What workhorse synth would you buy if you couldn't get Omnisphere?

[liquidsound]

I think Jac459 should master Avenger and save $500 at this point.
I bought many instruments for fun but I use few for real.
His good list should keep him busy for a long time.

[buzz1]

Synthmaster 3, even if I could get Omnisphere.

[Jac459]

Either they are easy to approach:
Twin 3, Phase Plant,
Either they sound excellent:
Spire, Friktion, Objekt.
Either both: Avenger 2 .

I'm struggling to understand what it is about Diva that doesn't appeal - the mix and match modules? The slightly opaque mod matrix? I actually have a different skin, MONA, which actually changes the way you work with the synth, and I do prefer that.

I only really know Avenger of that lot. I think it's very easy to approach too - although I find that's mostly when starting patches from scratch. You can do it all in front of you. But quickly you start needing tabs, and then that immediacy - an analog with analog - necessarily goes.

Omni is a very different paradigm. You have the very simple front controls in a few tabs, then you drill down to the detail. Some hate this, I like it.

You mentioned before you use Falcon as a preset browser, which I do find surprising as it's really terrible at that job imo. Omni is another league there, and that opens up whole new ways of working.

There's nothing for it - you're going to have to seek out someone or somewhere you can try it out yourself!

Well, for Diva, please remember that I am just saying I don't use it much. I still think it is a wonderful synth. And it is CLAP so yeah, awesome synth.

For falcon, I can agree, but v3 is far better in the way they organise the presets and it is about the sound ware... They have some beautiful ones really.

And agreed for Omni, I better find a way to try .

[IvyBirds]

I think what some of us are getting at with Omni is that it's the real world experience of using it that any serious competitor has to try to replicate. Can you turn to it for almost anything very specifically and find a subset of presets very quickly that are tailored to that specific search? And can then easily be further manipulated? Is it MUSICAL? With Falcon it's a big honking NO to all of these for me.

Waaaay back in 1987 with the Roland D50 Eric Persing created something revolutionary. He created a synth where you could blend up to four partials in a single patch. These partials could be either samples or virtual sawtooth and/or square waves

The idea behind that was that you could use different partials for different parts of your sound, rather than just run them all in parallel. The D50 also had on board effects which was new and many of the presets made use of them

If you fast forward a few years Eric in his role as chief sound designer brought the D70 to market where because memory become just a bit cheaper you could have larger samples and instead of virtual sawtooth waves and square waves you could use samples of them from a variety of vintage analog synths. More memory also meant you could have larger samples and have things like sampled pianos

Fast forward a few more years and Eric gave us the JV, then the JD, then the XV then he left Roland to focus on Spectrasonics

The very DNA of Omnisphere goes right back to the D50. You create layered patches which can either be 100% samples, 100% virtual waves or a blend of the two. It has a GIANT sample library which has samples of pretty much anything you can think of. Along with the giant sample library comes a powerful browser to help you make sense of it and find what you are looking for

In a lot of ways the browser acts like the Dewey Decimal System in a regular book library. Where you could go find the exact shelf you were looking for and find all of the available books on that topic on that shelf. If you go to a large library full of tens of thousands of books and want to find books say on growing plants in your garden you don't really complain about it mind the fact that the same library has fiction books from Tom Clancy or Stephen King. Likewise if you are looking for a Stephen King book you don't mind that the library has books made for young children and books on anatomy for university students. You appreciate the fact that the larger the library the more selection they will have on the topics you are looking for, and while you are looking for Stephen King books today, tomorrow you might come back and look at books on Astronomy

I think because that is the foundation and the DNA on how Omnisphere works if you don't want to work that way Omnisphere becomes frustrating

[noiseboyuk]

Terrific post, IvyBirds.

I've long held a feeling that most of the anti-Omni sentiment comes from those whose musical interests are pretty narrow. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but if that's the case you likely don't need Omni.

[egbert101]

I really don't understand the logic of the OP buying Serum rather than Omnisphere. Also why he bought it within a day or so of creating the thread or why he didn't do the research on alternatives or take various advice from forum members.

For example, both Korg M1 or Korg Triton are decent romplers (if you wait for 50% sales), although I would still consider Omnisphere as probably the best rompler for the money. Otherwise, again my suggestion of joining Roland Cloud would be less painful, having the opportunity to play around with the D-50, JV-1080, ZEN-Core or whatever it's called, etc., as probably a better way to access rompler sounds for a low price relatively speaking.

[BBFG#]

I'm not anti-omni at all. I am anti-subscription though. If the choice is between Spectrasonics and Roland, definitely Spectrasonics is the better way. And from what I read every Omni user has a narrow taste. I'm fairly certain that not everyone uses the same 10%...

[zvenx]

.....



The very DNA of Omnisphere goes right back to the D50. You create layered patches which can either be 100% samples, 100% virtual waves or a blend of the two. It has a GIANT sample library which has samples of pretty much anything you can think of. Along with the giant sample library comes a powerful browser to help you make sense of it and find what you are looking for
.......

