Omnisphere - Post purchase Questions, Issues, Problems

[koolkeys]

I have a question, although I could just email Glenn or something.

Today at NAMM, Jordan Rudess was showing Omnisphere and the dozens and dozens of patches he made(with "JR" at the beginning of them). They were some killer patches, and he is a killer keyboard player.

So are those patches going to be included in the new update, or in a future one? I meant to ask one of the Spectrasonics guys at NAMM today, but had to rush off to a short meeting and didn't have time to come back.

Brent

[RawTheory]

I have 60GB left on my HD but get this message from time to time.

Ahhh.....well, that sucks.

[siriusbliss]

I have a question, although I could just email Glenn or something.

Today at NAMM, Jordan Rudess was showing Omnisphere and the dozens and dozens of patches he made(with "JR" at the beginning of them). They were some killer patches, and he is a killer keyboard player.

So are those patches going to be included in the new update, or in a future one? I meant to ask one of the Spectrasonics guys at NAMM today, but had to rush off to a short meeting and didn't have time to come back.

Brent

Hey Brent,

I asked someone at the booth the same thing, and they didn't know if the 'JR's will be included in the 2 THOUSAND patches being released soon after NAMM.

By the way, that Rudess guy is such a show-off
I'm not a huge Dream Theater fan, but I also ran into Petruchi, who's a machine on guitar, and he was very nice.

Greg

p.s. good meeting you at the show!

[zerocrossing]

I sparked up Omnisphere a day or two ago and as usual, I was a bit dismayed at performance issues. Yup, my PC doesn't meet their recommended specs, and I've had to put the lib on a separate USB2 drive.

But, what struck me was the glitches seemed to be oddly random. Sometimes hitting a chord would cause one, sometimes not. Sometime for a few seconds a single note of a pretty generic polysynth sound would cause havoc (+70% cpu) and then all of the sudden it would settle down in the 30% range. The performance is just very erratic.

Should I give up and just ignore Omnisphere until I can upgrade my computer? I tried turning of streaming and that didn't seem to smooth out bumps in the CPU. I was hoping there would eventually be an update that included some optimization or quality modes, but it seems as if that's not happening. Part of what's bugging me is that often when I'm getting this crazy spikes I'm not doing anything that could not be done in Zebra 2 that would have my CPU in the 15% range. I'm not even trying to make a lightbulb sound like a 57 Chevy truck.

Anyway, it's a bit depressing is it's by far the most expensive bit of VST software I own and it gets the least use. I know this is my bed and I should sleep in it, but I'm wondering if there's a trick or something I can try before I give up.

[spectrum]

If your PC is under our recommended spec....then that's very likely the issue of course.

In the meantime, yes....there are many optimizations you can do to be able to use it on underpowered systems:

Check out this chapter in the Ref Gude:

http://support.spectrasonics.net/omnima ... age02.html

[zerocrossing]

If your PC is under our recommended spec....then that's very likely the issue of course.

In the meantime, yes....there are many optimizations you can do to be able to use it on underpowered systems:

Check out this chapter in the Ref Gude:

http://support.spectrasonics.net/omnima ... age02.html

Thanks. I'll look into this later.

[keiross]

Just digging this one up as I recently purchased Omnisphere and am getting the memory issue. Shame because it is one amazing synth.

yairhol and RawTheory, have you had any luck with this?

I'm running Intel Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz with 4GB RAM with Cubase Studio 4 and after flicking through some patches the memory issue comes up, more often than not leading to the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library crash. I don't need to reboot the system or anything after.

I haven't tinkered with any of the System settings on the Omni yet, wondering if that will help.

[yairhol]

Hi keiross,
You mean to tell me that you're getting these errors with only 1 instance of Omnisphere open in Cubase Studio 4?
I'll can tell you a couple of things.
First of all, if you get a "out of memory" pop up then it means that it is a virtual memory problem and not RAM. I still don't understand this since we all have big HD and virtual memory is taken up from the HD. Why then are we getting out of memory? I've gotten a response that since there are so many different systems out there, that some things happen sometime and that Spectrasonics are constantly looking into the situation.
I can tell you that lately I have not had problems with Omni and that is since I have applied the 3GB switch which you can find info on at the Spectrasonics website.
My guess is that that is what did the trick but remember that I am on 2GB of RAM and not 4 like you. I used to get error messages with only 1 instance of Omni open in Cubase Studio 4 which was terrible.
My suggestion is to try the 3GB switch.
Hope that helps.
Good luck.

