Omnisphere 3

[sellyoursoul]

Another similar synth you might want to look at is ReFX Nexus 5. It's a lot like Omnisphere in that it has a large sample library combined with virtual analog, wavetable, granular, etc. oscillators, but I find it a little easier to design in. It has the vibe of a hardware flagship workstation with a modern configuration UI.

Out of the box, it's not quite as heavy in the cinematic and lush layered sounds as Omnisphere. Instead Nexus' presets and sample libs are more focused on usable sounds for modern song production. I have both, but get way more use out of Nexus because I prefer it when sound designing. Plus it's out-of-the-box sounds are more aligned with the styles of music I write. I find a lot of Omni content sounds best in sparse arrangements, whereas Nexus content is easier to mix with other instruments. Both great synths though, but what's ideal for you will depend heavily on the styles of music you make.

Check out some videos on how editing is in the latest version 5 and compare it to editing in Omni and see what you like better. Just make sure it's newer video content, because the older versions of Nexus don't have latest editing capability.

Thanks. I'll give it a look (another synth with no demo!). I have only seen mentions of Nexus 5 in passing.

[HOTF]

Another similar synth you might want to look at is ReFX Nexus 5. It's a lot like Omnisphere in that it has a large sample library combined with virtual analog, wavetable, granular, etc. oscillators, but I find it a little easier to design in. It has the vibe of a hardware flagship workstation with a modern configuration UI.

Out of the box, it's not quite as heavy in the cinematic and lush layered sounds as Omnisphere. Instead Nexus' presets and sample libs are more focused on usable sounds for modern song production. I have both, but get way more use out of Nexus because I prefer it when sound designing. Plus it's out-of-the-box sounds are more aligned with the styles of music I write. I find a lot of Omni content sounds best in sparse arrangements, whereas Nexus content is easier to mix with other instruments. Both great synths though, but what's ideal for you will depend heavily on the styles of music you make.

Check out some videos on how editing is in the latest version 5 and compare it to editing in Omni and see what you like better. Just make sure it's newer video content, because the older versions of Nexus don't have latest editing capability.

Thanks. I'll give it a look (another synth with no demo!). I have only seen mentions of Nexus 5 in passing.

Ewww no nexus is gross.

[sellyoursoul]

Ewww no nexus is gross.

Well, go on...

[HOTF]

Ewww no nexus is gross.

Well, go on...

Only joking - kind of. The model of selling expansion card for 50$ a piece is not for me and also its heavily biased toward mainstream EDM wich is not my cup of tea.

[legendCNCD]

Agreed on the "patches tend to fill things up" nature of Omnisphere. I had the same impression from the Dune 3 demo, maybe due to the very wet nature of the patches but also because they tended to be layered and complex.

Usual route when choosing sound is to drop reverb and delay off from Omni, and use external one, also to be able to sidechain properly them if needed. 95% of time its external effects for those two. Sometimes "its in the sound" and works on the track.

Now with 3 one can use them outside the synth and sidechain them too. Nice.

[sellyoursoul]

Only joking - kind of. The model of selling expansion card for 50$ a piece is not for me and also its heavily biased toward mainstream EDM wich is not my cup of tea.

I'm seeing the same so far. I'll give it a better look just to make sure, but yea... I think Omni is going to be hard to beat. But I also have to determine whether the limited set of things that I want are within Omni (or Nexus...).

[billinder33]

Only joking - kind of. The model of selling expansion card for 50$ a piece is not for me and also its heavily biased toward mainstream EDM wich is not my cup of tea.

I'm seeing the same so far. I'll give it a better look just to make sure, but yea... I think Omni is going to be hard to beat. But I also have to determine whether the limited set of things that I want are within Omni (or Nexus...).

I disagree with HOTF's inference that you'll need to buy a bunch of $50 sound packs to get the value out of Nexus. The base install is ~5,500 presets and the massive sample lib is 70% the size of Omni's, and that's before you start considering the other engines (VA, wavetable, granular, etc.). Unless you are going to spend all day forever banging on presets, both synths are effectively endless.

The only reason I could see for acquiring additional packs for Nexus is if you want something specific like the guitar or cinematic packs (most producers would use Kontakt for these kind of sounds anyhow), or you want more sounds for a very specific genera of music like Afrohouse or Psytrance. Aside from that I think the whole "you'll always be buying sound packs" is way overblown. FWIW, ReFX was selling many of their older sound packs over the holidays for $5-$10 and I wasn't tempted at all.

IMO the main difference between these two devices is more about who you are and how you intend to use them. If you are a well-trained piano/keyboard player and want to let your fingers do the talking with the synth standing as the star in a mix where maybe you write a lot of cinematic, film scoring, ambient, or singer-songwriter type material, then Omnisphere is probably the right choice. It definitely shines as a player's instrument.

However, if you are more of a modern (70's and later) songwriter or EDM producer who pecks out melodies and basslines and needs them to fit between slamming drums and vocals, then IMO Nexus is a the better choice. I'm in the latter camp and I find Nexus a much more useful tool for that kind of work. ReFX's claim that Nexus' sounds are "mix ready" isn't just marketing. I find this to be very much reality in relation to Omnisphere, where most of the presets are dense, lush, guzzling up the whole frequency spectrum, and begging to be the star of the track.

And I can't understate how massively different the sound design interfaces are. If you intend to spend a lot of time editing, I would definitely spend time researching the differences to see which fits your style of editing. Again, just be sure you're comparing Nexus 5, because the older versions of Nexus were basically just romplers and not fully-featured sound design tools like v5.

