Omnisphere 2 First Impressions?

[zerocrossing]

Why don't you kids just try to be like me? You know; cool. Or are you calling it 'fly' These days? Fresh?

I believe it's "outta sight" these days, allthough "far out" is still accepted. I prefer "bitchin'" or "boss".

Word!

[zerocrossing]

I'm 42, I grew up listening to all forms of underground electronic music since the early 90s.
Being from Dublin, Ireland we had heavy regular exposure to what was going on in the underground scenes in the U.K. and the rest of Europe long before the European sound came to the USA.
Despite my background, even still I can say that I think Dubstep and all this other wub wub blip blop bullshit is not any kind of progression or stepping stone to something new and improved or the next stage of anything but rather the end of the line for a tired and worn out genre that has run out of new ideas in much the same way that rock music and many other styles did.
To be honest I'm disappointed in Spectrasonics pandering to that demographic because it's already gotten old and outdated. We all know how cheesy those old trance sounds from the mid-late 90s sound today, they haven't dated as well as some sounds from the 80s have they?
This dubstep stuff will have even less of a shelf life than that and dare I say will date Omnisphere itself a lot more than any bread and butter pad sounds.

What ever you say, pops.

You're suggesting that dubstep is beyond me because I'm too old and "don't get it". It's a cliché and it's one I can understand when it's being directed at an older person who grew up listening to Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby being introduced to Punk or Thrash Metal. They would call it noise as there was a huge gulf between those two styles, I get it, 100%. Music changed a hell of a lot and really fast in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's but since the late to early 00's things have most definitely levelled off especially in terms of music sounding more "extreme". The gulf between generations is not the same as it was before. If anything I'm your older brother not your "pops". I was 32 when I joined this forum FFS.

Incidentally, I have a brother who is 20 years younger than me and he listens to a lot of the same metal albums I did in the 80's, 90's.

Well, when I was your age, the Internet was called "library " and porn was called "Playboy." We had one video game and it was called "Pong," and we liked it! In the snow! With no shoes! The best synth song was "Popcorn."

I bet the Crosby generation thought the exact same thing as you do now. It is inevitable. Why can't they be like we were? Perfect in every way?! What's the matter with kids toooooodaaaaaay!?

[lotus2035]

Christ, talk about missing the point.

[wagtunes]

When I was that age we had no video games. We had battleship and Radar Search, which foe the time (circa 1965) was pretty cool.

I never dreamed of the world we have today. And while I guess there is stuff that will come that I can't imagine now (like flying cars, 3D printers that cost 10 bucks, and maybe even the ability to plug your brain into a machine and have it churn out the VST of your dreams), I prefer to just live in the moment and make the best of what I have. It got me through GI Joe, Pac Man and High Speed Internet.

Whatever comes next, I'm up for it.

And that includes whatever direction electronic music should happen to take.

[elassi]

Btw: This is KVR - someone has to mention Alchemy soon.

The audience faces too many posts without the typical (immanent) spin.

[spirit]

Old? Back in the day they promised me I'd be living on the Moon by now. My only hope these days is SpaceX and Omni2 when the shop's back online.

[gnosis123]

Must resist this futile debate, must resist…. awwwggghh…...

The problem is technology. The discovery of new technology and new ways of making sound greatly contributed to the wide divide between the 60s, 70s and 80s.
(…)
Ultimately, what's going to happen is that we're going to have a retro period. It's already starting, to some degree. with songs like "All About The Bass" which is a definite throwback to the 50s.
(…)
If you're looking for true innovation in sound design, like we had when we went from playing Les Paul Guitars to Moog synthesizers, it's not going to happen.

It simply can't anymore.

You are confusing new sounds with new music.

The piano didn't change much as an instrument from 1800 to 1900, but from Beethoven to Schoenberg is another universe.

We have a wider sound palette than ever before, but popular music has narrowed way down. Technology is not the reason. I would say it's partly the terrible commercial environment and partly the lack of some super-talent to kick everybody else in the behind. Imagine what Miles Davis or the Beatles or [Name your favorite genius] would do with today's tools. They would take elements of current styles, but head off in their own musical direction. Whether they'd manage to get heard in today's environment is another matter.

[wagtunes]

Must resist this futile debate, must resist…. awwwggghh…...

The problem is technology. The discovery of new technology and new ways of making sound greatly contributed to the wide divide between the 60s, 70s and 80s.
(…)
Ultimately, what's going to happen is that we're going to have a retro period. It's already starting, to some degree. with songs like "All About The Bass" which is a definite throwback to the 50s.
(…)
If you're looking for true innovation in sound design, like we had when we went from playing Les Paul Guitars to Moog synthesizers, it's not going to happen.

It simply can't anymore.

You are confusing new sounds with new music.

