Product Reviews by KVR Members
All reviews by erstwhile
Review Something or Find Reviews
Omnisphere 1
Reviewed By erstwhile [all]
October 28th, 2008
Version reviewed: 1.0.2 on Mac
HISTORY: Omnisphere is developed by Spectrasonics, which is owned by Eric Persing, who produced Trilogy, Atmosphere, and Stylus RMX. The software is by the same guy that did the Crystal free synth. Omnisphere replaces Atmosphere, and is supported on Mac and Windows (VST, AU, RTAS, etc).
SOUND: The sound quality is outstanding. The company is owned by sound designers, not software geeks. They tried to cover virtually every kind of sound, so it includes pads, dance, noises, textures, cinematic, classic synth sounds, voices, etc. You cannot put your own sampled sounds into the instrument, but patches can be freely shared and added.
GUI: The Omnisphere GUI supports novice, intermediate, and advanced users. Users that are not too familiar with the instrument use the Main window. The Edit window reveals lots of detail for tweaking LFOs, Filters, and Envelopes. Finally, there are Zoom windows which go into super-detail about each audio component (Envelopes, Filters, Modulation Matrix).
LIVE PERFORMANCE: Before performing, you can load up to 8 patches, then while you are performing live you can instantly switch between the 8 parts with key switching. The Stack window is also unique: you can load 8 patches and gradually fade from one to another or to many at once.
SYNTHESIZER FEATURES: Ominsphere has all the standard features of a quality soft synth: LFOs, envelopes, modulation-routing, filters, arpeggiator. Tremendous care went into the GUI layout for these features. The modulation could be a very confusing feature, but in Omnisphere it is presented in a user-friendly way, with dynamic indication of the values. The envelope GUI lets the user choose between the traditional ADSR or a modern curve-segment based approach.0 And there is a Chaos feature, obviously inspired by RMX, to randomly modify the envelope in real time.
SEARCHING: Omnisphere solves the problem of: "How do I find one sound from thousands of sounds"? by using multiple-keyword searches, which are a quick way to find sounds with queries like "classic retro analog synth" or "human voice female gospel".
PHOTOGRAPHS: The photographs that illustrate each of the soundsources are very cool, and it fun to see what pictures will pop up for when you select sounds like "Pensive" or "Static Rainbow".
DOCS: The DVDs come with only a small pamphlet that focuses on the installation process. After you buy Omnisphere you can download an HTML manual. Most useful is the dozen video tutorials which are great (a picture is worth 1,000 words).
PATCHES and PRESETS: There are patches and multis. The multis are simply 8 patches or parts, just like in RMX. Each patch contains two layers. In each layer you can put a synth waveform (sine, saw, etc) or a sampled soundsource. Each layer has its own individual filters, oscilators, envelopes, effects. The number of patches are around 2,000 now, and Spectrasonics is building more continually. You must download from their website to get all the newest ones. if you take the combination of 2,000 patches times 2,000 soundsources, that is a total of 4,000,000 sounds you can quickly generate without touching a knob. Plus, every individual audio component (Osc, Filters, Arpegiators, Envelopes) has their own individual presets.
DEMOS: Spectrasonics does not have any demos for download, so you have to hunt around for user demos.
VALUE-FOR-MONEY: Omnisphere retails for $499, although if you already own Trilogy, Atmosphere, and RMX, then they discount the price to $149.
INSTALLATION: It comes on 6 DVDs, and installation took me about 2 hours total. It was a simple installation. It takes about 48 GB of disk space.
STABILITY: The software is very, very robust. I have not seen a single crash, and even finding small aesthetic glitches is very hard to do (I cannot think of one I have yet seen). It has clearly been through a lot of beta testing before sale.
STARTUP TIME: The initial version of Omnisphere (on the DVD) had some issues with startup times (ranging from 10 to 15 seconds) seconds, but that has been fixed in the latest software update (downloadable from the Spectrasonics website) reduced my load time to 4 seconds.
CPU REQUIREMENT: Some features in Omnisphere are CPU hogs: harmonics, unison, heavy effects (by the way, Omnisphere has the full complement of Effects that RMX had, plus a couple of new ones). This CPU usage issue is no different than other soft synths. If your CPU is substandard, you may have to avoid certain advanced features. The bottom line is that Omnisphere is state-of-the-art, and it demands a state-of-the-art computer.
