Is Omnisphere 2 still worth it?

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KVRAF
4052 posts since 30 May, 2006 from Hollow Earth

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:21 am

VELLTONE MUSIC wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:06 am Wrote somewhere that in my country you can buy house,car and a woman for that money and people laugh on it,but seriously who pay 500 euro for a synth,when you can buy at least 5-6 top notch for same amount of money.
What is so special or amazing of Omnisphere 2,so to sell my old Golf for it ??? :):):)
if you can buy all that with 500 euro, that means you are lucky if you can sell your Golf for the price of a free synth :lol:
:D

ghettosynth
KVRAF
14821 posts since 13 Oct, 2009

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:40 am

Trancit wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 1:18 am
VELLTONE MUSIC wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:06 am Wrote somewhere that in my country you can buy house,car and a woman for that money ...
You made me curious... may I ask where you come from??
I know right? I mean, I have $500, and who couldn't use a second house and car?

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legendCNCD
KVRian
1490 posts since 23 Sep, 2004 from Kocmoc

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 4:49 am

Fornicras wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:14 am
VELLTONE MUSIC wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:06 am Wrote somewhere that in my country you can buy house,car and a woman for that money and people laugh on it,but seriously who pay 500 euro for a synth,when you can buy at least 5-6 top notch for same amount of money.
What is so special or amazing of Omnisphere 2,so to sell my old Golf for it ??? :):):)
I think many people think of Omnisphere as a preset browser (like Nexus, but better), because Synth side of it is quite outdated now.
They did do something to the VA side during 2.x releases. I've not noticed its anyway outdated with the sound.
Soft Knees - Demoscene - Live 10 - Diva - Omnisphere - Slate Digital VSX - TDR - Kush Audio - Fabfilter - PA - Valhalla - Fuse - Pulsar - NI - OekSound etc...

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VELLTONE MUSIC
KVRAF
1814 posts since 19 Sep, 2017 from The Future

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:35 am

C'mon i'm joking - i'm from Bulgaria,which used to be very affordable and nice for living place till recently,but now everything is expensive ...well the country houses and women are still cheap hahahaha :)

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VELLTONE MUSIC
KVRAF
1814 posts since 19 Sep, 2017 from The Future

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:44 am

I was wondering why people pay such money and nobody even take the question seriously,there must be some reason?

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T-CM11
KVRAF
2850 posts since 31 Jan, 2003 from Ghent, Belgium

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:46 am

VELLTONE MUSIC wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:44 am I was wondering why people pay such money and nobody even take the question seriously,there must be some reason?
To make music with of course... who buys plugins to take questions seriously? :D

i need Help
KVRist
245 posts since 19 Feb, 2022

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:47 am

LoveEnigma18 wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 8:28 am What I have realized now is that there seem to be only two kinds of people w.r.t Omnisphere: those who absolutely love it and those who absolutely hate it.
This. I’m sure the price has lots to do with it, and I’ll even venture to say some ppl in the “hate” camp might actually be there mostly because of said price (i.e. “I want it but it’s cost prohibitive, so I hate it.”).

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VELLTONE MUSIC
KVRAF
1814 posts since 19 Sep, 2017 from The Future

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:01 am

T-CM11 wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:46 am
VELLTONE MUSIC wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:44 am I was wondering why people pay such money and nobody even take the question seriously,there must be some reason?
To make music with of course... who buys plugins to take questions seriously? :D
Ha,if ask who buy Lamborgini,what will be the answer - people who need car?
Or who buy expensive chocolate - hungry people?
This is 5 years old kid logic.
Why someboy will spend 500 instead of 100 l,there must be something in it, that worth the money or not...is it now the question more clear?

i need Help
KVRist
245 posts since 19 Feb, 2022

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:03 am

Fornicras wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:14 am
I think many people think of Omnisphere as a preset browser (like Nexus, but better), because Synth side of it is quite outdated now.
Nahhhh. Everyone typing in this Topic has internet access so no need to ramble off a list of features but the STEAM engine has been updated and maintained over the years. IMO Omni’s “synth side” is at the very least current and modern, at best it’s got unique features I’ve not seen elsewhere.
Last edited by i need Help on Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

i need Help
KVRist
245 posts since 19 Feb, 2022

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:06 am

VELLTONE MUSIC wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:01 am
T-CM11 wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:46 am
VELLTONE MUSIC wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:44 am I was wondering why people pay such money and nobody even take the question seriously,there must be some reason?
To make music with of course... who buys plugins to take questions seriously? :D
Ha,if ask who buy Lamborgini,what will be the answer - people who need car?
Or who buy expensive chocolate - hungry people?
This is 5 years old kid logic.
Why someboy will spend 500 instead of 100 l,there must be something in it, that worth the money or not...is it now the question more clear?
Just something to point out: $500 is chump change to some people. So the question of Omnisphere being “expensive”, “worth it”, so on, is 100% subjective.