[keiross]

Hi keiross,
You mean to tell me that you're getting these errors with only 1 instance of Omnisphere open in Cubase Studio 4?
I'll can tell you a couple of things.
First of all, if you get a "out of memory" pop up then it means that it is a virtual memory problem and not RAM. I still don't understand this since we all have big HD and virtual memory is taken up from the HD. Why then are we getting out of memory? I've gotten a response that since there are so many different systems out there, that some things happen sometime and that Spectrasonics are constantly looking into the situation.
I can tell you that lately I have not had problems with Omni and that is since I have applied the 3GB switch which you can find info on at the Spectrasonics website.
My guess is that that is what did the trick but remember that I am on 2GB of RAM and not 4 like you. I used to get error messages with only 1 instance of Omni open in Cubase Studio 4 which was terrible.
My suggestion is to try the 3GB switch.
Hope that helps.
Good luck.

Heya. Thanks for the response. Great to hear you've got it sorted.

So far I have experienced the issue on two projects. The first occurrence was with five instances of Omni running (along with some other plugs, great track too) and then the second was with only three instances running. I haven't experienced it with just one instance yet, but I'm not ruling it out happening unfortunately. In both cases I had been working on the project for a fair while and my CPU usage was very low, under a quarter, so it's not a processor issue. Both times I was doing *a lot* of patch surfing as I'm still getting to know the presets obviously.

After the install I'm left with 15GB of free space on my C. I could move the installation over to my data drive where there's an ocean of space but I'm reluctant to do so because I'm not convinced there would be a problem with 15GB free.

I did see the 3GB switch on their site but after reading of potential driver issues I held fire on implementing it. Does anyone know the likelihood of this potential fix causing problems?

(I've contacted Spectrasonics so I'll see what they say and post accordingly).

[yairhol]

I did not implement the 3GB switch for several months because of the same reason being afraid of possible driver issues. Then I had no choice since I had Omni but could not use it effectively.
I haven't had any issues so far.

[keiross]

I did not implement the 3GB switch for several months because of the same reason being afraid of possible driver issues. Then I had no choice since I had Omni but could not use it effectively.
I haven't had any issues so far.

Interesting. Thanks very much mate.

(Fecking awesome synth isn't it? Even after a short amount of time with it, I'd say it's the most inspirational softsynth I have had the pleasure to use.)

[siriusbliss]

Running on 3G switch here on two systems for over a year now (both with 4G RAM) with no issues.
However Omni DOES hit the memory ceiling (running in Samplitude) when implementing arpeggiators and other real-time operations. If it's running 'static' playback, it's OK (for the most part) with up to a full 8 patches.

Part of me thinks that Spectrasonics optimized Omni for Macs, but not PC's - just my assumption.

Greg

[keiross]

Thanks for your help chaps.

Could you guys confirm exactly how my boot.ini file should look before I sabotage my system. I've seen a couple of conflicting posts in forums and want to make sure I've got it entirely correct. Currently my boot.ini reads:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Can you confirm I should change it to:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 3gb switch" /3gb /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Sorry for being a n00b, but does the order of individual commands in the string of text matter?

And am I correct in saying leaving both boot options will mean I'm prompted to select which I want to go with upon start-up? Does it mean if the new one breaks XP I can switch off and run with the original option?

[standalone]

First of all , make a copy of Boot.ini !! .

And read this ( if you haven't , already ) :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823440/


As you can see , you put 3GB at the end . The other switch ( Userva ) is complementary and optional . It helps you modulate the amount of ram allocated if you experience any problem .

[keiross]

OK I've carried out the /3GB switch. I'll keep you posted.