CONCLUSION: A very powerful, high-quality instrument that combines the best of additive synths with sampled sounds. Easy to use for novices. The variety of sounds is nearly infinite. A good value.Read Review
SOUND: The sound quality is outstanding. The company is owned by sound designers, not software geeks. They tried to cover virtually every kind of sound, so it includes pads, dance, noises, textures, cinematic, classic synth sounds, voices, etc. You cannot put your own sampled sounds into the instrument, but patches can be freely shared and added.
GUI: The Omnisphere GUI supports novice, intermediate, and advanced users. Users that are not too familiar with the instrument use the Main window. The Edit window reveals lots of detail for tweaking LFOs, Filters, and Envelopes. Finally, there are Zoom windows which go into super-detail about each audio component (Envelopes, Filters, Modulation Matrix).
LIVE PERFORMANCE: Before performing, you can load up to 8 patches, then while you are performing live you can instantly switch between the 8 parts with key switching. The Stack window is also unique: you can load 8 patches and gradually fade from one to another or to many at once.
SYNTHESIZER FEATURES: Ominsphere has all the standard features of a quality soft synth: LFOs, envelopes, modulation-routing, filters, arpeggiator. Tremendous care went into the GUI layout for these features. The modulation could be a very confusing feature, but in Omnisphere it is presented in a user-friendly way, with dynamic indication of the values. The envelope GUI lets the user choose between the traditional ADSR or a modern curve-segment based approach.0 And there is a Chaos feature, obviously inspired by RMX, to randomly modify the envelope in real time.
SEARCHING: Omnisphere solves the problem of: "How do I find one sound from thousands of sounds"? by using multiple-keyword searches, which are a quick way to find sounds with queries like "classic retro analog synth" or "human voice female gospel".
PHOTOGRAPHS: The photographs that illustrate each of the soundsources are very cool, and it fun to see what pictures will pop up for when you select sounds like "Pensive" or "Static Rainbow".
DOCS: The DVDs come with only a small pamphlet that focuses on the installation process. After you buy Omnisphere you can download an HTML manual. Most useful is the dozen video tutorials which are great (a picture is worth 1,000 words).
PATCHES and PRESETS: There are patches and multis. The multis are simply 8 patches or parts, just like in RMX. Each patch contains two layers. In each layer you can put a synth waveform (sine, saw, etc) or a sampled soundsource. Each layer has its own individual filters, oscilators, envelopes, effects. The number of patches are around 2,000 now, and Spectrasonics is building more continually. You must download from their website to get all the newest ones. if you take the combination of 2,000 patches times 2,000 soundsources, that is a total of 4,000,000 sounds you can quickly generate without touching a knob. Plus, every individual audio component (Osc, Filters, Arpegiators, Envelopes) has their own individual presets.
DEMOS: Spectrasonics does not have any demos for download, so you have to hunt around for user demos.
VALUE-FOR-MONEY: Omnisphere retails for $499, although if you already own Trilogy, Atmosphere, and RMX, then they discount the price to $149.
INSTALLATION: It comes on 6 DVDs, and installation took me about 2 hours total. It was a simple installation. It takes about 48 GB of disk space.
STABILITY: The software is very, very robust. I have not seen a single crash, and even finding small aesthetic glitches is very hard to do (I cannot think of one I have yet seen). It has clearly been through a lot of beta testing before sale.
STARTUP TIME: The initial version of Omnisphere (on the DVD) had some issues with startup times (ranging from 10 to 15 seconds) seconds, but that has been fixed in the latest software update (downloadable from the Spectrasonics website) reduced my load time to 4 seconds.
CPU REQUIREMENT: Some features in Omnisphere are CPU hogs: harmonics, unison, heavy effects (by the way, Omnisphere has the full complement of Effects that RMX had, plus a couple of new ones). This CPU usage issue is no different than other soft synths. If your CPU is substandard, you may have to avoid certain advanced features. The bottom line is that Omnisphere is state-of-the-art, and it demands a state-of-the-art computer.
CONCLUSION: A very powerful, high-quality instrument that combines the best of additive synths with sampled sounds. Easy to use for novices. The variety of sounds is nearly infinite. A good value.Read Review
