Omnisphere - will it be worth the hype ?

[koolkeys]

This may seem like an unimportant point to many but...

Is the Omnisphere packaging going to be very big, or can it be easily hidden from the wife upon delivery?

Maybe you should get a P.O. box?

(You must have married my ex-wife.)

But seriously, speaking of packaging, I am wondering in it will have a substantial printed manual (I like hard copy for reading away from the computer), or just a pdf. Although a downloadable pdf of the manual to read after the 15th while we're waiting on our orders would be really nice...

Well, I believe I heard(and that's it, so no statement of fact) that they were doing video tutorials like they did with RMX. I am wondering if they will do a manual similar to RMX that is actually HTML, but all crosslinked and searchable all the same? I love the RMX manual and videos, and hope they do the same. I can't imagine they will take a step back with this. So I think everyone will be happy, except those who want a printed manual. I just don't see them doing it. They do mention they like to save resources by not including a printed manual at one point, didn't they?

I print out my manuals at work anyways, so I personally don't mind. But some can't do that.

Brent

[Sascha Franck]

At 40 - 50GB, this is a pretty hefty beast. My laptop has only got about 35GB spare capacity, so I am wondering whether I will be able to use Omnisphere with an external hard drive / USB.

There's laptop drives going up to 500 GB. I'm gonna get me one next week (right now I use a 320 GB one). I like that a lot better tahn using external drives, especially for sample libraries, which I always want to have with me. I'd rather put my songs' audio data onto external drives and only keep the most recent stuff on the internal one.

[Sascha Franck]

Man, I wish all developers could learn a thing or two from Eric (and also Squid). THIS is how you conduct yourself as a developer. Always classy as hell.

I absolutely and totally agree.

[Gogor]

Dear Eric,

I was only reading this thread until now, but I really have to say that your "customer-support-in-advance" is incredible.

I am tempted to let my planned Kontakt crossgrade go just to be one of the first who owns Omnisphere, just by reading this thread ( I planned to get Omnisphere anyway, but not now).

As a very satisfied RMX (expanded!) customer I have no doubt that the sound quality and usability will be outstanding.

Just my remarks

Gogor

[gnu23]

Dear Eric,

I was only reading this thread until now, but I really have to say that your "customer-support-in-advance" is incredible.

I am tempted to let my planned Kontakt crossgrade go just to be one of the first who owns Omnisphere, just by reading this thread ( I planned to get Omnisphere anyway, but not now).

As a very satisfied RMX (expanded!) customer I have no doubt that the sound quality and usability will be outstanding.

Just my remarks

Gogor

The Spectrasonics crew are just as crazy for good sounds as we users are, and it shows. There are others out there like the eSoundz and the G-Media crew who are just as bonkers. They do their best to deliver cool stuff. That's why I stick with them.

[Ian SDZH]

At 40 - 50GB, this is a pretty hefty beast. My laptop has only got about 35GB spare capacity, so I am wondering whether I will be able to use Omnisphere with an external hard drive / USB.

There's laptop drives going up to 500 GB. I'm gonna get me one next week (right now I use a 320 GB one). I like that a lot better tahn using external drives, especially for sample libraries, which I always want to have with me. I'd rather put my songs' audio data onto external drives and only keep the most recent stuff on the internal one.

Well, that would overcome the problem with HD capacity, but I would have to reinstall all of my programs on the new HD, right? That's an awfull lot of hassle.
I can pick up a 50GB external HD for about $40 that I could use just for omnisphere or maybe get a larger HD and use to store other audio related stuff...
If Eric confirms that it will work on the external HD, I think that's the simpler route.
Thanks for your thoughts, though Sascha

[hyperborea]

It seems that "The Mother Of All Synth's" will arrive on the 15th

P.S. Love this thread

[Sascha Franck]

Well, that would overcome the problem with HD capacity, but I would have to reinstall all of my programs on the new HD, right? That's an awfull lot of hassle.

No, it's not.

