Omnisphere 3

[IvyBirds]

I have a question to O3 users. How is plugin opening time?

Lets say you add the plugin, close the GUI and open it again. Is it as fast as lets say Sylenth1/Dune 3/Obsession/Current ect or slugish like Massive X?

On Windows 11, it opens fast enough that I didn't really think about it.

I know for a fact that many people arent bothered by Massive X slugishness and say the same therefore i asked how fast is compared to that synth

Yet I don't use Massive X anymore because it's slow to load, same goes for Roland Zenology

So when I say I didn't notice slow load times, that means it's not noticeable

[Lbdunequest]

I have a question to O3 users. How is plugin opening time?

Lets say you add the plugin, close the GUI and open it again. Is it as fast as lets say Sylenth1/Dune 3/Obsession/Current ect or slugish like Massive X?

On Windows 11, it opens fast enough that I didn't really think about it.

I know for a fact that many people arent bothered by Massive X slugishness and say the same therefore i asked how fast is compared to that synth

Yet I don't use Massive X anymore because it's slow to load, same goes for Roland Zenology

So when I say I didn't notice slow load times, that means it's not noticeable

Awesome to hear! Thank you

[Arp_]

What really baffles me - it has all the pieces of a great synth. The new filters in Omnisphere 3 are absolutely incredible. Lots of oscillator options, really great synth samples to use as oscillator, etc.

But for some reason, controls and signal routing is designed to be as useless as possible. You can have two filters on one osc, but you cannot have two oscs going into one filter. The controls are layed out like... imagine if you have a hardware synth randomly cut into pieces which are put in different rooms in a huge house. So you move filter cutoff a bit, then you go upstairs and to the end of the corridor to change attack time, then you go back and go down into the basement to change osc detuning, etc. It's horrible. It has a modern GUI but it's harder to make synth sounds than a 90's rompler with tiny screen and a labyrinth of menu diving.

Unfortunately, despite all its capabilities, it's just a great preset machine for me.

[Echoes in the Attic]

What really baffles me - it has all the pieces of a great synth. The new filters in Omnisphere 3 are absolutely incredible. Lots of oscillator options, really great synth samples to use as oscillator, etc.

But for some reason, controls and signal routing is designed to be as useless as possible. You can have two filters on one osc, but you cannot have two oscs going into one filter. The controls are layed out like... imagine if you have a hardware synth randomly cut into pieces which are put in different rooms in a huge house. So you move filter cutoff a bit, then you go upstairs and to the end of the corridor to change attack time, then you go back and go down into the basement to change osc detuning, etc. It's horrible. It has a modern GUI but it's harder to make synth sounds than a 90's rompler with tiny screen and a labyrinth of menu diving.

Unfortunately, despite all its capabilities, it's just a great preset machine for me.

You can have multiple oscs going through one filter. Just change the "Signal Path" setting on the main page from Independent to Shared.

You're right that it is extremely tabbed. They actually used to do it better where you can see some important osc controls without zooming in, like the filters, but removed those and now you need to zoom into the oscs to do anything. It's a shame because the plugin UI has space for at least those important osc controls to be visible.

[IvyBirds]

What really baffles me - it has all the pieces of a great synth. The new filters in Omnisphere 3 are absolutely incredible. Lots of oscillator options, really great synth samples to use as oscillator, etc.

But for some reason, controls and signal routing is designed to be as useless as possible. You can have two filters on one osc, but you cannot have two oscs going into one filter. The controls are layed out like... imagine if you have a hardware synth randomly cut into pieces which are put in different rooms in a huge house. So you move filter cutoff a bit, then you go upstairs and to the end of the corridor to change attack time, then you go back and go down into the basement to change osc detuning, etc. It's horrible. It has a modern GUI but it's harder to make synth sounds than a 90's rompler with tiny screen and a labyrinth of menu diving.

Unfortunately, despite all its capabilities, it's just a great preset machine for me.

