Anyone else completely disappointed by Omnisphere?

[aumordia]

This is almost certainly 100% my own fault for not paying close attention... but I bought Omnisphere 2 a few days ago, and I have since spent almost every waking minute trying to love it, and I am failing miserably.

I remember when I first stumbled on the announcement video for it. I thought it looked like the Jeb Bush of synthesizers and I had zero interest.

But recently I got interested in doing film score type music. I wasn't sure what I needed for that, but Sylenth1 seemed somehow inadequate, and I kept seeing people online saying that "Omnisphere is great for film!" And I looked at the patch list and saw choirs and strings and figured what the heck, I got a nice refund from the IRS anyway, let's give it a shot.

And then I tried to find a basic piano sound. WTF. The closest thing to that is a piano that they lit on fire and then sampled. WHY?! Why would you do such a thing?

Ok how about a basic bass? Ha! No. But there are heaps of samples of some Frankenstein monster called an "experibass." Apparently they glued the necks of a violin and viola to an upright bass and then beat the whole thing with a stick in front of a microphone (not exaggerating). This is like hammering 4 extra legs onto a dog, calling it an octopus, and then putting it in a bow flex while the camera is rolling. It makes no damn sense!

Digression: I love the metropolitan museum of art, I used to live a few blocks away from it and I've spent countless hours exploring it -- and I feel I've only scratched the surface. I thought Omnisphere was going to be the same thing. Well, sort of. Only instead of the met, it's more like the MOMA. It's Jackson Pollack instead of Rembrandt. I could not be more disappointed.

Again, this is all my fault. I should have gone to a music store and demoed the thing first. I really wasn't paying close attention. It was expensive and had a sterling reputation for "film music," so I figured it had to be good. And it probably is if you're scoring The Matrix or whatever. But I hate The Matrix, and right now, I hate Omnisphere.

So, what am I missing? I'm trying to love this thing. Help me out KVR. I can't even like it as just a synth. For $500, it feels pretty limited and clunky, and really not all that special. I think the included sounds are supposed to be what makes it so great. But you know why nobody played a piano with a bow for hundreds of years? Because it sounds like crap! I don't need a gig of samples of that.

Rant over. Feels bad man. Please halp.

[ghettosynth]

LOL! I'm sure you can sell it.

[wagtunes]

Don't know what to tell you. Guess it's not for everybody. It's one of my favorite synths.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... new-sounds

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim/omnisphere-demo

[dreamkeeper]

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

What are you missing?

You said it yourself, many times, that it's your fault for not trying it. Nothing worth ranting about.

You want a straight piano, you need something else. However, for someone who says he wants to get into film scoring, i'm surprised you can't find enough about Omni to make it worth your while. You certainly don't need it to score films, but I'd be surprised if anyone actually getting paid in the industry doesn't find it a valuable addition to their toolbox.

Time and time again, these threads come up. What seems to be true, on each occasion, is that people either love it or hate it. If you love it, the asking price is definitely worth it. If not, sell it and buy something else

[ghettosynth]

What are you missing?

You said it yourself, many times, that it's your fault for not trying it. Nothing worth ranting about.

Whaaat?

The rant was fantastic, rantastic even!!! +1 would read again...

[Musical Gym]

You just need someone to help you get under the hood at the source material and make it work for you.
Go here https://www.pluginguru.com/about/ and contact Skippy; he can point you to videos he's made and give you some advice on how to get sounds you like out of it.

[zerocrossing]

First off, if you can't make bread'n butter synthesis sounds on Omnisphere, you probably have no business owning a synth. Go get yourself a basic ROMpler. With Omnisphere's core synthesis engine, you should be set for basic synth sounds. Natural sounds... well, that's not it's wheelhouse but they're there. Plenty of them. But you might be better off just getting Kontakt.

[Fleer]

Go visit the PlugInGuru indeed. Or add Keyscape for keys and another 1200 patches in between.

