Omnisphere 2 First Impressions?

[noiseboyuk]

Ach, I hope this discussion doesn't derail the thread. The synth is called Omnisphere - Omni means everything. If you're only after one specific kind of music or use, you'll get less out of it than if you value all kinds of different approaches and types of music. I don't mean like a workstation, I mean styles of synthesis etc. One of the big strengths of Omni 2 is that the range has expanded of what Omni does very well, and in all directions - analogue modelling and sources have improved, so have harder digital swoops and dives, so has the experimental avant garde stuff, so has cinematic etc etc. Everyone can just get out of it what they want or are interested in, but begrudging a wider palette ("there's lots of new sounds I don't like") seems kind of silly and against the ethos of the thing. You don't like them - absolutely fine, there's plenty else to keep you busy. Or broaden your horizons - either way.

[Astralv]

I don't have to do anything. All I want to do is to have fun composing music and playing my keyboards. I'm not trying to impress anyone or sell anything to anyone.

I am not remotely interested in making dub, glitch, trap, or circuit bent music. For the record, I don't care for opera, rap, or smooth jazz, either.

This is your right. But I hardly believe that you have no interest in delivering your art to the listeners. I am sure you will always find your listener. But here is the thing: some people can be called innovators, some are not. Some create self driving cars and drones, others ride a bicycle to work or grow their own food. Nothing wrong with that. You can find yourself anywhere in that spectrum. And you can always innovate what ever it is that makes you happy- you can always make it better. I just find interesting to use the new sounds that can not be made with acoustic instruments. I imaging music of the future being robot-like and electronic, while society will try to preserve traditional for today music as we are now preserving classical music. My choice is to move progress forward. But we sure need people that will preserve out culture as well.

[faun2500]

Wobbles and drops, drops and wobbles, static and glitch, circuit bent bloops, more glitchy wobbles and static-y computer whoops and....
YUCK.
I loved Omnisphere 1 for the endless gorgeous and musical sounds it had... Not so many of those in the O2 preset library. Oh, some, but please tell me how I can delete the rest of this stuff?
Womp, globble, dunk, wooowwwoooowww, spittle, crank, WOBBBBLLLE....

Probably just that it is far to hip for an old fart like me.
But these are lots of edgy, gritty, distorted, dirty, snarled sounds that probably don't fit in with much of anything I do, and my music runs across many genres.
I am hearing things in the O2 preset library that remind me a lot of the sounds in Absynth... interesting stuff to fool around with, but not very musical, at least in any remotely traditional musical sense.

I would like to point out that music production is changing with the progress of technology. If you don’t want to sound like old fart, you need to adopt. I am 40 y old and I noted that my music some time sounds like 80s. I watch YouTube videos and try to learn new techniques that new generation comes up with to make sure I stay up to date and appeal to the new generation. I am not claiming to be successful in it, but new sounds interesting to me not because I make EDM but because they are new sounds capable to change music in general. If you think of music 20 or 50 years from now, what direction do you think it would go? Do you think it will go toward wooobles or toward acoustic instruments? I agree that EDM sounds still not perfectly pleasant yet but as new plugins released, developers become more and more skilled with making them sound better by using better effects, filters and processing techniques. It is our job to implement new technology in to our music. I live in Virginia and I have many friends on my Facebook list but most of them listen typical American rock music and have no idea what is going on with the music in the world. It is my job to help them discover those sounds and find a way to include them in to my “old fashioned” music. I listen what kids listening. I do not always like it but I have a lot to learn. Even with my 20 years’ experience in music making, I have to learn from 16 years old with Abelton. I am a keyboard player, but I have to learn how to use Push or Maschine pads because it opens new ways to create melody line and offers new scales. Glitch and stretching is very interesting and promising technique. I am not going to full myself by thinking that I am so talented that everybody will just want to hear the chord progressions I learned while in college and the story of my personal struggle in life, expressed in music. New kids want EDM and music is progressing. Fighting it is the same as fighting robotics or computers or space industry. We have to open door, mind and heart to the new technology and learn to use it to be ahead of our peers.

