Omnisphere 3

[pchase]

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.

There are crush and reduce controls in the Toxic Smasher effect, isn't that a bitcrusher?

[Echoes in the Attic]

In addition to toxic smasher, flame distortion has bit crushing. Plus there is per voice bit crushing at the oscillator level. How much bit crushing does a synth need?!

[JasonSpatola]

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.

Yah! I think they are very good, but I also don't have the original hardware to compare it to. The controls seem to work as advertised though, so no complaints from me.

[bmanic]

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.

If that is true, it's absolutely mind boggling how bad they sound. I have some of the Overloud compressors and they sound and behave nothing like the ones in Omnisphere 3. Especially the Fairchild (at least I assume that's the one it's supposed to be) is just plain broken sounding. I think it's the UK version that distorts really badly on almost anything at any settings.. and the frequency response is so comically skewed in different directions that it's more like a stomp box pedal type of deal than a pristine high-end ultra high quality compressor.


EDIT: I just tried matching the Overloud GEM 670 to the version in Omnisphere and I can get really close! I think you are right, these are GEM plugins within Omnisphere, which would make me completely wrong because generally I really like the Overloud GEM plugins and own a bunch of them.

I think I figured out what is "wrong" with them. They are internally _very much over the top_ gain staged. Stereo Link also seems to be enabled on all of them whereas on the GEM plugins, if I remember correctly, stereo link defaults to off.

By setting all the knobs to the extremes (so either fully left or right) I was able to match the GEM 670 "London" Fairchild model to the 1950's UK model in Omnisphere down to about -56dBFS. It took some work and I did manage to get it sounding virtually identical. However the knob positions do not seem to closely match, it's like the scaling is different and overall the gain staging within the plugin itself is much hotter levels than in the GEM plugin. This is why it so quickly distorts and skews the frequency response. If the incoming signal is much lower volume, it starts working much more predictably.

Perhaps it's just a gain staging issue and knob scaling issue. I'll investigate.

In general, if these are indeed the GEM plugins they should be capable of producing really good results.

[bmanic]

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.

There are crush and reduce controls in the Toxic Smasher effect, isn't that a bitcrusher?

Ah shoot!

You are 100% correct! I totally missed it. It's excellent! Exactly what I was looking for.

Awesome!! Edited original post to correct my ignorant mistake. Thanks for the heads up!

[JasonSpatola]

I have some of the Overloud compressors

Is Overloud COMP670 one of 'em? If so... Does the Omnisphere one sound different in standalone mode?

[bmanic]

I have some of the Overloud compressors

Is Overloud COMP670 one of 'em? If so... Does the Omnisphere one sound different in standalone mode?

I edited my previous post as I did some comprehensive A/B testing right now. Details there.. but yes, in short it's most definitely the Overloud GEM Comp670 but internally in Omnisphere it's gain staging seems to be completely different and the knob ranges seem to have been tweaked. I managed to match them down to -56dBFS with various knobs in their extreme positions (just to make sure I have exactly the same settings on both plugins).

The reason the Omnisphere version distorts so easily is that it's internally set to be extremely hot at it's default settings.

I'll investigate and see if this is the case with the other compressors as well. If these are indeed the GEM suite of models, they should be really good as Overloud usually know what they are doing when it comes to component modeling and such. Perhaps the whole issue in general that I have with them is a simple case of everything being blasted at too high levels.

[JasonSpatola]

How bizarre!!

Hahaha, I started going down a rabbit hole with this and noticed you're in a huge intro thread from when COMP670 was released.

https://gearspace.com/board/new-product ... ginal.html

[bmanic]

Been going through a bunch of the new presets, mainly to see how the new effects are being utilized and I just have to marvel at the skill of the Spectrasonics sound design team. Many of the presets and the sample content itself is just amazingly creative and recorded at a silly level of detail.

THIS is what makes Omnisphere so worth the money. It's a quite capable synth in itself but as a box that inspires you to play and loose yourself in a dream world of sound, it's pretty much unmatched.. software or hardware. An amazing piece of musical marvel!

[db3]

NB: I don't think it's just the Overloud comps — looks like elements of Modula, Tapedesk, and Echoson are in there. Perhaps others.

[IvyBirds]

I have some of the Overloud compressors

Is Overloud COMP670 one of 'em? If so... Does the Omnisphere one sound different in standalone mode?

