Library Management and are installers smart?

I did a search for “Library Management,” but most of the discussions had to do with Windows machines. Although I’m a professional musician, I am not a professional user of Halion and VST, although I’m trying to learn. But I am confused about the different “flavors” of Halion Sonic that seem to be on my computer, primarily from the versions of Cubase and Dorico I’ve had over the years.

According to the Halion Library Manager, I have the following installed:

  • Auron
  • B-Box
  • Halion 4 Factory Content
  • Halion Sonic 2 Combis
  • Halion Sonic Factory Content
  • Halion Sonic SE Artist
  • Halion Sonic SE Basic
  • Halion Sonic SE Hybrid
  • Halion Sonic SE Pro
  • Halion Symphonic Orchestra
  • Model C
  • Trium
  • Voltage
  • World Percussions

Most of these have their content on an external drive, although I don’t remember how I did that. I’d love to move the content for Halion Symphonic Orchestra and some of the Halion Sonic Factory Content to the same external drive (half of it is already on the external drive). I can’t move it using the Halion Library Manager because these are all under the “Installed” tab and the “Move” and “Remove” options are greyed out.

There is a dialogue box at the top that reads, “Move new libraries automatically to default location,” but I assume that this would only apply to libraries added after I add a new default location.

And is there duplication between the five versions of Halion Sonic (!) listed above? If so, wouldn’t the installers realize this and tell me that I already have the latest version of Halion Sonic installed, or ask if I wanted unnecessary material removed?

Additionally, I have about 12 GBs of content in Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Content/Halion/VST Sound and another 31 GB in Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Content/The Grand 3/VST Sound. None of these 43 GBs, however, show up in the Library Manager.

I think with some of my Logic X content I created aliases to an external drive and wonder if that’s something I should do here, at least for the 43GBs mentioned above. But I’ve found that makers of audio software vary in their degree of finickiness when one starts to mess around in system files.

My main motivation here is to free up disk space. I assumed the Library Manager would be the tools for this, but apparently not.

What can I do?

/cb

I’ve the same question. I would like to keep the Halion SE content installed with Dorico 2, but can’t understand how to do.

I moved the HALion folder (containing the VST Sound folder with the sound library) to an external drive, and linked it to the original position in the Mac’s Library via an alias. When running Dorico, the sound library is reported as missing.

I can’t find the Library Manager anywhere in my drive. I’m just redownloading the “Dorico Playback 1 - HALion Sonic SE 3” installer to see if it is there, and I missed it. If not, where can I find it?

I could also relink the external library by manually editing some .plist file, but I can’t find which one.

Best,
Paolo

I confirm there is no Library Manager in the HALion Sonic SE 3 installer. So, where is it?

Paolo

Yes, how do we find HALion Library Manager? I have the previous version of HALion SE, but no app is present on my computer. MacOS 10.13.5 is my current system. Can’t find a place online (yet) to download the mythical manager.

Also can’t install HALion symphonic orchestra yet because the installer bails out saying “The installation failed. The installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.” – have submitted trouble report to Steinberg but so far no answer.

Presumably this is because I relocated my HALion SE 3 library to SSD some time ago, and it runs fine there, but I haven’t the foggiest recollection where the installer would be looking for that library. And yes I probably created a softlink (not an Apple alias, but a Unix filesystem link).

I found the HALion Library Manager for MacOS by downloading the SE 3.1.15 update from HALion Sonic SE 3 updates and downloads | Steinberg on steinberg.net .

Once it was installed, I could find where my libraries were on my SSD. Mine were at /Library/Application\ Support/Steinberg/Content/HALion where I had made 'HALion" into a Unix link ('using program ‘ln’ from command line) to the directory on my SSD. Note that /Library in this case is the root /Library, not the user ~/Library which also has a similar directory, but not the one the manager and VST software are looking for.

My problem with the installer failing may also have been due to the link I made. It appears the installer chokes on links and requires actual directories. Checking that next.

And now I can verify that the HALion installer has some problem with a link. It was able to update a directory, but not a link/alias to a directory. So I updated where it wanted the files to be, and then I moved them and reestablished my link and they worked.

In addition, it appears different HALion libraries are installed under varying directories. The SE 3 library was at the path I mentioned above. However the HALion Symphonic libraries were installed to a different directory, but still in the /Library/Application\ Support/Steinberg/Content/ path. So if you do what I did, just be careful to get the correct name on your link.

Or maybe link /Content/ rather than linking a directory below it. But I haven’t tried that.