I've been testing both these hybrid monsters over the last weeks as I need to expand my sonic horizon and toolbox for upcoming plans to design sounds and libraries.
Whereas HALion 5 has it's main strength in the extended granular engine from Padshop (HALion 5 currently is THE granular machine out there imo), MachFive combines more different synthesis methods like analog and wavetable synthesis (single cycle import is supported), FM synthesis, granular and sampling. The granular engine in MachFive still has some quirks, but with some tweaking good results can be achieved, the devs (which are great) are working on improvements. M5 also has the IRCAM timestretch which sounds pretty amzangly smooth and artifact-free at extreme stretching settings, a bit like Paulstretch with a Midi input, but this algo eats a lot of CPU. Then M5 also has custom scripting which I haven't explored yet.
The synth module in HALion also sounds very good, it has ring modulation between the 3 oscillators if needed which makes for some FM-like sounds. The filters are very good in both of these apps. The modulation possibilities in MachFive are almost Alchemy-like, HALion is a bit more basic in this respect.
Here are some sounds from my latest experiments:
HALion 5:
MachFive 3:
Whereas HALion 5 has it's main strength in the extended granular engine from Padshop (HALion 5 currently is THE granular machine out there imo), MachFive combines more different synthesis methods like analog and wavetable synthesis (single cycle import is supported), FM synthesis, granular and sampling. The granular engine in MachFive still has some quirks, but with some tweaking good results can be achieved, the devs (which are great) are working on improvements. M5 also has the IRCAM timestretch which sounds pretty amzangly smooth and artifact-free at extreme stretching settings, a bit like Paulstretch with a Midi input, but this algo eats a lot of CPU. Then M5 also has custom scripting which I haven't explored yet.
The synth module in HALion also sounds very good, it has ring modulation between the 3 oscillators if needed which makes for some FM-like sounds. The filters are very good in both of these apps. The modulation possibilities in MachFive are almost Alchemy-like, HALion is a bit more basic in this respect.
Here are some sounds from my latest experiments:
HALion 5:
MachFive 3:
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