Spectrasonics Omnisphere!

[Dr.Wu]

(i'll have to view the other vid's later. hope their quality is better than that of vid 7 )

yeah-just imagine how great that thing must sound in reality without the crappy videocompression and the shitty cam mic sound.


wake me up when september comes.....

[Animus]

I think the verdict is still out on this but sounds like it could be cool. Honestly nothing I have heard or seen demostrated sounds too entirely special so far. Just another good sounding synth/rompler despite all the hype. I will revist this in 8 months (+3 months for typical delays).

[klagga]

Sure, I'm a bit excited of the hype around Omni like everybody else. One can tell Eric & co are long time product evangelists.

What I like so far the most is that Omni has some new workflow enhancements compared to other synths. Ease of use is one of my biggest concerns.

But really, what exactly will Omni do that I can't already do with NI Kontakt 3 and some freaky samples? Kontakt has some pretty nice sound mangling possibilities too, you know.

Burning pianos sounds fun but it's hard not to think of the emperor's new clothes here. It didn't sound much different than other similar sample libraries already in the market, like piano attack, http://www.soundlabel.com/index.php?axe ... oduct&id=3.

Of course it's nice that Omni gives me 50-60 gigs of samples that all together probably would cost more if bought seperately at other suppliers. But, on the other hand, with Kontakt I can choose the sounds more in line with my specific needs. With Omni I'm locked to the samples Eric has chosen for me.

(I own Kontakt 3 and all 3 Spectrasonics instruments.)

[Logic108]

If Kontakt 3 or Kontakt 4 makes use of 64bit and the memory addressing that goes along with that then yes it could be like omni. At the moment Kontakt can only have something like 1.2GB of samples in RAM. With 64bit there is theoretically no limit to how many samples can be loaded up in RAM. So then I think you could get the same outrageous sounds through Kontakt. It wouldn't be too hard for NI to synthesize samples but Kontakt needs to overcome the 32bit memory addressing limitation that it has at the moment.

[ericj23]

in a 64 bit OS a 32 bit application can address up to 4 gigs of memeroy

so kontakt 3 in vista 64 has access to 4 gigs of memory now - and do you really ahve more than 4 gigs in your pc anyway ?

[Ben H]

Of course it's nice that Omni gives me samples that all together probably would cost more if I bought them seperately by other suppliers. But, on the other hand, with Kontakt I can choose the sounds more in line with my specific needs. With Omni I'm locked to the samples Eric has chosen for me.

(I own Kontakt 3 and all 3 Spectrasonics instruments.)

* Granular resynthesis
* FM modulation of waveforms.
* Groove locking
* Much better sample browsing and sample databse than Kontakt
* Real-time sound switching (the abililty to keeps the sounds playing while you switch between patches)

Those are just 5 that come to mind, off of the top of my head...

BTW, sure the burning piano is found elsewhere, but that is only one of hundreds of unique, never before sampled sounds. Including many uniquely built instruments that never existed before... Doubt you are going to find them in any sample pack.

[Logic108]

in a 64 bit OS a 32 bit application can address up to 4 gigs of memeroy

so kontakt 3 in vista 64 has access to 4 gigs of memory now - and do you really ahve more than 4 gigs in your pc anyway ?

Yes, but at the moment Kontakt 3 only allows for 1.2GB. Later in 2008 they will have the 64bit addressing and basically unlimited RAM. Personally I would think a 2GB limit enough.
But I predict that future versions of Kontakt will be pretty close to what Omni is doing.

[Ben H]

in a 64 bit OS a 32 bit application can address up to 4 gigs of memeroy

so kontakt 3 in vista 64 has access to 4 gigs of memory now - and do you really ahve more than 4 gigs in your pc anyway ?

Yes, but at the moment Kontakt 3 only allows for 1.2GB. Later in 2008 they will have the 64bit addressing and basically unlimited RAM. Personally I would think a 2GB limit enough.
But I predict that future versions of Kontakt will be pretty close to what Omni is doing.

