Omnisphere - will it be worth the hype ?

[ehdyn]

Taking a wait and see approach.

They've developed their own engine this time around, and it's unknown how this will hold up compared to what's say Kontakt. Hard to imagine it will be flawless in the synthesis aspects.

The demo's seem interesting enough. Not sure why the UI has to be so fuggin' big that it blocks your DAW with vast swathes of blank panels.

Honestly, the smug factor of the Spectrasonics crew at past NAMM's was palpable.
Snarky attitudes that would be hard to justify under any circumstances.

[mellotronaut]

I am more in a less is more attitide these days. Anyway, the idea of a sample playback engine as a synth was never that attractive to me. A good compromise is imo Absynth. If I had not Absynth I would rather invest in this than in Omnisphere

Why do people keep referring to Omnisphere as a "playback engine" or ROMpler? It isn't. Its oscillators are capable of loading samples for normal playback, granular synthesis, or whatever you want, but it also has subtractive synthesis, FM, PWM, sync, ringmod, etc. In other words, it's capable of real DSP synthesis, among other things. It also has filters, LFOs, envelopes and all the other features you'd expect in any powerful synth.

If you're going to criticize something before its even out, maybe you should read up a bit about it first?

i said rompler/synth hybrid. A lot of the videos is about sampling special sounds and altering them in Omnisphere with filters, lfos, envelopes etc. It looks like a bombastified CronoX 3, vulgo: rompler/synth hybrid.

m

[Epiphany]

Categorically and without reservation, the answer is "yes".

Trilogy and Atmosphere still sound better, and sit better in my mixes, than any other library OR softsynth on the market (including my Nord Lead and Virus TI hardware-wise, fwiw.)

Move that sort of pedigree onto a 12x larger volume of sample data, genuine and interesting synthesis capabilities, 8 part multitimbrality, and a burning piano... sorry, this one is not even up for debate.

[LarryAW]

I am more in a less is more attitide these days. Anyway, the idea of a sample playback engine as a synth was never that attractive to me. A good compromise is imo Absynth. If I had not Absynth I would rather invest in this than in Omnisphere

Why do people keep referring to Omnisphere as a "playback engine" or ROMpler? It isn't. Its oscillators are capable of loading samples for normal playback, granular synthesis, or whatever you want, but it also has subtractive synthesis, FM, PWM, sync, ringmod, etc. In other words, it's capable of real DSP synthesis, among other things. It also has filters, LFOs, envelopes and all the other features you'd expect in any powerful synth.

If you're going to criticize something before its even out, maybe you should read up a bit about it first?

i said rompler/synth hybrid. A lot of the videos is about sampling special sounds and altering them in Omnisphere with filters, lfos, envelopes etc. It looks like a bombastified CronoX 3, vulgo: rompler/synth hybrid.

m

You get 50 GBs of the best of their award-winning sample libraries, 10x what Atmosphere had. Sample libraries are what they did before they starting making plug-ins. So, you get a lot of great samples to play around with at the start. That alone makes it worth it to upgrade from Atmosphere for me. Stylus RMX was very innovative when it came out and I'm betting Omnisphere won't be a typical ROMpler as you're expecting. Omnisphere is the start of their being plug-in makers only. I think Omnisphere is going to be far more than CronoX3, which I have. Where's CronoX3's Groove Lock, for example (arpeggiator - video 4). I can't seem to find it That's something else I'm looking forward to. Someone else said they were always smug at NAMM. Spectrum (Eric) provided me great support when I had health issues. That's all I care about. Spectrasonics definitely has a fan in me. As always, buy it if you like its features, and pass it by if you don't. The hype is just marketing. Believe me, I don't love the Video Professor, who I seem to see more than anyone else on TV. I just looked at the Video Professor's site. His stuff is incredibly over-priced, especially compared to what you can get at Lynda.com for a $25 monthly membership. Anyway, we don't have a very long wait now to see if Omnisphere lives up to its hype.

[siriusbliss]

I think it'll live up to the 'hype', since it WAS relatively impressive at NAMM back in January.
Once users get deeper into the program's capabilities, and continue to customize sounds, I think it will easily be considered a sort of breakthrough in sound design.

Can't wait to load it into my surround setup!

Greg

[Dean Aka Nekro]

Omnisphere worth the hype? yes
Worth the money? yes
Is it a must have for everyone? no
Am i going to buy it? probably not
A Soundscape/sound design (hate that term)/Music for picture type folk's wet dream? TOTALLY

Nekro

[GlennO]

fyi, in Omnisphere, "Synth" means more than simply having a variety of sound mangling techniques at your disposal to warp the samples. In addition to using samples as the basis of the sound, it can also synthesize a wide variety of waveforms. This has numerous advantages over only being able to use samples. For example, you can precisely control the waveform and you have access to synth-only techniques like hard sync.

