Buy Omnisphere 2

[martinjuenke]

If I need many, many sample based sounds I would buy the OUTPUT Total Bundle (currently on sale and not that more pricey than this Corpus Delicti)...

[ghettosynth]

Okay, logical question. If Omnisphere is such a piece of crap, why do so many "working" professionals who are actually making money, some of them LOTS of money using it IF there are better alternatives?

Often for the same reasons that people cite as criticisms – it's a preset machine/rompler etc.

In soundtrack, ads, games, media sound design work (or any creativity-for-hire work for that matter) you are frequently dealing with clients who want stuff yesterday and find, ahem, novel ways to demand changes: "it's too chocolatey, needs more rubber...but with an edge".

Omni is the gift that keeps giving in that kind of environment. You've got an enormous set of tagged presets. There is one for every occasion. But, unlike, say Nexus, Omni is inherently tweakable (notice how Skippy Lehmkuhl's videos often stress how to adapt his team's presets). It may not be the deepest synth engine in the world but you can dial in sounds quickly and make significant changes just by clicking through the voice modifier tabs under the sample window. And presets will often have a decent set of macro controls, which Tracktion has emulated with Biotek - another synth that was aimed at the media composer.

Absolutely!

But to the diehard synthetist with time on their hands, all that is sacrilege. Because supersaws must be carved by hand in the name of your own spirit animal. So, there's never going to be common ground.

But no. This is missing the point. One doesn't necessarily need to sculpt sounds in Diva/Bazille/Reaktor Blocks, the presets sound great and they sound great because the technology isn't yesterday's news.

[fmr]

Omni is much more powerful than any kontakt library. Just like you said, not just the samples but how they can be triggered, or just generally how they can be used. So I don’t see your point since the value that can be extracted from samples in omnisphere is greater than most scripted kontakt libraries. Without even getting into the quality of the samples themselves which is important too.

"Omni is much more powerful than any kontakt library."

http://www.orchestraltools.com/librarie ... _ark_1.php

http://www.orchestraltools.com/librarie ... _ark_2.php

http://www.orchestraltools.com/librarie ... _ark_3.php

Compare this with Omnisphere.

[Cinebient]

[Gamma-UT]

But no. This is missing the point. One doesn't necessarily need to sculpt sounds in Diva/Bazille/Reaktor Blocks, the presets sound great and they sound great because the technology isn't yesterday's news.

There's a quaint irony in writing something like that about products that are, for the most part, based on things that were designed decades ago that, for much the same reason, didn't have presets and for which some people will pay major coin because only the OG gear has "that sound".

[wagtunes]

As far as dragging Kontakt into this conversation (apples and oranges) I agree with Ghetto. My guitar and orchestral libraries that are Kontakt based could not be done with Omnisphere, period. It is not physically possible. I would be lost without Kontakt for what Kontakt does well. I would not use Kontakt for a synth engine. The fact that Omni has a synth engine, even if it's not the greatest in the world, is what makes Omni better than Kontakt for what IT does better.

If you told me there were only 3 things I could keep, not counting sample libraries, they would be...

Vocaloid - To do my vocals
Kontakt - For all my acoustic instrument emulations
Omnisphere - For everything else

Those 3 things would have me covered for anything I could possibly want to do.

[vurt]

well, stop being greedy. you're allowed two, just like everybody else!

[wagtunes]

well, stop being greedy. you're allowed two, just like everybody else!

I get the attempt at humor (ha ha) but thank God we don't live in a world like that. If we did, I'd turn on the gas right now.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Omni is much more powerful than any kontakt library. Just like you said, not just the samples but how they can be triggered, or just generally how they can be used. So I don’t see your point since the value that can be extracted from samples in omnisphere is greater than most scripted kontakt libraries. Without even getting into the quality of the samples themselves which is important too.

"Omni is much more powerful than any kontakt library."

http://www.orchestraltools.com/librarie ... _ark_1.php

http://www.orchestraltools.com/librarie ... _ark_2.php

http://www.orchestraltools.com/librarie ... _ark_3.php

Compare this with Omnisphere.

Im talking about sound design and synthesis. I thought that was clear from the context and my previous post. Sorry, of course I shouldn’t have said all. I’m not comparing Omnisphere to a detailed orchestra library or an extremely multisampled and scripted guitar for goodness sakes, that would be absurd. I use kontakt for all these things. The kontakt scripting is more powerful. I am talking about the sound design possibilities when loading sample libraries and comparing, like I said, to similar sound design libraries.

Also Omnisphere list price is 399 euros, those ark ones were 549 and 599. Comparing these is so ridiculous on so many levels.

[vurt]

well, stop being greedy. you're allowed two, just like everybody else!

I get the attempt at humor (ha ha) but thank God we don't live in a world like that. If we did, I'd turn on the gas right now.

it's where we're headed though! amiright! power to the people!!!

[wagtunes]

well, stop being greedy. you're allowed two, just like everybody else!

I get the attempt at humor (ha ha) but thank God we don't live in a world like that. If we did, I'd turn on the gas right now.

it's where we're headed though! amiright! power to the people!!!

[noiseboyuk]

In soundtrack, ads, games, media sound design work (or any creativity-for-hire work for that matter) you are frequently dealing with clients who want stuff yesterday and find, ahem, novel ways to demand changes: "it's too chocolatey, needs more rubber...but with an edge".

Omni is the gift that keeps giving in that kind of environment. You've got an enormous set of tagged presets. There is one for every occasion. But, unlike, say Nexus, Omni is inherently tweakable (notice how Skippy Lehmkuhl's videos often stress how to adapt his team's presets). It may not be the deepest synth engine in the world but you can dial in sounds quickly and make significant changes just by clicking through the voice modifier tabs under the sample window. And presets will often have a decent set of macro controls, which Tracktion has emulated with Biotek - another synth that was aimed at the media composer.