[goldenanalog]

First impressions?

Its feels like as if I was 8 years old, and I just walked to a new playground that all my friends had been telling me about, and when I got there -

I'm greeted by a monstrous playground that's a square f!cking mile, thats got equipment to play on as far as the eye can see -

[zerocrossing]

Wobbles and drops, drops and wobbles, static and glitch, circuit bent bloops, more glitchy wobbles and static-y computer whoops and....
YUCK.
I loved Omnisphere 1 for the endless gorgeous and musical sounds it had... Not so many of those in the O2 preset library. Oh, some, but please tell me how I can delete the rest of this stuff?
Womp, globble, dunk, wooowwwoooowww, spittle, crank, WOBBBBLLLE....

Probably just that it is far to hip for an old fart like me.
But these are lots of edgy, gritty, distorted, dirty, snarled sounds that probably don't fit in with much of anything I do, and my music runs across many genres.
I am hearing things in the O2 preset library that remind me a lot of the sounds in Absynth... interesting stuff to fool around with, but not very musical, at least in any remotely traditional musical sense.

I would like to point out that music production is changing with the progress of technology. If you don’t want to sound like old fart, you need to adopt. I am 40 y old and I noted that my music some time sounds like 80s. I watch YouTube videos and try to learn new techniques that new generation comes up with to make sure I stay up to date and appeal to the new generation. I am not claiming to be successful in it, but new sounds interesting to me not because I make EDM but because they are new sounds capable to change music in general. If you think of music 20 or 50 years from now, what direction do you think it would go? Do you think it will go toward wooobles or toward acoustic instruments? I agree that EDM sounds still not perfectly pleasant yet but as new plugins released, developers become more and more skilled with making them sound better by using better effects, filters and processing techniques. It is our job to implement new technology in to our music. I live in Virginia and I have many friends on my Facebook list but most of them listen typical American rock music and have no idea what is going on with the music in the world. It is my job to help them discover those sounds and find a way to include them in to my “old fashioned” music. I listen what kids listening. I do not always like it but I have a lot to learn. Even with my 20 years’ experience in music making, I have to learn from 16 years old with Abelton. I am a keyboard player, but I have to learn how to use Push or Maschine pads because it opens new ways to create melody line and offers new scales. Glitch and stretching is very interesting and promising technique. I am not going to full myself by thinking that I am so talented that everybody will just want to hear the chord progressions I learned while in college and the story of my personal struggle in life, expressed in music. New kids want EDM and music is progressing. Fighting it is the same as fighting robotics or computers or space industry. We have to open door, mind and heart to the new technology and learn to use it to be ahead of our peers.

It's funny to me that I see a lot of people my age (50) have "stopped." They found some magic moment in their development and that's that. I don't know why that wasn't me, but it never was. I was interested in what was new in the 70s/80s and I still am.

Not that I subscribe to what ever musical trend is popular. In fact, I've always disliked most pop music. I discovered the Beatles via I Am The Walrus at a time when disco was hitting and I had many an argument with my younger sister about how the Bee-Gees went way down hill in the 70s. Not that I have any misconception of any time being better than any other. I know that for every I Am The Walrus there is a How Much Is That Doggie In The Window. That is the nature of culture.

So, does most EDM suck? Of course it does. Most pop music sucks no matter what the time period. To believe otherwise is just nostalgia. What I do find interesing about modern times is the production styles of guys like Skrillex. While I don't dig his music that much, I can't deny something's going on. Discarding the sounds because you don't like the music is like throwing the baby away with the bath water. Not that all the sounds are good, or pleasant, but even in the worst sounds sometimes there's a gem. I've taken some traditional EDM sounds, turned off the arp and made a few tweaks and ended up with something cool that I may not have discovered on my own.

