Omnisphere 3

[Echoes in the Attic]

I used to think it was weird they counted sound sources and presets as “sounds”. Now they count the same preset multiple times as a different sound?

I don’t understand why you’d want the same sound returned multiple times. Have they not heard of tags?

[LoveEnigma18]

The new Browser is what I am looking forward to trying out too.

I wonder if Spectrasonics will do more Sonic Extensions or the future will be genre-focused preset expansions like everyone else does these days and similar to what they did with Omnisphere 3. I must say that the new library they added in Omnisphere 3 is incredible (at least for the sheer number of presets) and it itself might be worth an upgrade for many, including myself.

One thing on the number of presets - it IS incredible, but don't be fooled by those headline numbers.

It claims that the new patch libraries contain 26,421 patches. Well kinda - technically yes, but these are not all unique patches.

I picked one patch at random - Dolby's Guitaret. It is s counted no less than 7 times, appearing in:

Ambient Dreams - Synths
Electronic Underground - Synths
Experimental Organic - Textures
Retro Vibes - Synths
Scoring Electronic - Synths
Warm Tones - Synths
Omnisphere Library - Retroland (legacy version)

So how many patches are unique? I set my coding-genius son to it, and based on the information on the Spectrasonics website, there are 13,915 unique patch names. Still a ton of new patches though, right? Well... not exactly. 9,242 of those patches are remastered legacy ones. So for unique totally new patches, the final number is 4,673.

Now that IS still a lot of patches. If you just want new quality patches, the cost of the upgrade easily worth it - when I compared with The Unfinished's bundle of all Omni libraries (he's excellent), it's about 1/4 of the cost (never mind the rest of the synth's improvements). But in truth it is only 18% of the claimed 26,421.

Thanks for the insight! Well, if that's the case, I think it is a strange representation of the count, because I think each "library" (not "category") is supposed to have unique patch names/sound presets (even though it may be reusing the relatively limited soundsources) and there are 18 new factory libraries.

Either way, that indeed doesn't deter me from upgrading. There's a significant content being added and lots of new useful features, for example, Mutate.

Hopefully, it will all work in our favour when we eventually get our hands on it.

[noiseboyuk]

I used to think it was weird they counted sound sources and presets as “sounds”. Now they count the same preset multiple times as a different sound?

I don’t understand why you’d want the same sound returned multiple times. Have they not heard of tags?

It's possible that they will put a filter on the Search All / Search Spectrasonics so it only returns 1 result for each patch regardless of how many times it appears in the library. Hopefully so, we wait and see. But the patches are certainly counted multiple times in their documentation, seemingly to get those headline numbers super-high.

The more I think it about, the more the new arrangement feels quite unsatisfactory. I'm biased, I helped create OmniTag so it was possible to search everything in one it in a very clean and unified way. I don't see how that will be possible now even just for all the Spectrasonics patches, let alone 3rd party.

[zvenx]

I was witness to a discussion on vi-control a few years ago between Hans Z and Eric. I had asked Hans why he doesn't use Omnisphere his response was, from memory, it just has too many patches. Eric volunteered to go to Remote Control and strip some of the patches off of Hans's install of Omniphere ( if I am remembering correctly).
I myself, though owning Omnisphere 1 and 2 from day one, probably haven't even played with 50% of the patches, cause it really is overwhelming for me.
My point is boosting the numbers by double counting, isn't always a positive for everyone.
rsp

[SLiC]

If there are more tan 1000 I will probably never hear them all!

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

I was witness to a discussion on vi-control a few years ago between Hans Z and Eric. I had asked Hans why he doesn't use Omnisphere his response was, from memory, it just has too many patches. Eric volunteered to go to Remote Control and strip some of the patches off of Hans's install of Omniphere ( if I am remembering correctly).
I myself, though owning Omnisphere 1 and 2 from day one, probably haven't even played with 50% of the patches, cause it really is overwhelming for me.
My point is boosting the numbers by double counting, isn't always a positive for everyone.
rsp

I stayed with Omni 1 till about 3 years ago. It was only because it became a pretty (Mac) OS-incompatible mess that I felt compelled to upgrade.

Even Atmosphere's original 2000(?) were already pretty close to sufficient.

[zvenx]

Here is the discussion, if anyone is interested. (I can't believe that is 13 years ago.. where has time gone!!)

https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... st-3656706
and
https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... st-3656899
rsp

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I"m certain I'll upgrade, but my beef with Omni was always the browser/tagging. Seems like another "mistake" they made, IMO, was over-categorization. It's like an AI went wild categorizing the presets as granularly as possible without understanding how humans interact with musical tools. Except, this was done by actual humans!

Do I need 20 sub-types for "Bells"? No! Do I need 20 for "Bowed things"? Also a big no! Every time I see that "Type" column in the browser, I ask myself what lunatic THAT level of categorization was helpful? Some of those have 1 preset in them! One! You created a "Distorted Octaves" Tag, for one preset called "Distorted Magma"! That's insane. That whole "Type" tag level is entirely unnecessary IMO. I get what they were trying to do by allowing users to home in on a specific type of sound, but they tried too hard.

So if they cleaned that up, that would certainly have been worthwhile.