What you need to do (and partially need to have):

- Move all your project data, documents, movies, pictures and what not to an external drive - in case you don't have one yet, get one. They're ridiculously cheap these days, something like around 60 Euros for an external 500GB drive, including the case. Make sure to copy your data, when done delete the originals (you don't want to get into the risk of losing anything while moving, hence the copying). Too much data will make the process described in the next sentences a really long experience...

- Install Bart PE (Google). A really, really handy boot CD based on XP (you need a valid XP installation disk to install Bart PE).

- Install both the Drive Image XML (Google) application and Bart PE plugin (descriptions on both the Drive Image XML and Bart PE site).

- Burn a bootable CD from Bart PE (easy, all you need is a program to burn ISOs. All of them do so). To be on the safe side, boot from it and try to access Drive Image XML from there. To be even more on the safe side, make a copy of that boot CD.
Important: Make sure that when booting from Bart PE, Drive Image XML will see your external drive!

So far, all these actions (except the data copy) should've taken you an hour or two. Depending on the amount of data you need to transfer from your internal to the external drive, you may want to do that overnight.

- After deleting your copied data originals, start Drive Image XML. Follow the instructions from their help files, their site or even the YouTube video (yes, there's one) and make an image of your current drive. To that external drive that is.

- Shut computer down and replace the drive.

- While keeping your external drive attached, boot from your Bart PE disk and load Drive Image XML.

- Load the image from your backup drive and tell Drive Image XML to copy it onto your new drive.

- Remove Bart PE CD, reboot and enjoy your very same system on a larger drive.

In case this will fail (unlikely, done that several times myself), you still have your old internal drive intact (btw, get one of those bus-powered external cases for it, makes up for a nice bus-powered external drive).

Really, while this sort of looks like a laborious process, it isn't. And then, once you're done, you will always have a nice, reliable system imaging tool handy.
Certainly takes a lot less time to do all this than reinstalling things from scratch. In fact, even installing just Windows XP is taking more time.

[poonna]

That way that Sascha explained is the fastest way to get the system up and running with the new hard drive. I'm sure you already know this, but make sure that the drive you move your system to, and the drive you back up your data to are not the same drive (or if the same drive, make sure they are not the same partition), otherwise the backed up data will be overwritten.

[Ian SDZH]

At 40 - 50GB, this is a pretty hefty beast. My laptop has only got about 35GB spare capacity, so I am wondering whether I will be able to use Omnisphere with an external hard drive / USB.

Mr.Persing, what do you say?

[beej]

Given that *all* of the previous Spectrasonics instruments have let you put the sound libraries on external drives, why would you think this one would be any different?

[Ian SDZH]

Given that *all* of the previous Spectrasonics instruments have let you put the sound libraries on external drives, why would you think this one would be any different?

Well, firstly, I wasn't aware that I could operate my Atmosphere from an external HD (and didn't need to). Secondly, I didn't want to make an arse of myself assuming that it would work and paying for the upgrade, only to find that it wouldn't work

When/if Eric confirms that it's OK, I'll order a little 50GB HD and then do the upgrade on the 15th.

[Reverend Rhythm]

I don't know where you are, but here in the US I've seen 320 gig external drives for as low as $80. So you might not need to limit yourself to 50 gig.

[Ian SDZH]

I don't know where you are, but here in the US I've seen 320 gig external drives for as low as $80. So you might not need to limit yourself to 50 gig.

Got any links!!??

[Sascha Franck]

I don't know where you are, but here in the US I've seen 320 gig external drives for as low as $80. So you might not need to limit yourself to 50 gig.

I bought a 500 GB external drive including a quality case for €70 some weeks ago and since then the prices have again been going down a bit.

The new internal one I'll be getting for my laptop next week or so has 500 GB and will cost me a bit over €100 I think.

Really, when considering to purchase something costing that much (note: I'm in no way saying it's not worth it - it might even be worth more), the last thing one should have to care about these days are drive space issues.

Heck, I don't even do any CD/DVD backups anymore (unless it's some *really* worthy data, in that case I do a double backup) because disk space has been getting so cheap.