I think because that is the foundation and the DNA on how Omnisphere works if you don't want to work that way Omnisphere becomes frustrating

I don't often agree with you, but I concur with Guy, this is an excellent post.
I myself though I have been a Spectrasonics and Omnisphere user from Day 1 never thought of it this way, but yeah I think you are correct.
rsp

[Synthman2000]

I get an impression that Omnisphere has a little bit of a reputation surrounding it.
I get the impression it is more of a scoring, TV, film, sync licencing composing instrument.

Dropping that money on it for someone who earns from those sources will be no problem, put that against your tax return too, and versus potential income it is small money.

Especially compared to the cost of synth hardware in years gone by.

Bedroom musician on Soundcloud is less likely to unless their hobby is very much going to benefit from it and its style of sounds. Just go on YT and you can hear how it sounds, it does do some nice sounds. However I suspect tonnes of sounds many would never ever get use as well... depending on genre.

I almost but did not quite bite on it myself. I get a little impression you might end up sounding a lot like others if you use it a lot.

That is just a side line impression, which I accept could be inaccurate but that is how I feel about the tool.

I am not sure it is irreplaceable. It might be for those who do media production it seems like a bit of an industry standard for media.

It is probably the best value for that style of music production. I would probably try Rob Papen Blue III on BF or sale times and the AIR Hybrid and XPand2! when they are on their ridiculously cheap offer prices. That will start to get you close to to the preset numbers
and cover a lot of ground and leave money for other tools. It still will not be Omnisphere though.

You either need it or can live without it at the kind of money it goes for.

[Synthman2000]

If you are a professional making music for adverts -TV - Film,then I guess that Omnisphere is a no brainer and is needed as a necessary tool for the job. And I suppose its a tax write off?

For hobbyists,such as myself,who want similar breathy sounds on a budget,I think AIR Expand2 could do a reasonable sound alike job. And its now available as a VST3. Stick NI Raum reverb on the end and it can sound pretty decent with its four samples to mix and play around with. Its main drawback is that its mainly a preset machine with limited control of sound editing.

I never read that, very similar post to mine you are spot on.

[BBFG#]

I get an impression that Omnisphere has a little bit of a reputation surrounding it.
I get the impression it is more of a scoring, TV, film, sync licencing composing instrument.

Dropping that money on it for someone who earns from those sources will be no problem, put that against your tax return too, and versus potential income it is small money.

Especailly compared to the cost of synths hardware in years gone by.

Bedroom musician on Soundcloud is less likely to unless their hobby if very much going to benefit from it and its style of sounds. Just go on YT and you can hear how it sounds, it does do some nice sounds. However I suspect tonnes of sounds many would never ever get use as well... depending on genre.

I almost but did not quite bite on it myself. I get a little impression you might end up sounding a lot like others if you use it a lot.

That is just a side line impression, which I accept could be inaccurate but that is how I feel about the tool.

I am not sure it is irreplaceable. It might be for those who do media production.

It's quite good for those doing commercial jingles for radio/TV. Translates easily to small speakers without much trouble. While it's still used in cinematic, it's not the dominating force it once was.
It's the nature of the pre-processing of how the samples are created that was its strength that can become its weakness in long time use.

And I have seen/heard it used often in churches I've visited. Generally, it's the simplistic GUI/browser that even the most techno-inepto can quickly grasp and find something gratifying. Those players often rely on about 10 presets though. Which is far less than 1%.

[Synthman2000]

Blue II 1/2 the price of III and I guess an upgrade path €74 - 4,500 presets and RP is no slouch when it comes to presets shipped. Try demo's maybe. It leaves plenty of coins left for other sounds elsewhere, those AIR synths go for $9.99 every now and then. That's less that €100 for all 3 and you have about 7,000 presets ! And the synths themselves of course.

https://www.robpapen.com/blue2.html

[noiseboyuk]

I've just had an idle half an hour, and been marveling at it afresh.

Found a patch based round a South American guitar. Added an Arp, delay and some Innerspace to make a pad layer. Then I sound-locked the Arp and FX, Sound Matched my current selection and started browsing through other similar patches.

What a way to get inspired. AFAIK, nothing else can do this.

[IvyBirds]

Those players often rely on about 10 presets though. Which is far less than 1%.

Can you explain why that would even matter? That keeps on being thrown around as if it is some kind of negative thing, but nobody who makes that statement ever articulates why if that statistic is even true is an issue

Omnisphere costs less than $500 if you as a musician find that 1% of its presets work perfectly for your music and your vision, why would spending less than $500 on them be an issue?

Compared to the cost of a hardware synth $500 is a real bargain.

[LFO8]

I've just had an idle half an hour, and been marveling at it afresh.

Found a patch based round a South American guitar. Added an Arp, delay and some Innerspace to make a pad layer. Then I sound-locked the Arp and FX, Sound Matched my current selection and started browsing through other similar patches.

What a way to get inspired. AFAIK, nothing else can do this.

Hehe... that's the same feeling I get from Omnisphere. There are two synths that for me I can never use without walking away with more presets than I started with opening a session: Vital and Omnisphere.