But to the diehard synthetist with time on their hands, all that is sacrilege. Because supersaws must be carved by hand in the name of your own spirit animal. So, there's never going to be common ground.

Terrific post (and congrats on page 521 or whatever we are now to bring some much needed light to proceedings). Its not the be all and end all, but that definitely describes part of Omni's appeal to a great many working musicians. Omni has a particular skill in making things that sound like real instruments but aren't, or when you need a synth sound that doesn't sound like a synth. Just being able to search by a musically meaningful mood is still amazingly rare, and that's been part of its appeal since day one.

Good posts by Echoes too, the Output / Spitfire / 8dio / Heavyocity Kontakt sound design libraries are invariably far more limited in use than Omni for those kinds of sounds, and cost far more combined. And the Unfinished has staggeringly good cinematic presets if you crave more, far cheaper than any 3rd party Kontakt library even vaguely worth its salt. If cinematic is your bag, Omni deserves serious consideration to be at the top of your list. Zebra is another good alternative that I've personally never clicked with, the whole Omni package appeals to me more, but many get amazing results with it.

[Echoes in the Attic]

So the value issue just does not hold up if you compare it to anything remotely similar at all. Like I said, not needing it is understandable, but pretending that’s its poor value is willful ignorance.

No no no. The problem with your thoughts here is that it's wishful thinking that Omni is "similar" to Kontakt in terms of value extracted from samples. Samples are useful, hence valuable, in a sampler that has the kind of power that Kontakt's scripting engine has. That's what brings the values to the samples in Kontakt, not the number of them, or how many gigs there are.

In Omnisphere they're just quasi-oscillators that you're paying too much for. Nobody pays that much for just samples, when you pay that much for samples from reputable sampling companies what you're paying for is the effort put into how the samples are triggered.

Well you did concede that you find kontakt libraries overpriced so maybe it’s beside the point, but I’m not comparing Omani to kontakt with its scripting abilities, I’m comparing it to kontakt libraries that are scripted that nobody is going to realistically alter, they will use as is. Omni is much more powerful than any kontakt library. Just like you said, not just the samples but how they can be triggered, or just generally how they can be used.

Omni is not a more powerful sample manipulator than Kontakt. One can't, for example, create (or buy from Spectra) anything like Scarbee Funk Guitarist as a patch/sample library in Omnisphere. So, those samples in Omni are worthless, to me, because the essence of Kontakt libraries like that is how the samples are manipulated by the scripting engine to make a playable instrument. That's the value in Kontakt libraries. The ones that are just synth clones with lots of pads are as overpriced as Omni is. That is, when they are priced like Omni.

So I don’t see your point since the value that can be extracted from samples in omnisphere is greater than most scripted kontakt libraries. Without even getting into the quality of the samples themselves which is important too.

No, I don't think that you really grok how deep and powerful scripting and sample handling is in Kontakt. Do you use those kinds of libraries? I'm not talking about processing the samples with weak synthesis, that's not the value of Kontakt and, with a few exceptions, I don't think that's what Kontakt is very good at either.

So said differently, and as an exemplar, given a set of guitar samples, you will be able to approximate guitar playing in some style much more effectively in Kontakt than in Omni. In Omni you can only treat the guitar samples as a source in a traditional synthesis context. In Kontakt you can completely define how user input triggers various combinations of samples. This is what makes for a playable guitar like instrument and that is what people who pay for Kontakt libraries are paying for. To think that they are just paying for recordings of guitars is the ignorance here.

Ok so now we are talking about emulating real instrument behavior? Obviously kontakt is better at that. I use it all the time for all kinds of instruments from guitars and bass to brass, winds, orchestras etc.

We can’t seriously talk about this when the goal posts get moved so much. I was talking the value of the sample library and what the user can do to it (and more importantly quickly and easily). Using samples in synthesis. You do not load a heavily scripted bass guitar in kontakt in order to do sound design and granular synthesis etc. You use it as a bass guitar. Nobody has ever said Omnisphere emulates real instruments. The proper kontakt sound design libraries to compare to are obvious. Not only that, but talking about value, how can you compare a detailed guitar, like orange tree or something, or sample modeling trumpet, when any two or three products of that quality tend to equal the price of Omnisphere! It is not a fair comparison at all. I can’t take this too seriously anymore, it’s again willful ignorance of the actual positions of those who find Omnisphere to be good value.

[pdxindy]

I am talking about the sound design possibilities when loading sample libraries and comparing, like I said, to similar sound design libraries.

You cannot load sample libraries... you only have what is included with Omni.

[Echoes in the Attic]

And again, there arenplentynif things that make Omnisphere unique, ignoring the sample content.

Here is just one example that I’ve given before. Many of us appreciate when a synth does per voice effects like the distortion in repro or in falcon. Pretty cool right? Well with Omnisphere, sincenit has 8 layers that can instantly copy from the first one and that can use separate midi channels, now you can modulate any effect that Omnisphere has (which is an amazing effects package actually!) per voice if have a midi controller that can rotate the channels like an mpe device. Modulate a chorus or phaser or reverb or delay parameter for example with an envelope or velocity or something and you will have seaparate modulations per voice. Thus making effects per voice like usually just osc and filters are. This would be very hard with other synths.

And of course even though I don’t like the tags in v2, there is plenty useful about finding similar sounds and locking sections etc. Lots of happy surprises can happen.