Omnisphere 3

[Echoes in the Attic]

I wonder what hardware filters the new models are based on:
• Beefy LPF 2-pole
• Beefy LPF 4-pole
• Classic LPF 1-pole
• Classic LPF 2-pole
• Classic LPF 3-pole
• Classic LPF 4-pole
• Classic LPF 6-pole
• Classic LPF 8-pole
• French LPF 2-pole
• French LPF 4-pole
• Jupiter LPF 2-pole
• Jupiter LPF 4-pole
• OB LPF 2-pole
• OB LPF 4-pole
• Sauce LPF 2-pole
• Sauce LPF 4-pole
• Subtle LPF 1-pole
• Subtle LPF 2-pole
• Jupiter HPF 1-pole
• Jupiter HPF 2-pole
• Jupiter HPF 4-pole
• OB HPF 2-pole
• OB HPF 4-pole
• Sauce HPF 2-pole
• Sauce HPF 4-pole
• Beefy BPF 2-pole
• Beefy BPF 4-pole
• OB BPF 2-pole
• OB BPF 4-pole
• Sauce BPF 2-pole
• Sauce BPF 4-pole
• Allpass Filter
• Notch Filter
• State Variable OB
• State Variable Sauce

Jupiter is obvious, and OB, but not sure about the others.

[Ah_Dziz]

Does all the sample data have to be redownload when updating or is the new stuff just added in? I'll get around to grabbing this sooner or later but I'm not particularly in need of it. I didn't even install omnisphere on the little laptop I'm using most of the time these days.

The upgrade is almost the same price I paid for v2 to begin with... Still a very handy tool and real MPE will be great to have especially for scoring jobs which are almost the only time I use Omni.

[noiseboyuk]

Does all the sample data have to be redownload when updating or is the new stuff just added in?

It sounds like this will be a complete re-install as they've optimised the sample format to take less space. Same footprint, it will presumably overwrite the existing STEAM data.

[_leras]

It’s a similar price to upgrading a DAW

Its a similar price to buying a DAW...

[IvyBirds]

So, what your thoughts about Omnisphere Fxs? Seems that in version 3 they was update the quality. And maybe Fxs fack is a really good bonus and one of the reason to update version 2 to version 3.

The FX are top notch just having them in stand alone form that can be run by itself and process anything is worth $199 to me without all the other upgrades

Especially the reverbs

Thanks. Interesting, how about compressors?

There are 3 new additions:
LA-2A, 1176 and Fairchild (I think). It'll be interesting how good they are but judging by their effects so far I think they will be great as well.

It's true. I am also very interesting how good they are. Just one thing - the interface of them are small compare to normal fxs...

Small? This is the new LA-2A compressor in Omnisphere

Screenshot_20251018-082638.jpg

Here is the UAD version which I own

Screenshot_20251018-082822.jpg

The Waves version and many others look pretty .much exactly the same as they feel the need to recreate the look of the hardware on the screen and waste so much screen real estate doing it

I much prefer the Spectrasonics approach that allows you to have more options and control rather than waste screen space recreating old hardware onscreen

And of course all of those controls are just an easy right click away from being mapped to your controller

[jbraner]

Does all the sample data have to be redownload when updating or is the new stuff just added in?

It sounds like this will be a complete re-install as they've optimised the sample format to take less space. Same footprint, it will presumably overwrite the existing STEAM data.

That's OK - it's better than having separate installs for ver 2 and ver 3

[fisherKing]

…it’s like upgrading a DAW level pricing.

Sorry, dumb Logic user here. What do these words even mean?

Yeah, for you it‘s each 4 years a new dongle-Macbook to stay on the latest version. That makes Omnisphere and other DAWs really look like a bargain.

what does that mean? what's a dongle? but logic does run on a macbook, yes.

(i know what a dongle is, but haven't seen on in a decade or more, in my iLok era).

[Vocalpoint Studios]

Perhaps if you don’t already have lots of good fx, but $199 for an upgrade certainly isn’t a bargain…

I guess it all comes down to what you consider a bargain.

For some of us - $199.00 is a steal. Especially from these guys.

VP

[Echoes in the Attic]

199 is actually a good price if you compare to sample based libraries for things like kontakt.

if they sold the FX Rack alone, 99 would be a good price. And then imagine what 99 gets you for a kontakt sample library - probably less then all the new instruments.

[IvyBirds]

Perhaps if you don’t already have lots of good fx, but $199 for an upgrade certainly isn’t a bargain…

I guess it all comes down to what you consider a bargain.

For some of us - $199.00 is a steal. Especially from these guys.

VP

When you consider what you get by upgrading to version 3, and then realize it costs less than a semi decent dinner out with the wife Omnisphere 3 is a bargain

[Teksonik]

I've always wanted to add Omnisphere to my collection but every time I see the list price I think of other things I could better spend the money on like upgrades to studio hardware, etc.

The fact there is no demo is not helping although I understand the reason why there isn't one. I once went to one of the local Guitar Centers in Vegas and while they did have an Omni demo set up it wasn't working and none of the staff could figure out why.