So, my advice is... don't think about it much. Do what you like. In a culture where few can make a living doing music, you're a fool to do anything that doesn't make you happy. If you don't like the new EDM sounds, there's only a few thousand other sounds to look to. Also... you can always start from the init patch and make your own.

[wagtunes]

@faun2500

Very well said.

Here's the other side of the coin.

If you're making music ONLY for others and get no enjoyment out of it yourself because what others like makes you want to throw your PC through a window, then there is no point in making music at all and you might as well find something else to do with your life.

I'm very fortunate. I grew up exposed to opera, show tunes, symphonies and piano concertos. I then discovered The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk and Dragonforce. There is very little music that I don't enjoy. In fact, it would be easier and shorter to list those genres than the ones I do enjoy. So as a result, I can make just about any kind of music.

Not everybody is that, I don't want to use the word "fortunate" as some people are more than content writing piano sonatas all day long, but not everybody is into all that stuff. And for them to "compromise" just to reach an audience just isn't worth it, not if it decreases their enjoyment of what they're doing.

I can see both sides.

Ultimately, I believe it comes down to what my mother (God rest her soul) said to me many times when it came to my "art."

"To thine own self be true."

I'm just lucky to be schizophrenic enough to go from Tchaikovsky to Tangerine Dream in the blink of an eye.

[lotus2035]

I'm 42, I grew up listening to all forms of underground electronic music since the early 90s.
Being from Dublin, Ireland we had heavy regular exposure to what was going on in the underground scenes in the U.K. and the rest of Europe long before the European sound came to the USA.
Despite my background, even still I can say that I think Dubstep and all this other wub wub blip blop bullshit is not any kind of progression or stepping stone to something new and improved or the next stage of anything but rather the end of the line for a tired and worn out genre that has run out of new ideas in much the same way that rock music and many other styles did.
To be honest I'm disappointed in Spectrasonics pandering to that demographic because it's already gotten old and outdated. We all know how cheesy those old trance sounds from the mid-late 90s sound today, they haven't dated as well as some sounds from the 80s have they?
This dubstep stuff will have even less of a shelf life than that and dare I say will date Omnisphere itself a lot more than any bread and butter pad sounds.

[budweiser]

when disco was hitting and I had many an argument with my younger sister about how the Bee-Gees went way down hill in the 70s.

Aren't you crazy ??? The old pots make the best soup.

[BBFG#]

If you don’t want to sound like old fart, you need to adopt.
[...]We have to open door, mind and heart to the new technology and learn to use it to be ahead of our peers.

I don't have to do anything. All I want to do is to have fun composing music and playing my keyboards. I'm not trying to impress anyone or sell anything to anyone.
I am not remotely interested in making dub, glitch, trap, or circuit bent music. For the record, I don't care for opera, rap, or smooth jazz, either.

I actually like all the genres to a point. It's usually the point where they get derivative, homogeneous, and mindlessly boring though. EDM reached that point of saturation far quicker than most and there seems to be a signal of a synth's abilities when the boring ubiquitous sound of it begins to bloat the browser. But I do go through these fields of crap to find any gem I can. Most notably, one can find a handful of tones in the 'dubstep' that can be used effectively in jazz and a few of the 'ambient/experimental' that fit nice enough in classic/classical sets. Take most EDM beats, cut the tempo in half and often is found the base to a more than decent piece of music that appeals to more than just the mary/molly crowds of the hyper-blurred focus.

It's just an overwhelming fact that for me, 'EDM programs' results in meaning "98% unusable".
I also find many of its 'presets' to be almost redundant with variations only in tweaks and naming.
But that happens one way or another in any VI that attempts to be all things for all people.
Omni is misnomer we accept as just a marketing logo/brand here. Otherwise, it would be more concerned with 'traditional' instruments also, which they have un-apologetically have determined to not be their direction for this plugin.

