Steinberg is celebrating 30 years of VST and 25 years of HALion with a raft of massive discounts and free updates

30 years ago, Steinberg changed the landscape of music production forever when it introduced VST, a groundbreaking format allowing the seamless integration of virtual instruments, effects and processing tools into any compatible host application.

The format quickly became an industry standard, with the majority of plugins today available in VST format, catering to producers working in most major DAWs including Ableton Live, FL Studio, Cubase.

But the 30th anniversary of VST isn’t the only thing Steinberg is celebrating; it’s also been 25 years since the German audio specialist launched its landmark HALion synthesizer and sampler platform.

And in light of these two massive milestones which have very much shaped the way music production looks today, Steinberg has launched HALion 7.5, introducing a raft of new features and upgrades including MPE support, real-time Decompose, and Spectral Snapshot.

Free for existing users, the new version of HALion also features six different synthesis types, a high-performance sample engine, scripting and a huge range of effects, allowing producers to tap into huge sound design potential and developers to build complex instruments and sample libraries with unique interfaces within HALion.

Alongside the HALion 7.5 update, several classic VST instruments are making their return, with full VST3 compatibility, and a VST SDK update supporting more MIDI 2.0 functionality.

To celebrate, Steinberg is hosting a huge anniversary sale between 4 and 24 August, with discounts of up to 60% on HALion and a massive range of VST instruments, including the Backbone drum re-synthesizer, Etude grand piano library, and the Iconica Ensembles orchestral collection.

Save up to 60% on Steinberg’s groundbreaking HALion synthesizer and sampler

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Save up to 60% on these classic VST instruments from Steinberg

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And if that wasn’t enough, Steinberg has created the Steinberg Classics Collection, comprising some of the first Steinberg VST plugins upgraded to VST3, including the LM7 retro drum sample unit, CS-40, Neon synthesizers, VB-1 bass instrument and Karlette vintage tape delay.

The sale also sees 25% off several key iOS and Android mobile apps available via the App Store and Google Play.

Browse the full sale at Steinberg.

Sam is the Associate News Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Thoroughly immersed in music culture for the majority of his life, Sam has played guitar for 20 years, studied music technology and production at university, and also written for the likes of MusicRadar, Guitar World, Total Guitar and Metal Hammer.