User Manual

Table Of Contents
Library Creator
405
HALion’s Library Creator allows you to create your own instrument libraries. These libraries
are built as VST Sound container files that contain all the necessary components, such as
presets, samples, macro pages, MIDI modules, scripts, and sub presets.
A library can be created as a single VST Sound container or as a combination of containers
and can easily be distributed between computers using Steinberg’s Library Manager. VST
Sound is a Steinberg container format that can be compared to ZIP or ISO files, for example.
It contains a file structure with folders and files. Once it is registered in the MediaBay, the
container is mounted, and all the Steinberg products that contain a MediaBay can access the
folders and files within the container.
Libraries
When working with HALion, all presets are managed by the MediaBay. The MediaBay is
the central place where all information about presets is stored. This information is added
by tagging the presets with a variety of attributes that describe the preset character, the
instrument category it belongs to, the author of the preset, etc. One of those tags is the
Library Name.
If you set all presets that you want to belong to a particular library to the same Library
Name, they become part of this library and the MediaBay allows you to filter your search for
content belonging to this library only. This means that if you save a new preset, you can add a
specific Library Name to it to assign it to an existing library.
There are no restrictions regarding the type of preset that you can assign to a library.
However, if you are creating libraries for use in HALion Sonic SE, it is better practice to
be more restrictive, that is, to treat a library like an individual instrument with dedicated
presets.
Often, presets refer to other files, such as samples, macro pages, and Lua scripts.
Combining presets with all the referenced files into a library makes it easy to distribute them
and to protect them against modification and deletion.
Target Users and Creation Process for Libraries
Before you create a library, you must decide who your target users or customers are. You
could build a library that only HALion users can use, which gives you the freedom to build a
macro page that is larger than the size that HALion Sonic supports, for example. However,
this limits the number of potential users.
Most often, you will probably want to build your library so that it works with HALion Sonic
SE, which means that it can be used by everybody. HALion Sonic SE is freely available for
download on the Steinberg website.