In previous months of testing this plugin, I've found maybe 25-35% of it as possibly usable. Of course, from what I'm reading here, the majority of patches being added will decrease that percentage for me. And while I'm sure it will make it even more appealing to a wider market in purchasing, will not necessarily result in it being used any more of it than what it was before.

But as always with these discussions (from both my side and yours), it's all academic.
I'd be more interested in just how many program/patches others tag and actually use then - rather than how many it offers.

[goldenanalog]

I think that it's *all* about people - a forum like kvr constantly trips over itself is because its really stange mixture when you think about it:

People + tech + music = ?

The rate of change is off the charts, especially for us 50 somethings and 60 somethings that have seen it all - we have historical inertia/context that can certainly effect out adaptive ability - a fair amount of confusion -

My solution is to treat a lot of what comes down the pike as new toys - thus my playground analogy - Omni 2 certainly fits -

Say you were a hunter/gun enthusiast, and someone gave you a portable particle accelerator mounted on a gyroscopically-stablized tripod - let's say this weapon was capable of consistently hitting a target the size of a dime @ 10 miles - how would you handle it?

Me: toy.

Omnisphere is absolutely amazing (like this plugin) - but you could look at it purely as a toy to keep the fun/experimentation factors in your perspective, at least for now.

Its only 3 days old.

[goldenanalog]

- and slamming EDM is very much like slamming a fashion - many people love to dance, and especially younger people are about what's new.

'Good' taste often times has absolutely nothing to do with it, so guess what?

We *all* sound like are parents at some point.

The better way is not to let any of it distract you. Omni2 has EDM material in it because it is built to be sold to a wide spectrum of people. Eric has to do this in order for Spectrasonics to remain healthy - he has to sell a lot of Omni.

The great thing is that if you are so inclined: using the Omni tools, you can mangle the sh!t out of the EDM material for your own amusement, if for no other reason.

[BassMasterK]

Can anyone tell me if this upgrade replaces the original Omnisphere instance in their DAW or if they still have access to Omnisphere 1 and now have a second synth Omnisphere 2 that just uses large portions of the same library.

If it replaces the first instance does anyone know if it is fully backwards compatible with tracks made using Omnisphere (1)? I get a free download of it but am halfway done with an album that I use Omnisphere on a lot and I don't want to do anything that might screw with the tracks that are already recorded. I guess I could just convert those tracks to audio first just in case.

[mwalthius]

My choice is to move progress forward. But we sure need people that will preserve out culture as well.

Look. If you keep making assumptions and (seemingly) lecturing me, I am going to get pissed off.

Moving forward does not require one to like dubstep, glitch, or circuit-bending, so knock it off with the speeches.

And the ONLY thing that is important right now, is that Manchester United score TWO goals in the last 10+ minutes against West Brom. That is ALL that matters right now, okay?

[rustman]

I'll bet most of you are like me- when you listen to music, you listen carefully and deconstruct it in your head. I've listened to music since the early 60's and paid attention. I don't want to listen to alot of those things anymore, but bits and pieces sink in. Over the past decade, I've allowed myself to "get behind" what is the latest thing. I'm not totally asleep at the wheel, but I've stopped buying pretty much all current music. What ai'm getting to is...when I sit down to write, I clear my mind, listen to some patches, and just let it happen. If you trust yourself (it's easier if you're only making music for fun), then you can literally forget all rules. Many will stick anyway because of all of the years of listening to music. I'm far from the first to say "There are no rules". I think that approach is exciting because I always feel like I might hit on something that I really like and it might happen to be really different. For the record, I own one Skrillex and one Nero record.

I skipped part of my own point- Omnisphere is like a playground of inspiration for me. After a few minutes, I usually get something going. I use a lot of insert effects these days, so no sound has to even be recognizable anyway.

[murnau]

Moving forward does not require one to like dubstep, glitch, or circuit-bending, so knock it off with the speeches.

True words. Or should i say: TTT T T TTT RUUUUUUUUEEE WO WOO WOOOO RDDDDDDSSSSssss.