Is Omnisphere 2 still worth it?

[Harry_HH]

That right there ^ is another reason (of many) that i like Spectrasonics.

Right goes over my screen - do you mean up/previous page.?

[Propellerhands]

Hi Propellerhands, Chris from Spectrasonics here.

Although it’s outside of our normal business hours, I saw your post and wanted to reach out to you here.

I’m really sorry to hear that you’re experiencing some installation issues. I can certainly understand how this can be tough to deal with, and can promise we’ll do everything we can to get you up and running ASAP!

Your USB drive should not take that long to install. A download from your user account is typically the quickest fix if you happen receive a bad USB, and then we’d offer to send you a working USB as well.

Since the download option isn’t working for you, we’ll be more than happy to expedite a working USB to you ASAP (we’ll test it before sending it your way).

Could you do me a favor and send an email to info@spectrasonics.net with a small description of this situation? First thing Monday morning, when our full staff is in the office, we’ll be sure to expedite a working USB to you.

Thanks in advance for your patience, we certainly appreciate you and your time!

Thank you for response. If it is indeed faulty USB then it is on me, because I did not contact neither my local shop where I bought Boxed Omnisphere version neither your company (even though thought about it).

I did a purchase an item several months ago, installed it, copied STEAM folder onto my own external flash drive (as advised in your website) and forgot about it. So because of that I saw no reason to go through the hassle of returning and replacing it.

Consider problem solved, since I have no intention of ever selling or transfering a license to someone else.

[noiseboyuk]

Well that all turned out nicely.

[ChrisSpectra]

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

Hi Propellerhands, Chris from Spectrasonics here.

Although it’s outside of our normal business hours, I saw your post and wanted to reach out to you here.

I’m really sorry to hear that you’re experiencing some installation issues. I can certainly understand how this can be tough to deal with, and can promise we’ll do everything we can to get you up and running ASAP!

Your USB drive should not take that long to install. A download from your user account is typically the quickest fix if you happen receive a bad USB, and then we’d offer to send you a working USB as well.

Since the download option isn’t working for you, we’ll be more than happy to expedite a working USB to you ASAP (we’ll test it before sending it your way).

Could you do me a favor and send an email to info@spectrasonics.net (mailto:info@spectrasonics.net) with a small description of this situation? First thing Monday morning, when our full staff is in the office, we’ll be sure to expedite a working USB to you.

Thanks in advance for your patience, we certainly appreciate you and your time!

Thank you for response. If it is indeed faulty USB then it is on me, because I did not contact neither my local shop where I bought Boxed Omnisphere version neither your company (even though thought about it).

I did a purchase an item several months ago, installed it, copied STEAM folder onto my own external flash drive (as advised in your website) and forgot about it. So because of that I saw no reason to go through the hassle of returning and replacing it.

Consider problem solved, since I have no intention of ever selling or transfering a license to someone else.

No problem - I’m glad to hear you’re all set up!

Just so you know, we’re more than happy to send you a working USB for convenient future installations if you like. If you decide you’d like to take us up on the offer, just send an email to info@spectrasonics.net (mailto:info@spectrasonics.net) and we’ll get you one.

Take care and happy music making!

[vurt]

thats bloody good customer service and deserves applause

[Maclay]

amazing service

[Stopani]

The down side is that it takes up huge amounts of CPU which for a ROMpler I don't understand.

Have only noticed it being light on CPU. Must depend on what engine is being used.

And which effects.

Amongst my machines i run Omni on a 2014 dell i7 running windows 7, with a whopping 8G Ram, i have to program up a storm to put a dent in CPU. RAM on the other hand...

I have a 2014 i5MBP, now retired. When it played Omni, it would use anywhere from 5 to 50% of the CPU. It all depends on the patch. But yeah, I can do anything with 4GB RAM except run audio plugins. They all seem to start at 500Mb just to instantiate anymore.

Ok I should add that it's when you start adding the internal effects the CPU usage can sometimes be very large

[Ex Machina]

The slow online download speeds is a proof that they did this all on purpose of reducing download speeds to sub 1MB/s. What purpose? I do not know but it is on purpose and for that I despise this company. Even though software itself is okay and I use it almost everyday.

