app settings and adjustments for sample rate, bit depth, and Format. As in previous recent versions of Mac OS, you can also aggregate multiple physical audio interfaces into one – one of a number of reasons we really love Core Audio as a sound system.

The reader also notes that the update seems to improve support for his built-in hardware:

It’s now possible to choose a higher sample rate and resolution for all inputs/outputs on the built-in sound card of my MacBook Pro early ’08, which is pretty cool. Before there was clearly hearable, annoying digital fragments when playing back any sounds, especially on low volume – all magically gone, i don’t hear anymore noise.

Got More Information?

Help us continue our “More Than You Wanted to Know,” obsessive series of coverage on CDM and tip us off!

Corrections and clarifications are welcome, too – that’s why I enjoy the maleable nature of the Web.