Is Omnisphere 2 still worth it?

[Jac459]

As an Omnisphere 2 owner I'd definitely say it's not worth it. Although I do not own many plugins (and no hardware) Omnisphere has never been the centerpiece of my compositions. I always force myself to use it, in a way to justify throwing €400 on it 10 years ago.

IMO there are better (both in terms of sound and user experience) and cheaper options available in 2023. It's a different plug-in era than when O2 was released really. I hope Spectrasonics take heed of the imense changes that have happened in the 5 years or so.

If the update to v3 will not be free I'll double down on my statement.

That's an unusual statement .
What do you don't like about it? What other plug ins do you use?

[ghettosynth]

He probably doesn't like that there aren't more polyphonic modulators.

[bmanic]

I emailed Spectrasonics about this and they corrected me on one point. Mod Envelope number 4 has the same little 'p' button as the 8th LFO. So we do actually have one additional polyphonic envelope.

The good news is that they are indeed considering adding the polyphonic option to ALL the basic LFOs and also all 4 mod envelopes. If they do that, then suddenly Omnisphere does indeed become a lot more capable for pure synthesis.

As it stands now, you have basically two normal envelopes (filter and mod envelope 4) and one normal LFO (nr . All others are monophonic (which is rather uncommon in most synths.. heck, some don't even have the option of forcing these to be monophonic).

A monophonic envelope can still be useful and even quite interesting but it's definitely not the norm. Anyhow, we'll see where Spectrasonics is taking this. Like I said, there are so many good modulation destinations available for the user that it has the potential of being extremely powerful but due to some choices of the modulation system, it's a bit limited at the moment.

They don't have to change a lot though to make it _really_ powerful. All they need is to add at least one level of "nested" modulation option (meaning you should be able to modulate each matrix slot amount/depth slider with any modulator) and add polyphony to all envelopes and LFOs. This change alone would make the synth almost on par with other monster synths like Alchemy/Vital/Avenger etc.

Another thing that is missing is a modulation shaping module, a simple XY matrix where you can shape any incoming modulation to your exact specification. For instance the way Alchemy does it, or many of the Arturia synths (or Avenger).

[ghettosynth]

I emailed Spectrasonics about this and they corrected me on one point. Mod Envelope number 4 has the same little 'p' button as the 8th LFO. So we do actually have one additional polyphonic envelope.

To be fair, three is a reasonable number as you will only rarely use a pitch envelope. That said, as you say, with so many destinations, there should be more. The M12 has five per voice EGs and five per voice LFOs and it is just an analog synth.

My guess is that this is left over from when CPUs weren't very powerful, and go ahead and be pissed off Omni fans, but I'm not surprised that their bread and butter customer base hasn't really noticed.

[cocoazenith]

As an Omnisphere 2 owner I'd definitely say it's not worth it. Although I do not own many plugins (and no hardware) Omnisphere has never been the centerpiece of my compositions. I always force myself to use it, in a way to justify throwing €400 on it 10 years ago.

IMO there are better (both in terms of sound and user experience) and cheaper options available in 2023. It's a different plug-in era than when O2 was released really. I hope Spectrasonics take heed of the imense changes that have happened in the 5 years or so.

If the update to v3 will not be free I'll double down on my statement.

That's an unusual statement .
What do you don't like about it? What other plug ins do you use?

I like it. It's an ok plugin. I'm not going to make a review and feature request list here.
Is worth $500? Judging based on the actual plugin market context, no.

I use Pigments & Alchemy.

[noiseboyuk]

I emailed Spectrasonics about this and they corrected me on one point. Mod Envelope number 4 has the same little 'p' button as the 8th LFO. So we do actually have one additional polyphonic envelope.

The good news is that they are indeed considering adding the polyphonic option to ALL the basic LFOs and also all 4 mod envelopes. If they do that, then suddenly Omnisphere does indeed become a lot more capable for pure synthesis.

Cool.

I can only presume that having a P button at all means that any CPU hit will only apply in poly mode. So if you don’t need them, there’s no downside.

[Jac459]

I like it. It's an ok plugin. I'm not going to make a review and feature request list here.
Is worth $500? Judging based on the actual plugin market context, no.

I use Pigments & Alchemy.

Thanks for the answer mate.

[Echoes in the Attic]

A great way to have more polyphonic modulators is to copy a patch across all 8 parts and play with rotating midi channels. Mpe is the easiest way to do that if you have a controller that supports mpe. But you could probably use a midi plugin to do that too.

This way you can use any modulator per voice. And you can also modulate effects per voice.

[Jac459]

A great way to have more polyphonic modulators is to copy a patch across all 8 parts and play with rotating midi channels. Mpe is the easiest way to do that if you have a controller that supports mpe. But you could probably use a midi plugin to do that too.

This way you can use any modulator per voice. And you can also modulate effects per voice.

That's true.... but not so user friendly.

[bmanic]

A great way to have more polyphonic modulators is to copy a patch across all 8 parts and play with rotating midi channels. Mpe is the easiest way to do that if you have a controller that supports mpe. But you could probably use a midi plugin to do that too.