[noiseboyuk]

Here is the discussion, if anyone is interested. (I can't believe that is 13 years ago.. where has time gone!!)

https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... st-3656706
and
https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... st-3656899
rsp

Ooooh I got a misspelled namecheck from Hans in 2012!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Ooooh I got a misspelled namecheck from Hans in 2012!

I think you mean Hanz. Hanz Simmer.

[IvyBirds]

I think people are jumping to a lot of conclusions, based on incorrect assumptions tied to their own confirmation bias, all on a product that is not released yet and that they have never used

Having watched all of the official videos that feature Eric and after reading the bulk of the manual, I have a different take

First off there is A LOT of misunderstanding of what they legacy library is and a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the fact that the same patch name is being used in the legacy patches as in the new ones.

If you want to use a legacy patch with the legacy version 2 effects they are there. If you want to use the legacy browser and tag system you can still do that also

If you have Trilion and Keyscape installed you will still have all of those patches with the original effects

This was done to ensure pure backwards compatibility with older projects. So if you have a project that uses version 2 it will sound the same in version 3

What they did do was "remaster" as they call it the legacy patches, I wish they didn't use that term because in Audio Production "remaster" has a different connotation

Anyway by remastering they mean they took the original samples used in the legacy patches and rebuilt the patch using the new effects and tools inside of the new Omnisphere 3. So while a patch with a given name may exist in both the legacy library and the new library they are different

Most users unless you are dealing with a legacy project that used version 2 will never have any use for the Legacy library. It only exists for backwards compatibility. If you are just searching for a new preset sound there is no need it reason to use the Legacy library at all you would just use the new one

The factory library also has a bunch of categories by default. And the same patch can exist in multiple categories this makes it easier not more complex. Let's say you want an Ambient style pad. And you look in the Ambient Dreams category. It might list a pad sound that would also be appropriate to have in the Organic Textures and might also be appropriate to have in a few more categories

But when you do a search all, those filters are gone and you just searching all where each patch will only appear once, as your search is expanded and not just limited to a single type

I think it would be wise to just wait a few days until the plugin is actually out, and we have ACTUALLY used it before we make any kind of assumptions about how good or bad it is

Most certainly at the end of the day if you have already decided something you have never used is going to suck and have already decided Omnisphere is bloated with to many patches/presets nothing Eric and the Spectrasonics team could have possibly done would ever get you to drop that confirmation bias, so you may as well just stick with simpler synths that have far less options as that would seem to be your comfort zone

For the rest of us, all of our legacy patches from version 2 will still be there exactly as they have been before if we choose to use them, if however we want to explore new versions of them made with enhanced tools and effects which are the reason we upgraded to version 3 anyway we can just ignore them in their legacy state

It actually makes sense that they didn't give reworked legacy patches new names. If you have familiarity with the legacy patches and you want to explore the new versions of them having them be the same name is a good thing rather than trying to figure out what they are if they had all new names. Like wise having every "remastered" patch based on a legacy one have to be called "cool pad sound Omnisphere 3 remastered version" would be a pain in the arse

It's far better just to have them in the legacy library which can either be ignored or chosen, and then again in the main Omnisphere 3 library

[trusampler]

If we pre-order now from JRR Shop, will we have access straight away to the same downloads once Spectrasonics opens up their servers? Or it it best to just order straight from Spectrasonics for the download option ?

[noiseboyuk]

If we pre-order now from JRR Shop, will we have access straight away to the same downloads once Spectrasonics opens up their servers? Or it it best to just order straight from Spectrasonics for the download option ?

Yes, once registered you access the same downloads.

[trusampler]

thanks for the reply

[noiseboyuk]

I think people are jumping to a lot of conclusions, based on incorrect assumptions tied to their own confirmation bias, all on a product that is not released yet and that they have never used

Most of this I agree with (though most of this discussion isn't anything to do with confirmation bias).

I'm pretty much with it all until this:

But when you do a search all, those filters are gone and you just searching all where each patch will only appear once, as your search is expanded and not just limited to a single type

Try as I might I can't make sense of this para. If you look on the website for my example patch Dolby's Guitaret, it will appear listed 7 times - 6 new directories and 1 legacy one. The 6 will be indentical to one another using new fx etc, the 7th is the original tags and fx.

So if All is indeed searching All and you search for the patch name, it will harvest 7 occurrences across all those directories. As I said, it remains to be seen if the search results are sharp enough to ignore 6 of them (or just have one remastered and one legacy version).

Most certainly at the end of the day if you have already decided something you have never used is going to suck and have already decided Omnisphere is bloated with to many patches/presets nothing Eric and the Spectrasonics team could have possibly done would ever get you to drop that confirmation bias, so you may as well just stick with simpler synths that have far less options as that would seem to be your comfort zone

That certainly doesn't apply to me and many others who have posted here. I humbly suggest this, in fact, IS confirmation bias, seeing any problem raised as that from a Spectrasonics-hating troll. I'm a huge Spectrasonics fan, Omni is my desert island synth. But its not perfect, and never has been. There are some fantastic new features in O3 I can't wait to try, and there are some major plusses in the new browser too. But there are also some problems - that's just how it is.