Omnisphere - will it be worth the hype ?

[Sascha Franck]

I've just watched all of the NAMM videos on YouTube and I have to say that this is really starting to look like a must have.
Whether you may need a sampled burned piano is completely beyond the point IMO, what you do seem to get is meticulously edited and mapped sample sources that seem to be pretty unique and the Omnisphere engine seems to be pretty much up to the task to mangle them into some highly playable and customizeable patches, probably even without too much effort, so even non synth tweakers could come up with something of their own pretty quickly.
Just what the doctor ordered. At least from what it seems so far.

[GlennO]

Omnisphere has the Power Filter (the same filter Imposcar uses), just like Stylus RMX. It also has the UVI filters from Atmosphere. Plus, it has 13 new filters giving you access to a wide range of sonic possibilities. Not only that, there are some novel ways the filters can be used, just to make certain you have lots of interesting possibilities at your fingertips.

- Glenn

[jackmazzotti]

i didn't find trilogy to be all that boombastic though

Me neither - some nice samples but it didn't really go beyond that for me. When you look at what people like Scarbee are doing with sampled basses and Kontakt scripting to significantly raise the playability bar, Trilogy is very dated. It will be interesting to see how they plan to reinvent Trilogy and what they do with it. And as for synth basses - I found that it didn't really give me much over and above what I could already do with other instruments.

As for Atmosphere, I really liked the sound content (and the Cathedral Strings patch is almost worth the price alone - just an incredibly playable string pad) but never bought it because when I've used it in the past I always found it incredibly tedious to audition sounds - either you were constantly navigating through multi-menus, or steping up/down patches with each one taking more than a few seconds to load - brilliant sounds but after playing through five or six of them in a row I would just lose interest - it was just too poor of an experience.

None of that applies to OS though, of course...

well i can easily imagine trilogy getting the omni steam treatment and become a standard setter
add in x10 content in sample department + sick and nasty osc modules + waveshaping+ new filters and racks of fx
the compressors and limiters in rmx could do wonders in the bass arena
with proper programing it could also become a master of kick drums too

vst synths that i think are already very boombastic
minimonsta and tassman

[kuniklo]

Maybe I missed this but I'm curious - I use three different computers to make music (not all at the same time). Would it be possible for me to authorize Omnisphere on all three? It's been great that this hasn't been a problem with Komplete, for instance.

[arafel]

I can only speculate... but I would not expect any problems with multiple authorizations... If its anything like the system for RMX. I have authorized and reauthorized my RMX and Atmosphere plugs for at least 3 separate computers, thru OS updates, complete wipe & reinstalls, decomissioning one, buying another, etc etc. No problems at any time.

[Waker]

Eric Stated that it's the same authorization system as RMX, so a (speculated) yes.

[kuniklo]

Good to hear.

I guess we'll have to wait and see just how well Omnisphere turns out but I do think their approach makes a lot more sense than, say, the Komplete + Kore workstation philosophy. I'd much rather have a single, consistent & flexible synth engine under the hood than a hodgepodge of independent plugins with wildly different architectures, cpu usage requirements, interfaces & stabilities. Maybe the NI approach is more flexible in principle, but Omnisphere seems a lot closer to the goal of a flexible synth workstation in software.

I wonder what kind of performance controls will be available for each patch? I do like the Kore approach of pre-wiring up to eight performance controls for each patch.

[spectrum]

More good news 4U guys:

Yes. All 5 oscillators per layer have control over the waveform, symmetry, waveshape, tuning, interval, pan, level AND hard sync for every oscillator!

Yes. That does sound pretty awesome with FM too.

And so that's correct. It's actually Ten real oscillators per patch!

That's not including the hidden oscillators for FM, Ring Mod and Hard Sync either.

I need to keep a bucket at the computer to catch the drool...

Seriously, though, that's some nice parameters to play with, expecially if you can modulate them with the lfos & envelopes & other stuff we don't know about yet.

The Modulation of the 5 Oscillators per layer is shared.

Separate 'hidden' oscillators for FM, RM, & Sync? Nice. But can the 5 main oscillators modulate each other's frequencies? Or the other parameters, for that matter? Just wondering if you could do a sort of 5-operator FM.