The piano didn't change much as an instrument from 1800 to 1900, but from Beethoven to Schoenberg is another universe.

We have a wider sound palette than ever before, but popular music has narrowed way down. Technology is not the reason. I would say it's partly the terrible commercial environment and partly the lack of some super-talent to kick everybody else in the behind. Imagine what Miles Davis or the Beatles or [Name your favorite genius] would do with today's tools. They would take elements of current styles, but head off in their own musical direction. Whether they'd manage to get heard in today's environment is another matter.

That's another subject and even then, what's left to do musically that will ALSO resonate with the age group that does most of the spending?

Unfortunately, the music "business" has become more business than music. You won't see major labels taking chances on "new" things the way they did back in the 60s and 70s. There is too much money involved. You need to stay mainstream to even have a chance to get noticed.

I could absolutely come up with some really off the wall stuff.

So what? Nobody will want to listen to it. I certainly won't get any major labels or even indies interested in it.

Sure, I can sit down at the piano and pump out some real odd ball stuff. In fact, I have. Go to my Soundcloud page and listen to some of my piano and violin duets. There is some really creepy stuff there.

So what?

And the truth is, you don't know what the Beatles would do with today's technology even if they were a brand new group. Certainly Paul McCartney isn't putting out anything amazing as far as I'm concerned unless you want to qualify his latest effort with Kanye a "gem" of music. I don't.

And this isn't really that uncommon. Listen to hundreds of years of classical music. It really wasn't until Stravinsky's "Rite Of Spring" that we got something really different. As much as I love classical music, I still have trouble telling one symphony from another.

I'm not going to argue that music itself has stagnated. And no, I'm not going to blame that stagnation on sound design alone, though years ago much experimental music came out of the fact that we had synths for the first time.

But if you really believe that the only problem is the lack of imagination by today's artists, you're wrong.

The bigger problem is that today's society won't allow them to even attempt to come up with something new when their very survival depends on churning out music so that they can pay the bills.

Trust me, there is new stuff out there. It's just buried on page 65,000 of Youtube because nobody cares.

[Dr.Wu]

2ndtry

https://youtu.be/eZFNzavADWw

[She Changed Her Mind]

'Trust me, there is new stuff out there. It's just buried on page 65,000 of Youtube because nobody cares.'
I doubt it

[gnosis123]

Unfortunately, the music "business" has become more business than music. You won't see major labels taking chances on "new" things the way they did back in the 60s and 70s. There is too much money involved.

Agreed, as I said (c.f. "terrible commercial environment", etc). Just wanted to point out that the samey-ness of popular music right now is not mainly caused by technology or that we've run out of new sounds.

Nothing, musically speaking, is preventing all kinds of new music from coming out. All your examples are about the shitty commercial environment, and I agree, as far as that goes.

[wagtunes]

Anyway, found a bug in the ARP that nobody should have trouble creating.

Here's what you do.

Bring up a single oscillator. Set it to a square wave. Doesn't matter.

Go to the ARP and set it to just one step using the Chord option. then click on steps 2 - 16. Hold down a chord. You'll notice it sounds a certain way.

Now save it and then reload it. You'll notice that...

1) The patch sounds different.

2) Steps 2 - 16 are now blue, though not triggered.

Now, if this isn't a bug but supposed to be how this work, then the sound should represent itself correctly BEFORE saving and reloading. Otherwise, you really don't know what you've got until you reload it.

Not the most efficient way to do sound design.

[Phorous]

So I think I found a good use case for sound match.

You have rushed to throw together the initial mix / prototype of your song but you just are not happy with one specific preset. Just sound match it and often you can find something that sounds better in its place. Just used it on the current track I am working on and it seemed to work nicely!

[Captain]

It replaces Omni 1. So far no hitch at all with existing projects, with one possible exception - I had a mis-timed sync delay on an existing patch. Quick tweak and it was back. Haven't any any other issues, and I've been working on several existing projects. It's just possible that it was always wrong and I never noticed before, but it was very noticeable here.

Yes, I had the same problem with Chorus Echo! Opened an old project, delay sync was all over the place. Tweaked the project tempo + delay time up and down, and probably did something else too, and something I did seemed to fix it. After closing & reopening the project, everything was still OK. No biggie, but seems to be a bug anyway...

[aMUSEd]

There are a few interface niggles, like the fact that you can automate the on/off for FM, RM and Waveshaper oscs but not Granular, Unison or Harmonia, you can automate the solo button but not glide, the stupidly tiny hard-to-select controls for envelope curves and levels sliders, and the 5 mysterious tiny hard-to-select dots over the Keytrack knob in the filter zoom view. Although the interface is wider it's still pretty small, I would like a larger option and to also see ratings in the side browser is essential. Also automation numbering/naming is very inconsistent.