Omnisphere - will it be worth the hype ?

[Muzik 4 Machines]

on the 15th, it's been said at least once a page for tha last 20 pages

[spectrum]

We announced Omnisphere early in January because we needed to show our longtime users where we were headed. After no news for 6 years on Atmosphere, I'd hardly call that being "hype-meisters".

We needed to let our customers know about this major new direction, especially with the situation of Atmosphere not working on Intel Macs.


spectrum

Hi Eric,

I'm OK with that, I (And I guess lots of Atmosphere owners) Just would like to know when the upgrade price will be revealed.

Peace.

September 15th.

[Touch_the_Universe]

hahhaha.. thats just too hularious***** i swear to god i just imagined thatdude from the spectra video running out on the free way carrying a hell of a buch of video recordings trying to records and the cars as they drive by .. for the holy shrine of the most magical waveform of the universe is............ *******************the bnumber 42.... cardrivebyon thefreeway... argggggggggggggggg**********ahyahahahhahahahahahahahah




serously though.. my idaein nutsehll this is??? yoda takinbg..




- the idea is to break down sounds...(anything oscillating more than 16 times a sec)....* think of a piano... the keys dont make the sound.... its the strings connnected to them.....

now go farther.... realize different strings... fabricatations of strings.. say from gold to diamond strings will resonating differently... go further.... temperature of lthe strings will affect resonations...... all the way from extremme 0.... like the temperature of vacumme space too bioling like sun...... this will resonate differently creating unique wafefroms......

does this make sense.....

i got the idea from the burning piano preset in omnisperh..

[Touch_the_Universe]

yoda talking******* hahahahah... argg. let the force be with u younge sky walker... *** hahahahlelele

[alexfalcao]

September 15th.[/quote]

on the 15th, it's been said at least once a page for tha last 20 pages

Actually the question should be "How much will be the upgrade" not When


Peace again.

[Ned Bouhalassa]

My understanding is that the upgrade will cost Sept 15th.

[hao nao]

My understanding is that the upgrade will cost Sept 15th.

Well, that's a relief. October the First is Too Late.

[Karmacomposer]

Eric,

I 100% agree with your intelligent answers. As an owner of a company about to release products ourselves, I have to work very hard at NOT spilling the beans too early and yet, want the world to know what we are doing.

Marketing is extremely important to a company's and product's success and you always do a very good job at that.

It seems like a lot of hype because the product itself is so darn exciting and revolutionary that people cannot wait to get their hands on it. Patience is quite hard in the virtual instrument world.

I can say, without any doubt, that your products are worth every single penny. I have gained massive value from Stylus RMX and use it on every project. I so believe in your company's amazing work that I went out and purchased just about the last copy of Atmosphere available in this town to take advantage of your soon-to-be-revealed VIP pricing.

Although I can (and do) make my own multisamples for use in our own projects and now in our upcoming products, I am still a musician/composer first and totally see the value in Omnisphere - so much so that buying it is not even a thought. If it works HALF AS GOOD as Stylus RMX, I will treasure it forever.

Mike

[AKJ]

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?

a bit late, but a reply still valid: I am aware that omnisphere claims to be a synth (and I am sure it will be one of the better ones). But actually: all the hype and 7 video clips, but very, very little information on the actual synth capabilities.

Exactly...so is it really fair for you to be making conclusive statements yet about what Omnisphere is as a synth?

They talk about arpeggiators, preset brwosers and, yes, psychoacoustic sampling (which actually just ordinary sampling of weird stuff).

That's actually not correct. There's a whole lot more to our Psychoacoustic Sampling process than just "weird stuff".

Try sampling a simple Lightbulb or a clothes Drying rack yourself and check the difference with Omnisphere's core library. There's a whole lot more that we DON'T reveal in those videos you know.

And shipping the product with a 50 gig lib makes me think: they will make use of it in their sound design.

Yes, of course. That's the idea!

So what I meant was: using samples as a basis is ok for a (real) synth.

So since Omnisphere is a real synth, we're OK then...eh?

But they should not be the main part of sound design.

Well they aren't, but your statement is your opinion, not a fact.

If it was true, then these synths don't count as "real" synthesizers:

Roland JD-800
Roland JD-990
PPG Wave
Waldorf Wave
Korg Wavestation
Prophet VS

Because after all, these instruments ONLY have sampled wavetables....no "real" oscillators like Omnisphere does.

