HALion 7: Sample and Synthesis Platform by Steinberg

The new Spectral Zone is built around a time-stretch and resynthesis algorithm developed in-house at Steinberg. It lets you change playback speed in real time without affecting pitch, and it includes formant shift, a spectral filter, purity and inharmonicity controls. The Blur effect smears incoming frequencies into wide, atmospheric textures, while Stack combines up to eight pitch-shifted copies of the spectrum so a single note can produce a chord.

The FM Zone was developed together with Yamaha. It lets you combine up to eight operators, use them as carriers or route them into feedback loops. The Algorithm Finder helps you navigate the algorithm designer, and the zone can import DX7 and TX81Z SYX files, which makes it practical for working with classic FM patches.

HALion 7 changes how modulation is assigned. Clicking a parameter in a zone lets you add a modulation to it directly, and modulation sources can be assigned by drag and drop. A visualization feature shows the signal of any modulation source, and the envelope editor offers brush, pen and eraser tools plus a Shaper mode that cycles shapes in sync with the host tempo.

The bundled instruments cover a wide range of styles. FM Lab is a dedicated FM synthesizer, Anima offers wavetable synth sounds with an arpeggiator, Auron provides 160 granular presets, B-Box is a 13-instrument, 16-step drum sequencer, and HALiotron recreates analog sounds from the 1960s and 1970s. Hot Brass and Model C, a tonewheel organ emulation, round out the set.