So, in Omnisphere, "Synth" means, if you want, you can work with truly synthesized waveforms. Or, you can work with samples. Either way, you've got a lot of tools you can use to shape the sound to make it your own.

- Glenn

[Dean Aka Nekro]

Either way, you've got a lot of tools you can use to shape the sound to make it your own.

AND THEN SOME!

Im with GlennO on this and:

I reckon it will impossible to max out the potential of the thing and create the exact same sound twice by different users (unless you saved it as a preset of course) so the variations will be huge and knowing what spectrasoncis are all about the *expansion libraries* will further add to that (*if they do release any*)

and all that in a pretty basic interface for something of this sort of scope

[Kicklicker]

Spectrasonics are the kings of Hype!

As a golden rule I never buy software that is as expensive as a hardware synth. For a few reasons:

I bought Komplete 4 and Kore a while back and I regret it to this day.

When you have a system that is based on presets or samples it takes you away from the true art of making music, sound design.

Scrolling through presets is simply not as fun as getting your hands on the knobs and creating your own sounds. IMHO I beleive your music becomes more intense if you are physically involved in the process. That is not to say that can't do this with VA synths, but you need some innovative modulation options and at the very least Midi Learn.

However, it must be stated that I am not sure how much sound designing you will be able to do with this new product, but if their previous products are any indication, it will lean more toward flashy presets that have no practical value.

Plus, one of the gripes I have toward Spectrasonics is that they don't update their software enough.

Here is the true test though. If you find yourself listening to the presets of a synth more than learning its features, you are not making music!

[GlennO]

However, it must be stated that I am not sure how much sound designing you will be able to do with this new product,

The preset browser makes it possible to sift through the enormous library of presets quickly and easily. But, if you'd like to do your own sound design with Omnisphere, the tools at your disposal, either for patch programming or real-time performance to shape the sounds are rather extensive.

- Glenn

[Kicklicker]

However, it must be stated that I am not sure how much sound designing you will be able to do with this new product,

The preset browser makes it possible to sift through the enormous library of presets quickly and easily. But, if you'd like to do your own sound design with Omnisphere, the tools at your disposal, either for patch programming or real-time performance to shape the sounds are rather extensive.

- Glenn

Yes, this is my point. I am tired of huge, enormous, gigantic, 40 gig sound libraries being a major selling point. I have so many sounds already that I will never use. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time listening to, and organizing my samples and presets than I do making music. I bought Logic 8 when it came out and I spent 6 hours installing it and all of its libraries. After a few weeks I spent some more time unloading sound libraries that I realized I would never use.

Lately I've been having more fun with free VSTs like Tal-Bassline. With limited presets comes a desire to tweak the synth just to see how many cool sounds you can make.

I know that Omnisphere is going to sound great. Don't get me wrong. After reflecting a bit I realize that point I am trying to make is this:

Huge sound libraries and preset organizing have become a selling point used to jack up the prices for soft synths. I just hope that all of the time and effort used to promote this vst yeilds a product that inspires producers to create music rather than stare at the computer screen while scrolling through thousands of "sparkly" presets.

Peas out!

[zircon]

I'd say that if you look over all the literature for Omnisphere, the sound library itself is really not touted as being the selling point... though the creativity of certain sounds are. The videos center more around Omnisphere's unique features, such as its arpeggiator, as well as sound morphing capabilities. As a synth, it seems to be more powerful than just about anything I've ever seen, so giving it a sound library of what seems to be unreal quality is icing on the cake.

However, honestly, Spectrasonics could release 40gb of WAV files in NKI format and it would still be an amazing product. The sound design in products like Distorted Reality is impeccable; Eric's own background as a star designer for Roland should give ample cause for excitement

[Kicklicker]

Eric's own background as a star designer for Roland should give ample cause for excitement

Wow! I did not know that. Are we talking about back in the day like SH-101, JP-8000, or more recent gear? What Roland gear did work on?

[!jC]

Taken from this page here:
http://www.spectrasonics.net/artists/epersing.php

In addition to being the Creative Director of Spectrasonics, Eric was a longtime consultant and the Chief Sound Designer for Roland Corporation Japan from 1984-2005, creating the key sounds for many popular Roland synthesizers, samplers, CD-ROMs, expansion boards, signal processors and groove devices - from the vintage Jupiter and JX series, to the legendary D-50, D-70, JD-800/990, R8, S-series samplers, JV-880/1080/2080, the Sound Canvas, JP-8000/8080, MC-505/909, The V-Drums, XV-5080, Fantom series, the V-Synth and many others.

[hibidy]

At the very least, Omnisphere will be a genuine attempt at groundbreaking/next-gen synthesis. I believe it will be worth the hype as well as worth the wait.

I believe though that it's gonna have to wait (er, that is after they do release it) considering I've got allot of already good stuff.