There are many great synths with so many possibilities which a have (Absynth, Modelonia, Morphine, z3ta+) that I hardly can find a reason to get a monster synth like omnisphere wihich will fill up my HD.

So you'd get rid of those synths if they had way more possibilities in their core library for manipulation?

That seems like a very limiting approach to me.

Here's some facts about why a large core library size is needed to produce the kinds of results that Omnisphere achieves:

• Compressed audio sounds way worse than uncompressed, so we use uncompressed.
• It's useful to sample certain sounds in Stereo
• Multisampling often sounds better than stretching single samples
• Multisampling allows for realtime Timbral Shifting techniques
• Velocity-switching often provides more expression than single dynamic sampling
• Higher bit depth provides better sounding results with signal processing and transposition
• More space = wider variety of soundsources for shaping and synthesis

In a nutshell: More variety, better sound quality, better expression and dramatically more possibilities.

Omnisphere is a true sound-designer's synth. Hard disc space is super cheap....so what's the problem?

I am sure - and other products prove it - that you can create a whole universe of excellent patches using a capable synth with just 100 mb of sample content (if you need them at all).

That's true, and I've been involved in developing many of those instruments and their wavetables. (read earlier in the thread for details)

But apparently you're claim is that there's a theoretical size limit on sampling creativity when it comes to core libraries in synthesizers with sample oscillators?

I would disagree with that wholeheartedly.

Imagine this scenario. Brilliant young sound designer on Spectrasonics staff approaches me and says:

Brilliant Young Sound Designer:
"Hey Eric, I created an amazing new soundsource by offline morphing multisamples of an acoustic piano with a cheese-grater scraping under a freeway overpass! When you put the final soundsource into the Omnisphere engine, the FM and Granular synthesis do all these incredible overtone shifts and it freaks out the polyphonic waveshaping to sound like Trent Reznor! It sounds unlike anything I've ever heard!"

EP:
"Can't wait to hear it. How big is the final soundsource?"

BYSD:
"150mb"

EP:
"Wow! That's after careful looping and memory optimization?"

BYSD:
"Yes. The original version was over a gigabyte. 150mb is as small as I can get it without sacrificing sound quality or what it sounds like in the STEAM engine."

EP:
"Gee, that's too bad. I'm afraid you've violated the theoretical size limit on sampling creativity as posted on KvR. Aren't you aware of those limitations? We can't use that great work you did, because if we do then some people will think that we didn't make a real synthesizer and that we don't know what we are doing."

BYSD:
"Whoa. I thought musicians and synthesists were supposed to be more open-minded than that."

EP:
"Yes, I know. But I'm afraid it's the universal law of sampling creativity that you've violated."

BYSD:
"Why don't people just get a larger drive? Aren't they insanely cheap now?"

EP:
"Sorry, but the law of KvR dictates that drive space must only be used for traditional orchestral samples. Weren't you aware that any sort of creative use of drive space is verboten?"

BYSD:
"So what do we do?"

EP:
"Well, we have two choices:

1. We can compress the snot out of it at a low bit rate, in mono, with no dynamics or velocity switching. It'll be very limited and sound bad, but at least we'll be within the KvR sampling regulations.

OR

2. We can choose to not include it at all. Maybe this is best, since we don't want to offend anyone by offering more than what we did 15 years ago on hardware synths."



Here's the thing:

If Spectrasonics staff can be involved in making a 1980's hardware synth for 6 months with a core library of only 8mb, then why is it that we suddenly can't make a really great synth in 2008 if we worked for 6 years to make a core library of 40+ gb?

After all, you are talking about the same people in your argument.
(The Spectrasonics' sound designers all come from many years in the hardware synth world, working within those tiny megabyte limitations. So you're not telling us anything we don't already know. We tend to view the current state of technology as a liberation of our creative ideas.)

And I don't like companies which create a hype like this. But it seems to work out for them..

Huh?

I'm really not following the argument that we somehow did something wrong or "too much" in our marketing of Omnisphere.

What's exactly is wrong with being excited about telling people that we worked really hard for a long time to create something special, powerful and different?

We announced Omnisphere early in January because we needed to show our longtime users where we were headed. After no news for 6 years on Atmosphere, I'd hardly call that being "hype-meisters".