On the main page all you have to do is engage the "Shared" option on the Signal Path button

If you do that all four layers/oscillators will have the signal path of Layer A. So you simply set up whatever filter options you want on layer A and if the shared signal path is engaged it will be assigned to all the layers

The handy thing with this is if shared is engaged the controls for things like the filter can be used on any of the layers and it will change all of them as they are all linked

If you are going to assign any modulations, DAW Automation, or MIDI learns you need to assign them to layer A however

The alternative to the shared signal path, is the independent signal path where each layer has its own signal path including the filters

It's really easy and simple to use

[Voxon]

I’ve had some issues saving FX settings running Omnisphere 3 in Logic Pro. Not sure full extent of the problem though - some FX changes seem to save, others don’t. Saving patches seems to work fine, it’s just the FX. Has anyone else come across this, and have any workarounds? Thanks.

[bmanic]

So, I got Omnisphere 3 upgrade as a Christmas gift from my lovely wife! Here are some thoughts.

The new effects:

The new effects are a huge mixed bag of great to awful. Most of the new compressors are ridiculously bad sounding. They try to be all kinds of authentic but fail miserably. They are AWFUL in terms of emulations. The only one I thought was even remotely in the ballpark was the LA-2A but even that one is still off by miles. The SSL bus compressor has some distant similarities to the real deal but the release curve and behavior is just plain wrong in the auto mode. The "fairchild" variants US, UK and EU are hilarious.

Then again, as simple creative effects for experimentation they are okay but definitely a complete waste of space in the stand-alone FX plugin for actual mixing, unless you are purposefully going for a really badly emulated sound.

Same goes for the various vintage EQ options. They range from "Are you f**king serious?" to "I can sort of see what they are trying to go for.."


EDIT: -----------------------------------------------------

I might be wrong about this too! Initial investigation does show that at least the Fairchild emulation is actually Overloud's GEM 670. With extreme settings I was able to match exactly the settings both in the GEM plugin and Omnisphere version, nulled down to -56dBFS which is practically identical. Residual signal was clean so it could probably have been nulled even more with careful gain tuning.

Knob scaling and internal gain staging is probably what causes most of the compressors to sound choked and over saturated. I suspect they may sound much better if the incoming signal is much lower. Also because the knob ranges seem to be tweaked, the "goldilocks" zone will be at different positions to the actual GEM plugins.. and because the GR metering responds and looks completely different it can be hard to go with the settings you are used to. But if indeed these are all GEM plugins then we know for a fact that they are absolutely capable of stellar results. A good place to start is most likely setting input levels to much lower values from the get-go and compensating at the output.
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Both the delay and reverb categories are excellent. So are the modulation effects.

Notable missing effects are sample rate reduction and bit crushing. I was really hoping that they'd add these. Glaring omissions in my opinion. Yes, you do have lo-fi effect possibilities in the oscillator section itself but that's not the same thing at all. I want to add bitcrushing to my reverb tails and delays.. and then modulate the heck out of it.

EDIT: I was wrong! There's the Toxic Smasher effect in the distortion folder which is an awesome bit crusher!


The new filters:

For the most part, decent. Still no properly self-oscillating filters. Still impossible to do 100% reliable keyboard tracking. The old Power Filter (aka ImpOscar 2.0 filter) is still in a league of it's own in my opinion. Some youtubers have been acting like Omnisphere 3 now has filters that rival U-He synths and the like but that is ridiculously far from the truth. They are "ok". Acceptable in 2025 but definitely nothing special at all.

What annoys me the most about the filter is that there is no way to modulate the saturation amount or even the pre or post gain. This is stupid. Basically the saturation amount of the filter is a set and forget thing. No way to make it dynamic or organic with your playing style.. or keyboard tracked. This is a huge missed opportunity and I really hope at least the pre and post gain controls become modulation targets at some point in the future.


The UI:

Could be much better but it's not horrible. The new, slightly updated look, is refreshing yet still very familiar. The early 00's look is somewhat gone but unfortunately the archaic control ranges and lack of mouse resolution over knobs is still stuck in that era. Cutoff knob and a bunch of others still have clear stepping when operated manually.. yet it's perfectly smoothed when modulated through modwheel or other mod sources. This is simply lazy and not at all acceptable in 2025 in my opinion. I'd also like knobs and sliders that behave like the ones in FabFilter plugins and many others, where you have proper well tuned mouse acceleration.. meaning when you move your mouse slowly, you get very fine values with high precision. Move it fast and the range that moves is much coarser.