Jesus, that was quite a rant. And I should know because I'm extremely prone to flying off the handle.

But I've downloaded the installers for all of the Spectrasonics plugins several times each and they have always downloaded at the maximum speed of my fiber optic Internet connection which is 500Mbps. Either there was a temporary issue with Spectrasonics' hosting service or there is something going on with your Internet connection.

Why on earth would Spectrasonics cap their download speeds? To save a few pennies on bandwidth? To frustrate their customers for some insane reason? If you thought about it for more than an enraged moment, you'd realize your comment makes no sense.

[mek42]

Just finished reading the whole thread. I'm glad I did; I now better understand polyphonic modulation.

I asked Spectrasonic about using the effects independantly or even the possibility of sending audio to use Omnisphere as a virtual multi-effects rack. My understanding of the answer is that the best I could do is to record audio and then import it as a sample to then apply Omnisphere effects to it. This seems suboptimal to me. I'm hesitant about this because if the effect is good enough for me to invest both money to buy and time to learn, i'd want to be able to use it elsewhere. I also learned that MPE is not currently supported, which is a bummer because I own a Linnstrument and would like to get an Osmose someday. So I think I'm going to hold off for a bit.

[Rene Sens]

Omnisphere and Nexus are still my first choices for any given track. Actually, I could easily skip any other VST (except drums, maybe).

[zerocrossing]

Just finished reading the whole thread. I'm glad I did; I now better understand polyphonic modulation.

I asked Spectrasonic about using the effects independantly or even the possibility of sending audio to use Omnisphere as a virtual multi-effects rack. My understanding of the answer is that the best I could do is to record audio and then import it as a sample to then apply Omnisphere effects to it. This seems suboptimal to me. I'm hesitant about this because if the effect is good enough for me to invest both money to buy and time to learn, i'd want to be able to use it elsewhere. I also learned that MPE is not currently supported, which is a bummer because I own a Linnstrument and would like to get an Osmose someday. So I think I'm going to hold off for a bit.

Yeah, I’d hold off on buying Omnisphere if you are interested in MPE. Equator 2 makes a lot more sense. Eric mentioned that he was interested in implementing it, but that was a really long time ago. I would not bet on it happening anytime soon, but if it does, it’s not like you can’t buy it then.

[bmanic]

Well, I just added a lot of content to my Omnisphere 2 library by purchasing Keyscape (a long overdue purchase on my part as I actually received it for my birthday over a year ago!).

EDIT!!: The following paragraph about the badly sampled D3 note is FALSE. It was due to missing sample data on my USB drives that came with the Keyscape boxed copy. I found a few more missing samples when going through the Keyscape Creative presets and contacted support who promptly helped me get the full installer package from the net. I installed this and _all_ my issues got solved. Suddenly the C7 piano sounds a lot better and D3 sounds just perfect.

<False information> Keyscape itself is quite wonderful though I did find it very weird that the LA Custom C7 piano has one badly sampled note (D3, midi note nr 50) that sorely sticks out as having way less overtones and is a bit lower in volume. A rare slip up from Spectrasonics. I've reported this to them via email so hopefully they can get it fixed at some point.</False information>

As everybody has said, the rhodes and other weird keyboards are simply amazing sample fodder for Omnisphere 2. It's so easy to make a preset a lot more organic using these highly sampled sources.

I also think the K-Verb and K-Channel are extremely good, probably the most useful and best effects in all of Omnisphere (I have none of the latest Sonic Extensions though, so keep that in mind). It's absolutely bizarre that you have to jump through some strange hoops to get access to them though. Why can't they simply add them to the FX list?

Keyscape Creative pack is absolutely chock full of amazing presets! Really loving all the stranger ones and have already done a lot of custom modifications to them to my liking. An amazing inspirational source for music.

Yeah, this package hasn't been cheap but considering how much I've gotten out of Omnisphere 2 over the years it's been a bargain!

[bmanic]

I'm seriously impressed by the K-Verb. I'd definitely pay quite a bit of $$$ to get this as a standalone plugin. If it's in house developed, they should consider packaging it as a VST effect plugin and selling it.

[bmanic]

The start of a new track. 100% Omnisphere.

Keyscape fun MP3 (google drive link)