This way you can use any modulator per voice. And you can also modulate effects per voice.

This is very true and relatively easy to setup in a DAW like Reaper but it is NOT at all convenient.

I really hope Spectrasonics update Omnisphere to be more in line with current crop of synthesizers. It really doesn't need much to suddenly become a lot more capable. The core is already there. We got awesome samples, awesome synthesized oscillators, awesome processing for all these things (granular, fm, wavetable, waveshaping, unison etc). It has so much to offer and only falls short in some of the modulation sources category. It has tons of modulation source options (I was recently made aware of the 'Bias' source which is just awesome!) but very few ways of shaping their input/output and no way to modulate in multiple nested levels (there are a few exceptions, still very limited). This means that you can not easily have multiple modulation sources affect other modulation sources in a nested, multiplicative manner. I'm so used to abusing this in other synths like Avenger, Alchemy, Twin3, Spire etc. etc.

The foundation is extremely capable and with a few tweaks to the modulation system it could easily become a real beast of a synthesizer!

Don't get me wrong though, I still think Omnisphere is very much worth it, even in 2023, simply due to the huge amount of different sounds easily available. It's definitely an almost infinite source for a huge variety of sounds but it's lacking in the ability of giving the user 100% control over how things are modulated which ultimately makes this a bit less expressive and explorative than it could be. I find it rather strange and sort of amusing that a synth conceived by Eric Persing himself is rather limited in terms of the actual "synthesis core". It's like having a massive modular system with tons of oscillators, audio shapers etc but with extremely few modulation options.

[Echoes in the Attic]

A great way to have more polyphonic modulators is to copy a patch across all 8 parts and play with rotating midi channels. Mpe is the easiest way to do that if you have a controller that supports mpe. But you could probably use a midi plugin to do that too.

This way you can use any modulator per voice. And you can also modulate effects per voice.

This is very true and relatively easy to setup in a DAW like Reaper but it is NOT at all convenient.

I really hope Spectrasonics update Omnisphere to be more in line with current crop of synthesizers. It really doesn't need much to suddenly become a lot more capable. The core is already there. We got awesome samples, awesome synthesized oscillators, awesome processing for all these things (granular, fm, wavetable, waveshaping, unison etc). It has so much to offer and only falls short in some of the modulation sources category. It has tons of modulation source options (I was recently made aware of the 'Bias' source which is just awesome!) but very few ways of shaping their input/output and no way to modulate in multiple nested levels (there are a few exceptions, still very limited). This means that you can not easily have multiple modulation sources affect other modulation sources in a nested, multiplicative manner. I'm so used to abusing this in other synths like Avenger, Alchemy, Twin3, Spire etc. etc.

The foundation is extremely capable and with a few tweaks to the modulation system it could easily become a real beast of a synthesizer!

Don't get me wrong though, I still think Omnisphere is very much worth it, even in 2023, simply due to the huge amount of different sounds easily available. It's definitely an almost infinite source for a huge variety of sounds but it's lacking in the ability of giving the user 100% control over how things are modulated which ultimately makes this a bit less expressive and explorative than it could be. I find it rather strange and sort of amusing that a synth conceived by Eric Persing himself is rather limited in terms of the actual "synthesis core". It's like having a massive modular system with tons of oscillators, audio shapers etc but with extremely few modulation options.

I agree. I bet they will do mpe at least and wouldn't be surprised if they enhance the other modulation capabilities as well. CLAP would be great.

[LFO8]

Can any of you post examples of particular sounds you would be able to get with polyphonic modulation sources that you can not now with monophonic ones? (genuinely interested)

[Cepheus]

Can any of you post examples of particular sounds you would be able to get with polyphonic modulation sources that you can not now with monophonic ones? (genuinely interested)

Sami Rabia aka Aiyn Zahev explained it pretty well in Hive 1.2 four years ago

[Jac459]

Can any of you post examples of particular sounds you would be able to get with polyphonic modulation sources that you can not now with monophonic ones? (genuinely interested)

Imagine you are playing a chord with a strum effect. If you have LFOs that are polyphonic, attached to the volume or the filter, each part of the chord will have down point and up point at different moment, making a very nice and harmonic effect.

Another one is to attach the rate of a polyphonic lfo to a polyphonic ADSR. You start with a very high rate and decrease progressively. This effect is very nice. If you have mono lfo or envelope, you will end up by restarting the rate decrease each time, so it won't work.

Don't know if I am clear, I can attach an example later today if you want.


Basically if you are playing in chords, that makes very "alive" sounds and you can have very nice harmonics and even arpegii effects this way (like a chord starting like a chord but finishing like an arpegio).

That's bring me to the real advantage of CLAP, you can setup very complex mseg and LFOs independently of the synth and attach it to any synth and sound .... After.
That's awesome and very productive.

Omnisphere has a kind of similar feature where you can lock some parameters while browsing sounds, but this goes far beyond.

[Atlatnesiti]

Omnisphere is the biggest and best sounding rompler of all times. My initial purchase came on 8 CD's - Gigabytes and gigabytes of data...
Is it still worth it in this day and age..?
NO