[ATS]

it's the only synth I would never think about selling

[realkuhl]

Hi there, aumordia - this is John "SkiPpY" Lehmkuhl - I own PlugInGuru.com. I have over 20 patch libraries just for Omnisphere 2 - also many other libraries for many other synthesizers as well. I do not work for Spectrasonics nor do I officially represent them here with my comments (just so we're clear). I do beta test with Spectrasonics and Eric Persing is a dear friend of mine since well before Spectrasonics released their first sample library on CDROM way way back in the day.

Omnisphere is by far the most powerful synth engine with the coolest interface to program with on the freaking planet. I keep waiting but nobody has yet created a synth where a simple right+click on any parameter will let you modulate anything with anything. It doesn't have piano sounds, nor legit string orchestra with various playing styles, literally ZERO brass samples nor Bass samples. This instrument was designed 4 years ago to fill in gaps. Pretty much every DAW comes with piano and bass samples. People have a keyboards with these typical types of sounds in them, usually. Omnisphere is the creative "something different" instrument that makes the signature sounds you hear film, commercials and more and more on dance tracks in every genre as people play with it and then freak out because of the sonic footprint of the instrument.... It's a workhorse with 16 effects per patch and can play 8 patches at once. You can now load your own samples into it - I have guitars with 13 seconds of reverb baked into the samples and then using 6 patches, I'm using a Multi to map those 6 samples to make these amazing guitar patches to play that sound like nothing else. I could blab on forever. Contact me at my website if you have specific questions - I'm more than happy to share my opinion and knowledge from working literally thousands of hours with this synth.

If you were expecting this to be your ROMPLER with Piano / Brass and Strings then you will be very disappointed. This isn't THAT instrument - otherwise it wouldn't be people's voted #1 favorite synth of the year for something like 2 years in a row. This is special and something different. There are MANY places you can go for the stock samples you HAVE to have for film work - this isn't the place. Having said that, the new Keyscape library can work standalone or integrated into Omnisphere 2 and has a huge variety of different keyboard sounds (piano, electric pianos and many "rare" and truly special instruments). Trilian is their Bass library and has pretty impressive Acoustic, Electric and Synth basses and also can work standalone or plugged into Omnisphere 2 for even more power. I've made a library for Trilian and I'll probably release a library for Keyscape later this year...

I also have over 150 videos on YouTube teaching how to program sounds from scratch with Omnisphere and other synths as well.

My Channel:


Omnisphere tips video w/special guest interview with Eric Persing:


Again, I'm available to help you anyway I can if needed.
Good luck!

[Kinh]

Don't know what to tell you. Guess it's not for everybody. It's one of my favorite synths.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... new-sounds

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim/omnisphere-demo

I disagree. Omnisphere is for everyone.

[Michael L]

Omnisphere is for everyone

You are totally correct. Omni- is a prefix that means "every" and a sphere is all the points at the same distance from "one" thus Quod Erat Demonstrandum (it is proven).

[ghettosynth]

Omnisphere is for everyone

You are totally correct. Omni- is a prefix that means "every" and a sphere is all the points at the same distance from "one" thus Quod Erat Demonstrandum (it is proven).

This explains it, I'd probably like it more if I wasn't such a square.

[Kinh]

Spend more time on it. The textural synths, the voices. Everything in Omnisphere (from a preset level) is hybrid...pianos, strings, arpeggiators, guitars, keyboards. That's what film is mostly.

You say you want something basic? Well all you have to do is use the initial patch, click sample and then that folder icon, it will take you to a browser where you can see the sources in their raw form.
I own a lot of synths and Omni has the best effects and modulation than all of em.

You say you dont like the matrix. Well you dont really need to work in it. Just right click any parameter and add lfo or whatever, on the left panel it will then display that modulation. You can easily adjust it from there.

Also you wont find a better arpeggiator than Omni.

If you want something that's really good at doing one thing then you could try Output products individually.
http://output.com/products
but Omni can do everything, every genre with superior quality.