We needed to let our customers know about this major new direction, especially with the situation of Atmosphere not working on Intel Macs.

So with 9 months until the launch, we thought it would be fun to make some video episodes showing a little of the behind the scenes of the creation of the instrument and why we are excited by it. Sure, it's marketing. But hopefully we also made them educational and fun too.

The overwhelming response to the video episodes was very positive and people enjoyed the synth history stuff we did, the free Omnisphere loops we provided, the Remix contest was a big success and people liked the preview of seeing a little of what Omnisphere could do when it would be released on September 15th.

We placed a few magazine ads in the last month and did a few interviews from interested magazines.

This is what we did from the company. It's not really all that different marketing-wise than what other major developers do.

The rest has come from enthusiastic users on forums like this.

Cheers,

spectrum

this is an amusing reply and I appreciate it. But imagine this situation:

girlfried: didn't we want to go on holiday?

synthenthusiast: yes, but you have to set priorities in life. and my income is limited and it has to be spent on the real important things. and at kvr I read about that wonderful new synth. No this is no hype. and the company which created the synth is not responible for all the people preining this synth. It just happened. and I have to get it. no, I am not a victim a guerilla marketing. also in a world which is not dominated by capitalism, this synth would represent a real need. and it costs just as much as the plane ticket.

girlfiriend: wow. that sounds reasonable, so go and get it. but what happend to all the 54 other synths you bought over the last two years? are they all broken?

synthenthusiast: no. they are software, you know. software get's outdated very soon. btw, can you lend me some money. this new synth ships with a core lib of over 40 gigs. and sice all my 3 harddrives are filled with that uninspiring and oldfashioned orchestral and rompler libs, I need a new one.

girlfrien: no problem. but how come that in the days back when you did not have so many synths you made a lot more and better music.

synthethusiast: this is what I wonder, too.

[musikmachine]

So what will the uk price be?

Nevermind i found it. £299.

[setAI]

all you have to do is look/listen to the examples of Omnisphere that are avaialble now to see that like the PPG Wave this is an integrated system of unique samples and synth engine that has a huge authoritative spectrum of sound of it's own- a sound you are NEVER going to get with your own samples and synth plug-ins-

the difference in sound quality between the libraries and romplers out there and Omni reminds me of the difference between the Foley in a generic TV series and BEN BURTT

[alexfalcao]

My understanding is that the upgrade will cost Sept 15th.

I know expectations is a really bad thing for our spiritual growth, and Eric is helping us to meditate on our wrong view of the World, great for removing our spiritual clouds giving more inspiration.

The Eightfold Path of Buddhism says.
"Wrong view of the world occurs when we impose our expectations onto things; expectations about how we hope things will be, or about how we are afraid things might be."

[Reverend Rhythm]

But imagine this situation:

girlfried: didn't we want to go on holiday?

synthenthusiast: yes, but you have to set priorities in life. and my income is limited and it has to be spent on the real important things. and at kvr I read about that wonderful new synth. No this is no hype. and the company which created the synth is not responible for all the people preining this synth. It just happened. and I have to get it. no, I am not a victim a guerilla marketing. also in a world which is not dominated by capitalism, this synth would represent a real need. and it costs just as much as the plane ticket.

To AJK,

If there is a dilemma between taking your girlfriend on vacation and buying Omnisphere… go on vacation. You can always buy Omnisphere later. If you make your girlfriend mad, you could end up as nutty as Touch_the_Universe. So sad….

[Casar1973]

My understanding is that the upgrade will cost Sept 15th.

I know expectations is a really bad thing for our spiritual growth, and Eric is helping us to meditate on our wrong view of the World, great for removing our spiritual clouds giving more inspiration.

The Eightfold Path of Buddhism says.
"Wrong view of the world occurs when we impose our expectations onto things; expectations about how we hope things will be, or about how we are afraid things might be."

The circular path of the mighty Omni says:
"blessed are ye players of myself, for ye shall inherit the kingdom of sound".
"let's go"

[Ned Bouhalassa]

AKJ,

If you did buy 50+ synths in the past year(s), you clearly are quite the collector, maybe even obsessive. Too bad your best years are behind you. Have you considered buying an acoustic guitar and selling all your software?