Omnisphere 2 First Impressions?

[elassi]

Another impression: it would have been cool if they implemented the main page controls of Trilian into Omni2.

The Orb is fun but I think the mentioned controls are more useful as they allow to quickly refine a patch without diving too deep into the preset settings.

At least there's enough space left for an additional tab on the UI so I'm hoping for future updates...

[bmrzycki]

Another impression: it would have been cool if they implemented the main page controls of Trilian into Omni2.

They are there for existing Trilian patches. If you go to the main page there is a "Trilian controls" button in the top left.

I don't know if you can create a new/init preset that makes use of those controls within Omnisphere though.

[Astralv]

The more I see videos, the more I think- I was right not buying this thing in the past. All these bass sounds and guitars and rodes and just other typical old stuff. It is good for a new musician who has no gear. If you been in music production for couple of decades, you already have tones of guitar bases. Yes, I produce electronic music, so I care about EDM and wooble sounds. But it has to be new to impress me. I hardly heard one sound yet that I never heard. When I installed Serum, there were some FX sounds I never heard. Some. And it was worth it. I dont need 50 Gb library that has 300 bass guitar sounds or lame string-based pads. I have that on hardware. It would help if somebody post some cool sounds- something that would make listener wonder, "How did they do it?" Something that gives creepy feeling or anxiety or unfolds like a movie. Who cares about another bass sample? And all the grain engine- it was done long time ago by Steinberg. No new technology there. If I want to import a wav file, I can use Padshop or even Enzime. Probably every other soft synth can import wav files in it. From the entire 14 sounds we heard so far- I am not impressed.

[elassi]

They are there for existing Trilian patches. If you go to the main page there is a "Trilian controls" button in the top left.

I don't know if you can create a new/init preset that makes use of those controls within Omnisphere though.

Thx, found it.

Unfortunately the controls can't be re-/defined like in Trilian. One can see it when right-clicking the "imported" Trilian control in Omni2.

[elassi]

Big plus of Omni2: The new browser bar shows the modulation administration once you set a modulator. Well done!

[Phorous]

The more I see videos, the more I think- I was right not buying this thing in the past. All these bass sounds and guitars and rodes and just other typical old stuff. It is good for a new musician who has no gear. If you been in music production for couple of decades, you already have tones of guitar bases. Yes, I produce electronic music, so I care about EDM and wooble sounds. But it has to be new to impress me. I hardly heard one sound yet that I never heard. When I installed Serum, there were some FX sounds I never heard. Some. And it was worth it. I dont need 50 Gb library that has 300 bass guitar sounds or lame string-based pads. I have that on hardware. It would help if somebody post some cool sounds- something that would make listener wonder, "How did they do it?" Something that gives creepy feeling or anxiety or unfolds like a movie. Who cares about another bass sample? And all the grain engine- it was done long time ago by Steinberg. No new technology there. If I want to import a wav file, I can use Padshop or even Enzime. Probably every other soft synth can import wav files in it. From the entire 14 sounds we heard so far- I am not impressed.

Funny thing, I got the exact opposite impression owning Omnisphere for a year. That its strength was in things that wouldn't work well for EDM or pop. Alot of the samples and patches are extremely experimental sounding, that is basically Spectrasonics strength.

From what I have seen so far in the sample content and patches in the new version that impression has only been reinforced.

I wouldn't recommend Omnisphere for EDM or pop still, although it is improved in that area significantly.

[quantum7]

The more I see videos, the more I think- I was right not buying this thing in the past. All these bass sounds and guitars and rodes and just other typical old stuff. It is good for a new musician who has no gear. If you been in music production for couple of decades, you already have tones of guitar bases. Yes, I produce electronic music, so I care about EDM and wooble sounds. But it has to be new to impress me. I hardly heard one sound yet that I never heard. When I installed Serum, there were some FX sounds I never heard. Some. And it was worth it. I dont need 50 Gb library that has 300 bass guitar sounds or lame string-based pads. I have that on hardware. It would help if somebody post some cool sounds- something that would make listener wonder, "How did they do it?" Something that gives creepy feeling or anxiety or unfolds like a movie. Who cares about another bass sample? And all the grain engine- it was done long time ago by Steinberg. No new technology there. If I want to import a wav file, I can use Padshop or even Enzime. Probably every other soft synth can import wav files in it. From the entire 14 sounds we heard so far- I am not impressed.

I cannot lie, I was just a BIT underwhelmed by the new sounds....as I write mostly New-Age and Ambient these days, but there are a few real gems in there. Once you do eventually get Omni 2, I do think that you will find some, "how did they do that" sounds. I have absolutely no regrets and think that the Omni 2 upgrade was worth every penny. I am salivating at all the incredible 3rd-party libraries that will surely be coming soon with all the new features and the sample import. Omni 2 IMO is a sound-designers dream, and it has me REALLY wanting to get better and sound design/creation.

[elassi]

Not to mention the new wavetables (hundreds...) that - together with the manipulation features of Omni2 - imho leave the so called "EDM standard tool" named Massive (NI) behind.

Guess it's a question of the sound designers. Imho EDM isn't nor was the cup of coffee for Spectrasonics.