Those are my first impressions. Haven't had time to explore the new sample content nor the new presets yet. Basically the 3.0 update feels barely like a major update in terms of synthesis power and UI tweaks.. how it sounds and operates hasn't deviated a lot from version 2.0.

Is it worth the update? For me, yes. Omnisphere is one of my most used plugins so to me just the new sample content alone is worth the upgrade. And I'll gladly take all the new filters and effects, even though I was expecting a bit better quality than what was delivered.

A true 3.0 upgrade in my opinion would have had a completely overhauled and more up to date modulation matrix. It's still the same old system that isn't all that capable nor deep. It's where it's always been at. Then again, on the positive side, the CPU footprint of relatively large presets is still quite low.. as long as you don't go pressing that "ultra" button on various FX that does absolutely nothing to save them from still sounding hilariously broken (vintage component modeled effects my ass! L O L).

Anyhow, will be playing with my new toy over the holiday weekend and probably post more opinions once I've familiarized myself a bit with the new features.

[cryophonik]

Damn, I hope your wife doesn’t read that and feel bad for buying you such an awful Christmas gift.

[enCiphered]

Yeah, that’s a remarkably confident verdict for a first impression. Either Spectrasonics slipped up or the eggnog is hitting with zero-latency.

[IvyBirds]

So, I got Omnisphere 3 upgrade as a Christmas gift from my lovely wife! Here are some thoughts.

The new effects:

The new effects are a huge mixed bag of great to awful........Same goes for the various vintage EQ options. They range from "Are you f**king serious?" to "I can sort of see what they are trying to go for..Notable missing effects are sample rate reduction and bit crushing. I was really hoping that they'd add these.

It's simple really if you don't like them don't use them. And if you really need a bit crusher there are tons of options you can use outside of Omnisphere

[bmanic]

Damn, I hope your wife doesn’t read that and feel bad for buying you such an awful Christmas gift.

Haha.. nah it's just the typical initial hype that got me a bit over excited. Now having explored most of the new stuff it's obvious yet again that one can't trust youtube sources for any real information. But I knew what I was getting into. I had a gut feeling the hype was too good to be true.

Don't get me wrong, none of the new features (except the abysmal compressor emulations) are "bad" per say but they are definitely not "world class" in any way shape or form. And I just discovered the nice OB State variable filter in the specialty folder. That one is pretty nice!

I'm just glad we now finally have polyphonic toggles for all LFOs and Mod Envelopes. That + the new sample content is more than enough for me to justify the update.

[bmanic]

It's simple really if you don't like them don't use them. And if you really need a bit crusher there are tons of options you can use outside of Omnisphere

Yeah, I'm not planning on using the compressors for mixing, as I already stated. Neither the EQs, as already stated. I do however plan on using them for lo-fi / experimental lets-see-what-happens type of effects within the synth itself.. as already eluded to.

As for the bitcrusher / sample rate reduction, sure you can add it afterwards but you know the obvious bit.. it ain't the same. I like modulating the stuff within Omnisphere.

Anyhow, Spectrasonics have been excellent with feedback and adding things in updates so I'm sure it'll get a lot of new things over the next decade.

[jobinho]

So, I got Omnisphere 3 upgrade as a Christmas gift from my lovely wife! Here are some thoughts.

Looks like a nice update but 200 dollars nice? I'm still not sold. It'll probably be worth it as Spectrasonics roll out more updates like they did with v2, just wish it was a bit less boomer / 2000's UX, interface wise.

[jobinho]

delete

[db3]

The new effects are a huge mixed bag of great to awful. Most of the new compressors are ridiculously bad sounding. They try to be all kinds of authentic but fail miserably. They are AWFUL in terms of emulations.

I thought the comps were largely licensed from Overloud who are generally well received.