im not judging superiority in any way.
i dont think either is superior for any reason, just one fits my personal needs, the other doesnt so much. but both are pretty awesome at what they do.

and as for cars, the red one is superior.

Er, not to change the subject but I was at a local music store the other day and I saw a Novation Ultranova sitting there... which I had never seen before. I immediately applied pressure from my two hands and went WOW! I have to say it's the first time - in a long time - a synth hard or soft made me go WOW! That thing is crazy...

back to topic...

I think both synths are great and Eric is clearly a fantastic sound designer So I'm not going to get into a comparative discussion. However, I'd like to just mention some of the things we've been working on to improve Alchemy further, in the light of some of the things people felt could be improved.

We're nearing the release of Alchemy v1.5 which adds a really fully featured sound browser, offering the ability to search by Category, Subcategory, Genre, Sound Library, Articulation, Timbre and Sound Designer or free text search. You can also apply user tags, so you can tag presets associated with a particular project or live set and its also easy to tag your own presets. We've added a ratings system, with the ability to sort by rating. We've also gone through and fully tagged all 4000 Camel presets, so its now really easy to find the sound you are looking for.

We're also going to be releasing a bunch of additional free sounds to Alchemy owners over the coming months - watch this space One thing to bare in mind when comparing numbers of presets in Alchemy is that the remix pad really does offer 8 different presets in one - these variations are all created by hand with great attention to detail by the sound designer. Alchemy does also have an intelligent randomise feature to create remix pad variations, but the quality of something generated by randomness can never match the skill of a sound designer. So I really encourage you to dig in to the remix pads if you're looking for more inspiration. I also recommend hooking up your iPad/iPhone if you have one, with the Alchemy app in remote control mode to do this, as it makes it a lot more fun to try out the variations or step through presets from the comfort of your controller keyboard.

There's pros and cons to a single price and large amount of sounds, relative to having a lower priced product with less sounds for those who wish to import their own samples and build their own sounds, and then having a range of add on libraries. One cool thing about having a range of libraries from different sound designers is that each one can have a very distinctive sound.

I totally accept that the quality of some of the sample material and presets we released with v1.0 of Alchemy was not as high as it could have been. This is something we've been addressing since, more than doubling the amount of samples with really high quality deeply multi sampled sounds. As I mentioned above, we'll also be releasing more free sounds for Alchemy owners over the coming months. Aside from the sample side, I think it also took some time for sound designers to get the most from Alchemy and we're now lucky to have many fantastic sound designers who know Alchemy inside out, and I think the quality of our sound library releases such as Dream Voices matches anything out there.

With all this talk of sounds and browsing I think it's worth pointing out that for me, the most important aspect of Alchemy is the synthesis engine itself. In Alchemy v2 (which is a considerable way off) we are focusing a huge amount of effort on radically improving the re synthesis quality and expanding the ways in which sounds may be manipulated, especially with a view to making those changes relatively easy to do. Alongside that we're also investing in heavily in great deeply multi-sampled sounds.

Anyway, as I say, I think both synths are great and I think if you can, getting both is the best of all options. I hope those of you own Alchemy enjoy the update and thanks for kind words on this thread

Cheers
Ben

The changes coming up sound great Ben. Also nice to hear you recognize the weaknesses and address them. Not just act like everything is perfect. Omnisphere is not perfect either. I am waiting for the next sale to get some more Alchemy Banks.

Maybe I just too pragmatic for my own good but I see both as being really good at what they do in my productions.

Difference, simply difference...

Yes two great synths !

The new features for Alchemy will be very usefull

If Spectrasonics released the Omnisphere library for Alchemy, I see no reason why there'd be a significant difference between the two products.

I think the key that I harped on earlier to the OP is that these are creative products made by totally different developers. They just aren't the same!! They're different!!

Choose one if you can't afford both, or choose both if you like them both (assuming you have a store or a friend to demo Omni with).

Stop trying to make one into the other. It doesn't make sense.

As I also stated, I think the "status" of Omnisphere is a bit of an urban legend. Maybe it's a bit like the status Waves used to have or Pro Tools had before they both became much more widely available. I don't know. For those of you who can't afford it, you don't have to pine away craving Omnisphere. I'd really like Symphobia but can't afford the huge price tag right now. Ok, fine, I'll just use what I have for now and get it later.
Last edited by A.M. Gold on Tue Aug 21, 2012 4:42 pm; edited 1 time in total

Different filters, different interface, different effects, different arpeggiator, different overall VA engines, different patch browsing.

Plus releasing the Omni library for Alchemy would be sort of like releasing the Symphobia string library for East West Hollywood Strings.

Aside from the different interface, none of those points are significantly different between the two.


You mean because the Symphobia library would sound nearly the same whether it were in Kontakt or Play?

Hey...that's great news. I'm looking forward to the sounds and the update!

Camel Audio can start with by making Alchemy able to handle drag-n-drop of sample files (wav, rex, wusik,etc).

I am not comparing Alchemy to Omnisphere regarding this function. I just thought it would be very nice to have this on Alchemy. Otherwise, it will stay underused for me.

main difference I see if that Omni is 400$ and Alchemy is ~ 250$

I could prolly make either one of these synths sound interesting

peace