Of course they will. I predict software manufacturers will be "borrowing" some of Spectra's ideas for years to come.

However it may take them several years to get to the same point that Spectra is at now, by which stage Spectra will have something newer and zanier!

[benjamind]

in a 64 bit OS a 32 bit application can address up to 4 gigs of memeroy

so kontakt 3 in vista 64 has access to 4 gigs of memory now - and do you really ahve more than 4 gigs in your pc anyway ?

Yes, but at the moment Kontakt 3 only allows for 1.2GB. Later in 2008 they will have the 64bit addressing and basically unlimited RAM. Personally I would think a 2GB limit enough.
But I predict that future versions of Kontakt will be pretty close to what Omni is doing.

Of course they will. I predict software manufacturers will be "borrowing" some of Spectra's ideas for years to come.

However it may take them several years to get to the same point that Spectra is at now, by which stage Spectra will have something newer and zanier!

Ben, will Omnisphere run in 32bit Windows XP? Will there be 32 and 64 bit compatibility?

If it could work in 32 and 64 bit platforms it would be a Godsend, as those with huge amounts of RAM could make better use of memory. Some people who use 64 bit platforms are installing 8gig+ of ram and to be able to load heaps of Omnisphere presets in a project would be incredible. I wonder how many presets there'll be? My guess is about 4000?

There is no doubt in my mind that Omnisphere will blow just about everything else out of the water in terms of features, presets, and what have you. I was planning on buying Albino 3, Zebra 2, and the NI Synth bundle, but I'll now wait until September and listen to all the MP3 demos.

Ben

[tfishbein82]

Straight from the Spectrasonics Omnisphere FAQ:

Is Omnisphere 64 bit?

This is planned for the future as the music software industry transitions to 64 bit platforms.

In other words, Omnisphere - at release - will be no more 64 bit than Kontakt.

[DocAtlas]

I haven't seen any activity on this thread for a while, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts.

The sounds in the videos reminds me of the first time I heard the Yamaha DX7, and a few years later, the Roland D50. Even with the no-so-great sound on some of the videos, I get the feeling that this is an instrument I'll enjoy spending time learning to program. I used to spend a lot of time programming new sounds, but no a lot of newer stuff has grabbed me like that. Until this plug.

I'm especially interested to see more about the synthesis paramaters; it looks like we'll be able to do quite a lot without even using any of the samples. And the things you can do with the samples seem to go way beyond simply playback & filtering. Changing the sample start time, as well as modulating it, isn't new, but it isn't all that common, either. There are a lot of times I've wanted to be able to strip off some or all of the attack in a sampled sound, but couldn't on a lot of instruments. This is a feature I think I'll get a lot of use out of. It would be nice to be able to modulate sample loop position, too, at least with certain kinds of samples, like the PPG's wavetables & Ensoniq's transwaves. Probably wouldn't be so useful on other kinds of samples.

It would be nice if Spectrasonics put up the manual (when it's done, of course) as a downloadable file. I'm sure a lot of interested folks would like to be able to read through it before deciding if it's really something they want to spend money on.

I was also wondering if they may do some sort of pre-order a bit before September 15th? It would be nice to have it already paid for & ready to ship as soon as it's done. (Yeah, I'm one of the impatient ones...) Just another week until Spectrasonics puts up the next Omnisphere video.

[Cyprus]

There is a 99% I'm going to buy this product... Spectrasonics can't fail.

[DocAtlas]

I just ordered Atmosphere this morning. I've been wanting this vsti for a long while now, so it was about time. I should have a lot of fun messing with it while waiting for Omnisphere, and it should help me get familiar with a small segment of the content in the latter. I think this is going to be a good year.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[Vectorman]

Eric's already costing me money and the synth isn't even out yet...I thought his newer-model Kensington Expert Mouse looked so nifty in the videos that I went and bought one for my recording PC, LOL.