Yes the "Tube Limiter" in Omnisphere 3 is identical to the Comp670. It's the Fairchild 670 Emulation

All of the new compressors sound amazing are identical to the Overloud ones. The upgrade price from version 2 to version 3 actually costs less than buying them from Overloud even if you get the bundle, and it's more than just the compressors from Overloud

Since you can run them in the new stand alone Effects plugin that makes everything a real bargain

The SSL compressor based on the SSL 4000 G is my favorite

Running that ahead of the new reverbs in the stand alone effects plugin sounds amazing on a mix bus for just about anything but especially drums and vocals

[billinder33]

I have some of the Overloud compressors

Is Overloud COMP670 one of 'em? If so... Does the Omnisphere one sound different in standalone mode?

I edited my previous post as I did some comprehensive A/B testing right now. Details there.. but yes, in short it's most definitely the Overloud GEM Comp670 but internally in Omnisphere it's gain staging seems to be completely different and the knob ranges seem to have been tweaked. I managed to match them down to -56dBFS with various knobs in their extreme positions (just to make sure I have exactly the same settings on both plugins).

The reason the Omnisphere version distorts so easily is that it's internally set to be extremely hot at it's default settings.

I'll investigate and see if this is the case with the other compressors as well. If these are indeed the GEM suite of models, they should be really good as Overloud usually know what they are doing when it comes to component modeling and such. Perhaps the whole issue in general that I have with them is a simple case of everything being blasted at too high levels.

I have no experience with the Overloud compressors, but a truly authentic vintage compressor emulation should be expecting -18dbfs on the way in, but since practically no one born after 1980 understands this, a lot of plugins tolerate hotter intake to prevent over distorting. Most sound designers will be coming out of the osc section and into an FX rack much hotter than -18.

If Spectra just dropped the code directly into Omni without any internal gain adjustments, that would explain your experience with it. How does it test as just a standalone FX rack inserted on a source where you'd normally use the Overlouds?

[bmanic]

I have no experience with the Overloud compressors, but a truly authentic vintage compressor emulation should be expecting -18dbfs on the way in,

Actually, it's not even that simple. -18dBFS in the digital domain can translate to wildly different outgoing volume levels. It's completely dependent on your audio interface how loud it goes out. It's got somewhat standardized in the plugin domain to -18dBFS but I suspect that's the influence of Acustica Audio as that was traditionally what the dynamic sampling for Nebula required as headroom.. and at -18dBFS it would translate to about +4dBu and at those levels, most high-end tube systems are barely driven at all.. though again, it depends on the design.

But yeah, it's all semantics at this point.

What I have learned yesterday is that many of the emulated effects do sound a LOT better when sticking with much lower input levels. You can actually prevent the Neve wannabe thing from audibly distorting most signals, as long as you set the input drive to it's minimum (-15dB) and compensate on the output.

It's a pity though that the internal gain staging is set to such hot levels.. but then again, having these hot levels allows for much easier distortion experimentation and possibly was a decision by the Omnisphere team so as to make modulation of these levels easier to access the full range of saturation, all the way into severe soft clipping.

[billinder33]

It's a pity though that the internal gain staging is set to such hot levels.. but then again, having these hot levels allows for much easier distortion experimentation and possibly was a decision by the Omnisphere team so as to make modulation of these levels easier to access the full range of saturation, all the way into severe soft clipping.

They should have added a 'normalize gain' button on these emulation FX that automatically drops the gain at input and raises it by the same amount at output. I mostly avoid emulations but on those rare occasions I'll do a similar thing using 2 instances of Bitwig's Tool utility, one in front and one in back.

[IvyBirds]

It's a pity though that the internal gain staging is set to such hot levels.. but then again, having these hot levels allows for much easier distortion experimentation and possibly was a decision by the Omnisphere team so as to make modulation of these levels easier to access the full range of saturation, all the way into severe soft clipping.

I think the decision for hot gain staging was made very long ago with Spectrasonics Atmosphere so the filters could run hot. Since then they have kept it that way because backwards compatibility has always been important and the old UVI filters from Atmosphere still exist in the software

I think with the new Version 3 effects they just dropped in plugins that were looking for less hot inputs without any modifications. That's awesome for use the stand alone effects plugin but can cause issues with some of the presets