Edit: Just to clarify, I’m not saying $500 is chump change to me. $500 is more “pocket money”, which in my arbitrary rating system is a step or two above “chump change” lol.

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T-CM11
KVRAF
2850 posts since 31 Jan, 2003 from Ghent, Belgium

Post Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:15 am

VELLTONE MUSIC wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:01 am is it now the question more clear?
Before buying Omnisphere, I read a lot of topics like this one and watched about 50 Youtube videos. Are you planning on buying it (or not) based on how a few people answer your (very general) question?

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VELLTONE MUSIC
KVRAF
1814 posts since 19 Sep, 2017 from The Future

Post Wed Mar 22, 2023 6:22 am

No i was joking about what man can buy with 500 euro,but for a producer on a budget it's serous amount of money,considering that Vital is free and most popular advanced synth are 100-150 euro range.
Anyway i have enough synths already and couldn't even consider spending more money on something convincingly worth it.
Cheers :)

YnJ
KVRist
237 posts since 18 Apr, 2021

Post Wed Mar 22, 2023 8:06 am

I'm not paying for it if I can't demo it first, 500 euro is a lot of money even in my country

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HOTF
KVRist
197 posts since 16 Jun, 2022

Post Wed Mar 22, 2023 11:26 am

Here's my thoughts. but it as my very first VST plugin years ago. I havent use it in years. It is incredibly powerful tho and I think it's a quality soft synth but the workflow isn't for me the GUI has some many pages it pisses me off. Immediacy is very important for me thats why i went back to relying 90% of the time on stock plugins. You might not care about immediacy.

overal thoughts : Powerful synth, not fun to use in my experience.

yl0506
KVRer
12 posts since 30 Oct, 2009

Post Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:11 am

Hello to all,
I am only a modest amateur in composition, but I am passionate about synthesizers since the 80s. My first synth was the juno 60, and I had a Matrix 6, a TG77, an akai S900. The last hardware synth purchase was a Virus TI Snow, which I still have.

Since the 2010's, I compose almost exclusively using software synthesizers. I have a lot of them, and certainly way too many compared to the ones I use regularly.

Obviously, the opinion I'm going to give you about Omnisphere is subjective, and I assume this subjectivity. My review is going to be a bit long, I hope you'll excuse me.

I have no problem admitting that this is one of the most expensive software synths. It currently costs 600$ to buy on the Spectrasonics website including the Bob Moog Tribute Library 2. And if you add the Sonic Extensions package, you probably need to add about $500.

So counting only what Spectrasonics offers for Omnisphere (not counting other compatible applications like Trillian and Keyscape), that's $1100. That's a lot of money for sure.

Now if you compare what this synth offers to the competition, there is not one that comes close. Those who say it's just a sample player, don't know what they are talking about because they probably didn't have enough money to buy it. This is a real synth. And if I think about it, if I had to keep only one software synth, this is the one I would keep.

Why would I do that?

There are certainly many other possibilities in other synthesizers like Vital, Pigments, Zebra, Hive, Rapid, Massive X, or many others. But in terms of the quality of the sounds that you can already have or program yourself with this one synthesizer, it's hard to find anything better. It is the most eclectic synthesizer on the market today.

Let's take a simple example, a very concrete example. Let's imagine that you like the sounds of the Roland D50, especially the one called FANTASIA. With which synth will you succeed in playing it again while respecting its spirit? Of course you can use the simulation proposed directly by Roland with Zenology Ultimate, for example. But a comparative test between the "D50-Fantasia" preset of Zenology, and "D50-Fantasia Chorale Mms" shows a very clear difference in quality.

This comes not only from the difference in quality of the effects but also in the reconstitution of the sound sources. It must be said that the example is a bit biased because it seems that Eric Persing himself made the preset for the Roland D-50. So obviously he remembered very well what he wanted to do when he initially created this preset. What I see, however, is that Omnisphere allows him to redo this preset and improve it.

And with this example, all you need is Omnisphere without any extension, to do the test.

So when you add all the sound sources that come with the Bob Moog Tribute Library and the Sonic Extensions... it's hard to imagine all the sounds you can make with it.

In fact, it is not possible to imagine because our imagination is not inventive enough to do it! You only have to take the time to program this synthesizer to realize that it would probably take years of full time work to run out of new creation possibilities.

While looking for why I found this synthesizer so impressive on the sound level (and what interests me is first the sound quality, sorry for those who make personal preferences on the interface), I came to several observations:
  • The quality of the sound sources is impressive and the variety of the sampled waveforms gigantic.

    Eric has structured his synth in such a way that you can easily mix and modify them with filters and modulations.

    The effects were designed in such a way that they become an integral part of the sound synthesis process, they are not only of excellent quality compared to the individual effects we can find on the plug-in market, but they are also modulable.

    The Sonic Extensions are expensive, but the 2 effects provided by each of the extensions could be worth the money spent on their own: which is quite impressive to say the least.
That's it, I think I've already said enough in this long post.

As I'm getting to know the programming of this synthesizer, I'm ready to answer your questions.

Kind regards

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