I assume there is a money back guarantee if not satisfied? I didn't see anything about it in their FAQs.

I also assume the sample content can be installed on a D: drive rather than on the OS drive.

Oh well, at any rate given the current economic condition in my country I can't justify the purchase at this time but perhaps early next year.

Omnisphere really is a synth built to my specifications, sample based, multi-layered etc. Some day she will be mine.

[cryophonik]

I also assume the sample content can be installed on a D: drive rather than on the OS drive.

Yes, you can specify a custom library installation path. Not sure about a money-back guarantee, though.

[zerocrossing]

Perhaps if you don’t already have lots of good fx, but $199 for an upgrade certainly isn’t a bargain…

I guess it all comes down to what you consider a bargain.

For some of us - $199.00 is a steal. Especially from these guys.

VP

When you consider what you get by upgrading to version 3, and then realize it costs less than a semi decent dinner out with the wife Omnisphere 3 is a bargain

...and a lot of that nice dinner just ends up as poop, though a lot of people might consider my random synth meanderings pretty similar.

[hebex]

BTW. I got my coding-whizz son to do a quick analysis of the patches based on the library info on the website. The answer is - of the 26,421 new patches, there are 13,915 unique names.

That includes the 9,242 remastered legacy patches. So the total number of unique brand new patches is...

4,673.

And honestly, I'm not complaining. Far from it, that's an absolutely insane number of brand new patches from top designers. Imagine what it would cost from someone like The Unfinished - never mind all the brand new features. It's a steal.

I think for anyone that uses patches, it's going to take a while to get used to always starting with one of the 18 new directories (or legacy / third party). It's actually quite a big conceptual leap. I think there's going to be big plusses in patch discovery, but not easily being able to search multiple areas for a particular Type, or factory plus third party, could be minuses. I know there's still a search ALL button, but I think that will now be pretty overwhelming and messy.

Hmm, the sonic extension Undercurrent alone has 2000 sounds. If the real number of new Omnisphere 3 sounds is 4573 is correct, then that´s of course for expectations good to know.

[bmanic]

I was planning to upgrade anyway, but I agree that the FX rack makes the upgrade cost an absolute bargain.

u

Perhaps if you don’t already have lots of good fx, but $199 for an upgrade certainly isn’t a bargain… it’s like upgrading a DAW level pricing. There’s some very nice additions but the core synth engine and UX hasn’t evolved a great deal in v3, outside of performance and a few extras.

imo, this upgrade is so much better than the upgrade from v1 to v2. It's also 50 quid cheaper, and that's before taking into account the 10 years worth of inflation

Yeah plus 2.5 was a free update. I was just pointing out it wasn’t a bargain at $199 — which is what was being asserted — perhaps if it had some additional sound engines plus a new intuitive modulation system, but those are largely undeveloped.

I’ll likely upgrade at some point, it’s just not a critical part of my workflow and 2.8 with Keyscape is still great.

.. well you ARE getting thousands of new sound sources and up to 4k+ new presets. And the synthesis engine is a bit more flexible now that all LFOs and Envelopes can be polyphonic (this was confirmed by Spectrasonics themselves in a youtube comment).

But I do agree, taken as a whole, the upgrade is indeed expensive.. but so is the software itself. It has never really become cheaper except if you count inflation. It's the exact same price as it was more than 10 years ago.

EDIT:

I still see a lot of people missing a crucial point with Omnisphere. I always think of it as a beefed up Roland JV-1080/2080/5080/Integra type of system. It has a very straight forward 4 layer system with modest synthesis capabilities and a HUGE absolutely amazing library of recorded sound sources (audio samples) that are expertly looped, mapped and ready to go instantly.

It's an amazing system for quickly turning out really complex custom sounds without having to dwell all that deep into synthesis and the nitty gritty. It also makes it extremely easy to very quickly completely change the tonality and direction of a preset, simply by swapping out the underlying sound sources to something completely different. Basically what the mutator does now in v3.

This kind of quick and instant access to so many high quality sound samples is simply not available anywhere else. There are no Kontakt instruments with this vast of a sound library and the whole system itself isn't nearly as quick and easy to use. UVI has nothing like this either (though I've been asking them to create it for Falcon since forever.. still boggles my mind that they don't understand that they could directly compete with Spectrasonics if they leveraged their vast library of sample material.. but as always with UVI, usability and accessibility are concepts that just doesn't exist in that company).

Omnisphere as a concept and as a product is completely unique, both in terms of hardware and software.

I tried to showcase this with an audio example I made a few years ago. It's a 32 minute file that I recorded live (about 2 hours worth of live noodling with a keyboard) and then spliced together so that it'd be short 10 to 20 second clips with unique sounds. ALL sounds you hear in that demo are sound sources only. Single layer/oscillator. No effects, no synthesis, no filters, nothing. Just the raw sound sources. And I went through maybe 0.1% of the sound sources available in Omnisphere 2. Think about that for a second..