No, not at this point. It's more like you have a primary Oscillator and four additional oscillators with separate controls. The FM implementation is much simpler than a dedicated FM synth like the FM-8.

Having the 5 osc is quite powerful sounding and flexible though.

[spectrum]

Maybe I missed this but I'm curious - I use three different computers to make music (not all at the same time). Would it be possible for me to authorize Omnisphere on all three? It's been great that this hasn't been a problem with Komplete, for instance.

Sure, no problem.

Single user?multiple computers is the basis of our license policy.

[JavaJ]

Spectrum,
I know you can't give away any specs yet. But what is your opinion on multicore processors and the positive impact they have on your development? Are you able to embrace multicore (beyond 2 cpu's) or is that something that is still down the road? Is the Steam engine opened to expand to 4 or 8 core processors down the road? I plan on using Omnisphere as a standalone synth for live use so can you optimize the Steam engine to make use of more available resources (sort of like how Vista uses memory). I figure we should be able to tell a Steam product to go crazy and max out (or max out to a specific level) the hardware it is running on.
Not sure if that scalability exists yet but I thought I would ask (and maybe get you talking about the future of the technology instead of current speeds and fees that Omnisphere will need).
Thanks
J

[DocAtlas]

More good news 4U guys:

Yes. All 5 oscillators per layer have control over the waveform, symmetry, waveshape, tuning, interval, pan, level AND hard sync for every oscillator!

Yes. That does sound pretty awesome with FM too.

And so that's correct. It's actually Ten real oscillators per patch!

That's not including the hidden oscillators for FM, Ring Mod and Hard Sync either.

I need to keep a bucket at the computer to catch the drool...

Seriously, though, that's some nice parameters to play with, expecially if you can modulate them with the lfos & envelopes & other stuff we don't know about yet.

The Modulation of the 5 Oscillators per layer is shared.

Separate 'hidden' oscillators for FM, RM, & Sync? Nice. But can the 5 main oscillators modulate each other's frequencies? Or the other parameters, for that matter? Just wondering if you could do a sort of 5-operator FM.

No, not at this point. It's more like you have a primary Oscillator and four additional oscillators with separate controls. The FM implementation is much simpler than a dedicated FM synth like the FM-8.

Having the 5 osc is quite powerful sounding and flexible though.

Okay, no problem, though. I'm sure that as it is, Omnisphere will keep us busy for years to come. And the current voice architecture should lead us down some interesting roads, programming-wise.

[Dean Aka Nekro]

i watched the vids (not on youtube) and they are very intresting and they sound good even the small option video downloads from the spectrasonics site sound very good, so in the flesh i imagine the words blown away would be apt to describe the experience - i mean them people at namm dont get paid to pretend to be excited, a picture speaks more than a thousand words and shit just check out H.Hancock's reaction: that says it all IMO

[kuniklo]

I wonder if there's going to be any kind of patch randomizer in Omnisphere. I find them very useful in other synths.

[GlennO]

I wonder if there's going to be any kind of patch randomizer in Omnisphere. I find them very useful in other synths.

Instead of patch randomization, we went that kind of thing at the level of individual components. So, for example, you can add chaos to modulation or looping envelopes. That has the advantage of real-time control so you can get those unpredictable surprises as you're playing. Or, you can simply generate new envelopes until you hear something you like, and then save that as a patch.

- Glenn

[Vocalpoint Studios]

Single user? Multiple computers is the basis of our license policy.

Eric,

I do wish you guys would be able to implement a "deactivate" scheme via the support website for managing activations. Recently I have been involved in a lot of Vista 64 bit testing and had many installations to configure and test - and I started to get messages from your auth system (on my RMX license) about too many activations etc etc.

I always got my authorization but - it would be nice to be able to display/activate/deactivate authorizations - Toontrack does this with their stuff and it's easy to work with. Especially when reinstalling on the same hardware - I get the same challenge/response and can just copy/paste to authorize.

Just a thought.

Also - I see my Atmosphere order has just about arrived....really looking forward to Omnisphere and your upgrade pricing.