Omnisphere - worth $500?

[V0RT3X]

Since i own Zebra2, Bazille, Reaktor, Massive,Synthsquad, etc do i really need Omnisphere?

I'd probably be better off buying something like Alchemy or absynth. However for some people who don't have the luxury of doing complex sound design, i can see the appeal in such instruments.

[werp]

scored my copy for $230 AUD on a runout sale. I certainly wouldn't have coughed up any more for it as there were no demos available and I'm the only person I know weird enough to play with soft synths. I think Alchemy beats it.

[deastman]

I find it interesting that whenever this question comes up, the responses are split pretty evenly. Omnisphere has a pretty decent synth engine, coupled with some very unique and original sample sets, and very competent patch design. But the price is high enough that most people are going to think twice. I've been balanced on that precipice ever since it was released.

[V0RT3X]

[layzer]

i've survived fine without it. mostly because no one will sell it to me for $50

[Synchanter]

For $500 you can do much better.
AIR Music Tech Instruments Pack, Alchemy, Zebra2 and Harmor cost much less and are all highly capable of adding fresh new sounds.

However I suppose Omnisphere may be worth it for the convenience of having a huge sample library to pick and choose from.
Of course, $500 worth of Kontakt sample libraries may be good too.

[4damind]

For me not. I have played some hours with Omnisphere and there is nothing where I would say "I need this". The synth is average and very limited compared to other synth, the samples are very good quality and the presets are good. But for a sample player it's too expensive.
IMO it's worth $300 because of the big sample library.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

For $500 you can do much better.
AIR Music Tech Instruments Pack, Alchemy, Zebra2 and Harmor cost much less and are all highly capable of adding new sounds to your stable.

perhaps we need an "imho" emoticon in this place

FOR ME, omnisphere is an (almost) perfect instrument, and worth every penny (would have paid even more)

i am not going to argue it has the best synth engine, but then i don't buy synth's for synth's sake. while i appreciate that the latest plugin technologies are desirable for many, my only criterion is that the instrument inspires me to make music. on that basis, omnisphere is the best synth i've ever had

[hibidy]

Majorly tough question to answerer dude.....

It can be very rewarding at times......and very frustrating at times.

What do you want to get out of it? Think about it

[Synchanter]

Ah sorry for not qualifying my opinion. Please consider my hasty comments to be IMHO.
If a VSTs sounds inspire you, its probably worth the money. Its all about a subjective X-factor anyway.

From my demo of Omnisphere at a music store, it had amazing huge-sounding pads like Hollywood soundtracks.
If you want that huge professional sounding Hollywood type sounds, maybe it might be good.
I highly echo the suggestion to demo it at a music store if you can.

[noiseboyuk]

That's a KVR click bait title if ever there was one. Of course the discussion has been done to death, but every few months its due another airing. Perhaps the fact that one synth released so many years ago still does this tells you something.

Here are the reasons why I think Omnisphere is the one true truly revolutionary VI synth. Bear in mind most of what I do is media composing, so I'm often working at speed and need to be able to pull anything off at the drop of a hat. Also it really benefits from being run off an SSD where the vast majority of patches load almost instantly, but there is a lite loading option when browsing for those with older drives.

The UI. Most soft synths borrow their UIs from hardware, either specific models or general principles (some have more experimental UIs which can be impenetrable). This generally I think is a mistake, and leads to the eternal quest for the perfect emulation in particular or perfect general soft synth. No-one will ever get there for a really fundamental reason - computer software is not hardware. The way we interact is fundamentally different.

Spectrasonics broke that mould completely with Omnisphere, and its something that other developers (and plenty of users) still haven't really grasped. They made something truly intuitive to use from a computer perspective. The idea of having a simple page where many of its elements can be drilled down into for deeper programming is a simple as it is brilliant.

The sonic range. Omnisphere can't do everything, but it can do more than practically any other single synth. It expands its boundaries way beyond conventional synthesis by the huge sample library full of acoustic sources and the legendary psychoacoustic sources and textures. But even its pure synthesis element is very well developed, and benefits hugely from the aforementioned UI. Both Trilian and the Moog expansions add immeasurably also.