[Mutant]

The more I see videos, the more I think- I was right not buying this thing in the past. All these bass sounds and guitars and rodes and just other typical old stuff. It is good for a new musician who has no gear. If you been in music production for couple of decades, you already have tones of guitar bases. Yes, I produce electronic music, so I care about EDM and wooble sounds. But it has to be new to impress me. I hardly heard one sound yet that I never heard. When I installed Serum, there were some FX sounds I never heard. Some. And it was worth it. I dont need 50 Gb library that has 300 bass guitar sounds or lame string-based pads. I have that on hardware. It would help if somebody post some cool sounds- something that would make listener wonder, "How did they do it?" Something that gives creepy feeling or anxiety or unfolds like a movie. Who cares about another bass sample? And all the grain engine- it was done long time ago by Steinberg. No new technology there. If I want to import a wav file, I can use Padshop or even Enzime. Probably every other soft synth can import wav files in it. From the entire 14 sounds we heard so far- I am not impressed.

+infinity

While the sounds i heard until now are good, there is nothing new here, nothing that couldn't be achieved with VSTi instruments years ago.
From what i see the only new thing is easy, almost instant way to achieve these sounds, but IMHO the end result is what really matters.
Nice library, nice effects, maybe even worth its price of 499$ (not even close if you compare it to Komplete 10 for 499$ which offers way more possibilities).

But don't listen to me if Omnisphere 2 makes you happy, i know how fun it is to sit with your new and shiny VSTi and tweak knobs while hitting some notes and chords, i am just resistant to hype...

[noiseboyuk]

Funny thing, I got the exact opposite impression owning Omnisphere for a year. That its strength was in things that wouldn't work well for EDM or pop. Alot of the samples and patches are extremely experimental sounding, that is basically Spectrasonics strength.

From what I have seen so far in the sample content and patches in the new version that impression has only been reinforced.

I wouldn't recommend Omnisphere for EDM or pop still, although it is improved in that area significantly.

Yes, that's closer to how it is (was) from my perspective, though it was way more than experimental of course. Was always very good at retro and organic too, for example.

Here's my early take on the EDM side of things with Omni 2 - I think they built the tech before they started designing any patches, and they perhaps rushed through the patch-building phase - no complaints on numbers but the patches they do have aren't always well categorised. A casual flick through some EDM stuff isn't too impressive, but I think it's deceptive. I think they'll sort out a lot of the current database issues so things are categorised better and more easily found - at the moment it's not up to Omni 1 standards there IMO.

But the bigger thing is that this is a synthesis playground like you wouldn't believe. I reckon in months we'll be inundated with great quality third party content that really gets into niche EDM (and plenty more besides). I reckon people need to hear more bread and butter contemporary cliches to prove what it can do, and then folks will start to really stretch its wings. My overall feeling of 2.0 is that we're barely scratching the surface.

[noiseboyuk]

Dupe post

[Ned Bouhalassa]

I know this is a painful time for some friends, and I can't do much, except maybe share a little of the results of my first few weeks with this baby:

https://soundcloud.com/ned-bouhalassa/s ... re-2-demos

[Phorous]

But the bigger thing is that this is a synthesis playground like you wouldn't believe. I reckon in months we'll be inundated with great quality third party content that really gets into niche EDM (and plenty more besides). I reckon people need to hear more bread and butter contemporary cliches to prove what it can do, and then folks will start to really stretch its wings. My overall feeling of 2.0 is that we're barely scratching the surface.

Exactly! While the first was quite a playground with its sample content, I feel like the new additions to the synthesis and effect options as well as sample import truly make this a "sound design platform" to be reckoned with.

Very much looking forward to the near future seeing what others and myself do with it

[noiseboyuk]

I'm just playing around with the EDM patches again now, and found one that exactly illustrates what I was saying about the categories.

There's a Seth Norman patch, Beef Reese. It's a huge lead sound - all the bigness and width you could ever want, with the portamento glide a la a lot of Trap leads. So it's in the Synth Mono category - so far so good. But inexplicably, it's not in Lead Synths, it's defining characteristic I'd say. There's also no Trap Genre, it's tagged instead as "simple, electronic, pop, dubstep, Dance, Hip hop".

Now, you MIGHT find this patch when searching in a hurry, but chances are I'd miss it because it's not in the first thing I'd click on, Synth Lead (together with Dance). In fact, there are only 15 synth leads in the EDM bank in total, according to the browser. There's not - there's way more and some real gems, but they're not categorised helpfully.

Some Diego Stocco patches aren't given any attributes at all in some critical fields - you can't even modify them if you go to Edit Tags without filling them in yourself!

There are 2,500 new patches. That's shed loads. My sense is we're all missing most of them - and many, many gems among them - on early plays for these kinds of reasons.

(incidentally, the patches from The Unfinished, Seth Norman and Plughugger are among the real highlights for me in the EDM section)

[Phorous]

Seth Norman and Plughugger are both excellent designers. I know John Lehmkuhl (pluginguru) is in there as well, I havn't taken much time to look through presets yet but I am sure there are some gems in there.

Liking what I have heard so far with the new soundsources! Going to go through all the new psychoacoustic ones tonight.