[billinder33]

duple

[bmanic]

Agreed on the "patches tend to fill things up" nature of Omnisphere. I had the same impression from the Dune 3 demo, maybe due to the very wet nature of the patches but also because they tended to be layered and complex.

Usual route when choosing sound is to drop reverb and delay off from Omni, and use external one, also to be able to sidechain properly them if needed. 95% of time its external effects for those two. Sometimes "its in the sound" and works on the track.

Now with 3 one can use them outside the synth and sidechain them too. Nice.

Also in terms of mixing, getting things to fit, filters are your best friends here. Don't be afraid to remove things below 500Hz and above 3kHz or just keep the 3 to 8kHz range for some sizzle.. or just keep the 100 to 500Hz range for some body, etc.

This is why good "musical" filters are so in demand. Some filters just have an uncanny ability to "remove stuff" without it feeling removed. Though generally that means it's a rather gentle filter. My personal favorite in this category is the ones found in Curve Bender hardware, which was modeled very nicely by Softube.

Oh and don't forget to also experiment with narrowing the stereo image and then panning things. That's another typical problem when trying to fit a lot of huge synth sounds within a mix. Simply reducing the stereo width to almost mono can help immensely.

[IvyBirds]

Agreed on the "patches tend to fill things up" nature of Omnisphere. I had the same impression from the Dune 3 demo, maybe due to the very wet nature of the patches but also because they tended to be layered and complex.

Usual route when choosing sound is to drop reverb and delay off from Omni, and use external one, also to be able to sidechain properly them if needed. 95% of time its external effects for those two. Sometimes "its in the sound" and works on the track.

Now with 3 one can use them outside the synth and sidechain them too. Nice.

Also in terms of mixing, getting things to fit, filters are your best friends here. Don't be afraid to remove things below 500Hz and above 3kHz or just keep the 3 to 8kHz range for some sizzle.. or just keep the 100 to 500Hz range for some body, etc.

This is why good "musical" filters are so in demand. Some filters just have an uncanny ability to "remove stuff" without it feeling removed. Though generally that means it's a rather gentle filter. My personal favorite in this category is the ones found in Curve Bender hardware, which was modeled very nicely by Softube.

Oh and don't forget to also experiment with narrowing the stereo image and then panning things. That's another typical problem when trying to fit a lot of huge synth sounds within a mix. Simply reducing the stereo width to almost mono can help immensely.

Very good points, also to make this even better Omnisphere has the "Classic Tube Filter" that models the Plastic HLF-3C. It's a nice easy to use musical filter that you can insert in the effects rack with smooth LP and HP filters,

And the "Imager" which is just amazing which makes you to control the stereo image from mono all the way to enhanced super wide and everything in between and then be able to pan that in the stereo field, you can also swap the L/R channels and adjust the phase of them. This is just a super handy tool

Bonus tip (and the opposite of what we are talking about) place the Imager after one of the lush reverbs and crank up the width to 11 for room filling stereo

[sellyoursoul]

Agreed on the "patches tend to fill things up" nature of Omnisphere. I had the same impression from the Dune 3 demo, maybe due to the very wet nature of the patches but also because they tended to be layered and complex.

Usual route when choosing sound is to drop reverb and delay off from Omni, and use external one, also to be able to sidechain properly them if needed. 95% of time its external effects for those two. Sometimes "its in the sound" and works on the track.

Now with 3 one can use them outside the synth and sidechain them too. Nice.

Also in terms of mixing, getting things to fit, filters are your best friends here. Don't be afraid to remove things below 500Hz and above 3kHz or just keep the 3 to 8kHz range for some sizzle.. or just keep the 100 to 500Hz range for some body, etc.

This is why good "musical" filters are so in demand. Some filters just have an uncanny ability to "remove stuff" without it feeling removed. Though generally that means it's a rather gentle filter. My personal favorite in this category is the ones found in Curve Bender hardware, which was modeled very nicely by Softube.

Oh and don't forget to also experiment with narrowing the stereo image and then panning things. That's another typical problem when trying to fit a lot of huge synth sounds within a mix. Simply reducing the stereo width to almost mono can help immensely.

Very good points, also to make this even better Omnisphere has the "Classic Tube Filter" that models the Plastic HLF-3C. It's a nice easy to use musical filter that you can insert in the effects rack with smooth LP and HP filters,

And the "Imager" which is just amazing which makes you to control the stereo image from mono all the way to enhanced super wide and everything in between and then be able to pan that in the stereo field, you can also swap the L/R channels and adjust the phase of them. This is just a super handy tool

Bonus tip (and the opposite of what we are talking about) place the Imager after one of the lush reverbs and crank up the width to 11 for room filling stereo

I had a look over Nexus 5's manual, and it looks extensive enough in features. The UI looks like less paging than Omnisphere, and less clicking is always a good thing. I'm just not hearing any demos out there that aren't focused on EDM, not getting a good idea of what oscillators and filters are included and how they fair for getting classic analog and digital sounds, which is what I'm interested in Omnisphere for.

[smellypants]

[sellyoursoul]

Omnisphere seems to have that ground covered, but it would be good to hear some rawer examples for someone flipping through oscillators and filters and tweaking them.

[Grizzellda]

Hi folks,

I am sure Omnisphere 3 is great, I just recently made a post, asking if is ever offered at a reduced price. I wanna get it! It is somewhat expensive.

It should be available...native for Linux, how about it, Spectrasonics?

[BBFG#]

Check the minimum system requirements first. You may need to buy a new computer before buying Omni v3.

+1 on Linux Native.