Steinberg at 30: Free Classics, HALion 7.5 and 60% Off
Steinberg marks 30 years of VST with five free classic plug-ins, a free HALion 7.5 update with MPE, HALion Sonic Play for iOS, and up to 60% off to August 24.
Steinberg invented VST in 1996. Three decades later, the company is marking the anniversary with four releases at once. There's a free collection of its earliest plug-ins, a free HALion 7.5 update, a new iOS workstation instrument, and a catalog-wide sale that runs to August 24, 2026.
It's also 25 years of HALion, which explains why the sampler sits at the center of nearly all of it.
Here's what landed, and which parts deserve your attention.
Steinberg Classics: five original VSTs, free
Steinberg Classics bundles five of the first VST plug-ins ever released into one free download. It's nostalgia, but it ships with a working license.
You get:
- Neon — a subtractive polyphonic synth, and one of the first on the market. It shipped in 1999 with Cubase 3.7, mock wood panels and all.
- VB-1 — one of the first virtual bass instruments. You get electric bass tones plus controls for pickup and pick position.
- CS-40 — an early-2000s synth with warm vintage character, covering smooth pads through cutting leads.
- LM7 — a sample-based drum machine. Simple, punchy, still usable.
- Karlette — a tape delay with four replay "tape heads", each with its own pan and high-frequency roll-off. It syncs to host tempo.
None of these will replace your main synth — Neon is a simple subtractive polysynth and nothing more.
But that's the appeal. These are the plug-ins that established what a software instrument could be, and Karlette in particular still earns a slot on a send bus. Four tape heads with independent pan and high-frequency damping make a useful delay topology, not a museum piece.
Claim it from the official Steinberg Classics page, which issues the license to your Steinberg account.
HALion 7.5: MPE finally arrives
The bigger news for existing owners is HALion 7.5, a free update for HALion 7 customers.
Five additions stand out.
MPE support. Steinberg calls this one of its most requested features, and that tracks. Its absence from HALion 7 was a recurring frustration among owners of an otherwise deep instrument. Connect an MPE controller and you get per-note expression across the engines.
Real-time Decompose in the Spectral Zone. Split a sample into transient, tonal and noise components, then rebalance all three while the sound plays. It's the fastest route to reshaping a stubborn drum hit or a messy field recording.
Snapshots in the Spectral Zone. Capture spectral snapshots from any sample and build evolving textures out of them.
Auto Gain Compressor. A new dynamic range compressor, which Steinberg describes as delivering tight, controlled and highly musical results.
MediaBay. Search, filter and preview sample packs from Cubase, Nuendo or third parties without leaving HALion.
MPE is the one that changes daily use. The rest refines an engine that already carried eight-operator FM built with Yamaha, a spectral oscillator, and wavetables of up to 1,024 waves.
HALion Sonic Play brings the engine to iPhone and iPad
Steinberg also took the sound set mobile with HALion Sonic Play, a standalone workstation instrument for iPhone and iPad.
It carries close to 2,000 sounds across synths, basses, keys, pads and leads. Run it standalone, or load it as an AUv3 plug-in inside Cubasis and any other AUv3-compatible mobile DAW.
The interface is built for speed, with Quick Controls that handle tone shaping without menu diving. A dedicated ADSR page covers the envelope, and an arpeggiator adds movement in a tap.
The practical details are modest: a 25 MB download, iOS 17.2 or later, and support for iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision. Cubasis for Android users can pick it up as an in-app purchase.
Price is $14.99, which reflects a 25% introductory discount ending August 24, 2026 — the same date as the desktop sale.
Close to 2,000 sounds for $14.99 on a phone is a straightforward proposition. If you sketch on iOS at all, it's a low-risk buy.
The Instruments Anniversary Sale: what's worth buying
The sale runs until August 24, 2026, with discounts up to 60%. All prices below come from Steinberg's own store and include 19% VAT.
The three best-value items
| Product | Regular | Sale | Off |
|---|---|---|---|
| HALion 7 | €349.00 | €139.60 | 60% |
| HALion Sonic 7 Collection | €249.00 | €99.60 | 60% |
| Backbone | €149.00 | €59.60 | 60% |
HALion 7 at €139.60 is the standout. This is Steinberg's flagship sampler and sound-design environment, with FM, wavetable and spectral engines under one roof. That 60% cut is the deepest tier in the sale. And with 7.5 arriving as a free update, you're buying the current version, not one about to be superseded.
HALion Sonic 7 Collection at €99.60 suits anyone who wants the sounds more than the sound design. It's the player-and-library route, without HALion's full editing environment.
Backbone at €59.60 decomposes drum samples into tonal and noise layers, then lets you resynthesize them from there. If you build kits from scratch, it's the most distinctive tool in the sale.
The rest of the 50% tier
Most of the instrument catalog sits at half price:
- Orchestral — Iconica Ensembles €299 → €149.50, The Orchestra: Colors €149 → €74.50, Hyperion Brass Elements €99.99 → €49.99
- Keys — Etude €99.99 → €49.99, Swiss Grand 1860 €99.99 → €49.99, TBO MKII €69.99 → €34.99
- Guitars and bass — Electric Bass €129 → €64.50, TGuitar €129 → €64.50, Artefakt Guitar and Axe Machina both €99.99 → €49.99
- Synths — Materials – Wind & Glass €129 → €64.50, Stratum €99.99 → €49.99, Simple €89.99 → €44.99, RAST-A and XTC both €59.99 → €29.99
- Vocals — Olympus Choir Elements €119 → €59.50, with Lyrical, Ethnic and Moroccan Vocal Phrases and Voice Of Wind: Adey at €99.99 → €49.99
- Drums and percussion — Pandrum 2 €109 → €54.50, Hybrid Hit €69.99 → €34.99
- Bundles — The World Music Bundle and the Danny Lux Signature Bundle both €199 → €99.50, Hybrid Bundle €89.99 → €44.99
Two products stay out of the sale: Absolute 7 holds at €499, and Medieval Phrases Fiddle & Nyckelharpa holds at €99.99. If you were waiting for Absolute to drop, it hasn't.
Where to buy: the sale is Steinberg-direct only
The anniversary discounts run on Steinberg's own store, and nowhere else. We checked the major retailers the day the sale went live, and the catalog is still at standing prices there. HALion 7 sits around €346 at Plugin Boutique and £285 at Thomann, while Steinberg is asking €139.60.
So buy the sale items direct.
Retailers still cover two things the anniversary page doesn't: crossgrades and educational editions. Plugin Boutique lists a HALion 7 educational edition and an Absolute 7 competitive crossgrade for owners of Falcon, Kontakt, Komplete or Omnisphere. It also stocks Backbone and HALion 7 year-round.
Check HALion 7 price at Plugin BoutiqueVerdict
Steinberg has stacked a real giveaway, a real free upgrade and a real sale into one week. That doesn't happen often.
Take the Classics collection regardless, because it costs nothing and Karlette is a delay you'll actually use. Install 7.5 if you own HALion 7, since MPE was the piece that was missing. And if you've been circling HALion 7, €139.60 with a fresh feature update is the strongest case the product has made.
Everything expires August 24, 2026.