The browser. Nothing else comes close, even those that have their own tag browsers such as the NI range. The trick is that Spectrasonics use musically useful terms like "warm" / "airy" / "aggressive". You can usually get close to where you want to be in seconds. Sadly, the majority of 3rd party patch suppliers do not follow their conventions which messes things up, and I have to edit them (in my experience The Unfinished is the most consistent and superior by far - I never need to touch them as they slot right in correctly).

The patch / soundsource range and quality I have 5,000 patches from the inbuilt library and another 3,000 third party. Forget scrolling through them one-by-one, you'll lose a life. Instead, make use of the aforementioned browser and quickly you'll be working with a relevant more manageable subset each time you approach the synth to do a job. Although the instrument has a star rating system I never use it, because each time I go to it looking for something different - what was wrong one day might be right the next. The quality (of their own patches) is universally good, there's no filler or padding (not always true of 3rd party of course, though some are terrific and cover different ground to the factory library - kudos to Plugin Guru's excellent Toxic bank).

The editing tools You can learn the synth to incredible depth with scores of filters to choose from, boundless modulation options, drag in midi to envelopes etc, but the genius is in also giving tools right at the other end of the spectrum. The Orb is a giant playground where you can just see where a patch takes you almost blind.

I have lots of other synths now, but the feature set above means that almost invariably I go to Omni first and then try others when I'm struggling (not that often). It's earned its money a thousand times over. If lost every other synth I owned tomorrow I'd shrug my shoulders, but if I lost Omni I'd go on a violent rampage.

Is it worth it? Hell yeah.

[benjamind]

Worth $500?

Certainly is. I have it and I would just never see myself without it. I couldn't imagine music without these great sounds. You can get sounds from Omnisphere that you absolutely cannot get from the vast majority of other synths.

Not to discount other synths, they have their strengths and weaknesses, and most synths are very useful.

But Omnisphere is one of my best purchases to this day.

The reason for this is because of the included sample material, which is enormous and covers a very large range of different sounds.

Google Define:Omni

omni-
prefix: omni-
all; of all things.
"omniscient"
in all ways or places.

omnicompetent, omnipotent, omnipresent.

[Monkberry]

Definitely worth every penny. So much variety for inspiration. I write and record a lot of music and Omnisphere shows up on tracks along with Kontakt and EastWest libraries most frequently. Alchemy is also special. They're like children, you never think of one being better than the other. You love them equally for their unique attributes.

[Synchanter]

Am I going to make sounds with this that I can't make in Sylenth, Massive, FM8, or Absynth? Why?

For sure Omnisphere can make sounds Sylenth, Massive and FM8 cannot. The reason is that it starts from real-life samples. Real-life samples, sound much more "realistic", because they arise from real-life physical environments which shape harmonics etc. a certain way.

Omnisphere's sound may overlap a bit with Absynth because some Absynth patches use samples as well. However, Omnisphere has many many more samples (5000?), very high quality supposedly and some very unusual samples such as a burning piano. Of course, you could simply run Omnisphere through Absynth for ridiculous effects.

From my demo of Omnisphere in a music shop, I can confirm the samples are indeed of very high quality, like you would expect to hear from a Hollywood soundtrack. And that there are some really "out there" samples. Clarity, lushness, expansiveness, inspiring, imaginative is how I would describe the particular sound characteristics of Omnisphere.

The question is do you want sampling sounds in your music?
As I said they have a certain character different from subtractive, wavetable, or FM synthesis.
If the answer is yes, then do you want "standard" type sounds or more unusual type sounds.
Kontakt/EastWest for the standard, Omnisphere/Alchemy for more unusual though there is much overlap.

Is Omnisphere or Alchemy more suitable for your needs? Is Omnisphere worth $500? The only real way to know is to listen to Omnisphere sounds through store demo, videos on internet or find tracks using Omnisphere on soundcloud. https://soundcloud.com/search?q=omnisphere

Or you could just forget about samplers with large inbuilt libraries, and just buy wavs from third parties and resynthesize and mess with them in Harmor, Absynth etc. Or explore additive synthesis or physical modelling which can give somewhat realistic sounds through a different approach.

[Synchanter]

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