Omnisphere 2.6 announced at NAMM [RELEASED 27-03-19]

[noiseboyuk]

My MS20iC has arrived! And it works! It all works! It's fun!

I wonder if all the cable connections create the equivalent modulations in Omni? I never foudn out how they could send midi signals.

Curiosity got the better of me and I did some diagnostics on the patch cables using Cubase's midi monitor. Despite the MS20 main controls being midi CC, the jacks seem to use NRPN, one set of numbers for a single jack plug / unplug, and two sets together when there is a connection between two jacks. This seems to be the pattern FWIW:

NRPN MSB - 99 4 (99 is common to all, 4 is plugged in, 5 is unplug)
NRPN LSB - 98 X (98 is common to all, X is the ID of the jack)
DatEnd MSB - 6 Y (6 is common to all, Y is the paired ID I think)

All of which hopefully means that, though the above was undocumented in the manual, Spectrasonics will have been able to translate that into Omnispeak. It would have to scan for that NRPN range, look for pairs using the paired ID and then allocate the jack numbers to the Omni equivalents. They do modulation for other synths, but admittedly those are more preset options rather than jackfields. Nice to know its at least theoretically possible, anyway.

[Echoes in the Attic]

My MS20iC has arrived! And it works! It all works! It's fun!

I wonder if all the cable connections create the equivalent modulations in Omni? I never foudn out how they could send midi signals.

Curiosity got the better of me and I did some diagnostics on the patch cables using Cubase's midi monitor. Despite the MS20 main controls being midi CC, the jacks seem to use NRPN, one set of numbers for a single jack plug / unplug, and two sets together when there is a connection between two jacks. This seems to be the pattern FWIW:

NRPN MSB - 99 4 (99 is common to all, 4 is plugged in, 5 is unplug)
NRPN LSB - 98 X (98 is common to all, X is the ID of the jack)
DatEnd MSB - 6 Y (6 is common to all, Y is the paired ID I think)

All of which hopefully means that, though the above was undocumented in the manual, Spectrasonics will have been able to translate that into Omnispeak. It would have to scan for that NRPN range, look for pairs using the paired ID and then allocate the jack numbers to the Omni equivalents. They do modulation for other synths, but admittedly those are more preset options rather than jackfields. Nice to know its at least theoretically possible, anyway.

Cool. Now I wish I had kept my MS-20 controller. I never liked the Korg MS-20 emulation so I didn't really use the controller. Maybe it would be cool as an Omni controller though. Thing is, Omnisphere doesn't have any filters that can really do justice to the MS-20 filters. Would have been cool for them to emulate those like they did for the SVF. I wonder if it's possible to deactivate the filters while using a hardware profile, then use Cytomic The Drop afterwards and simply midi map the filters and filter mods to it as well.

[noiseboyuk]

It'll be interesting to see what filters they put into the MS20 profile. Is it just the UVI1 that can self-oscillate still? Must admit another option there wouldn't go amiss.

In the meantime, I've done a MDP template for the Dave Smith / Oberheim 0B-6:







https://mididesigner.com/qa/7224/dave-s ... sphere-2-5

[borjacobs]

Best of all, Omnisphere 2.6 can now capture the MIDI data of what the arpeggiator is doing as a standard MIDI file, which can be dragged to any DAW for further editing!

Thats awesome!

[noiseboyuk]

Echoes and anyone else interested - very belatedly realised that Omni itself helps you out with the mapping info. Select a Hardware Profile, then in the utility menu, click Show Midi Assignments. This opens a report in your web browser. You can then save this as an html file. Excel can import this, which is a bit easier on the eye. Lots of repetition to cover the 8 channels, but even so these are beasts... around 1,600 parameters for the Moog Voyager for example.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Echoes and anyone else interested - very belatedly realised that Omni itself helps you out with the mapping info. Select a Hardware Profile, then in the utility menu, click Show Midi Assignments. This opens a report in your web browser. You can then save this as an html file. Excel can import this, which is a bit easier on the eye. Lots of repetition to cover the 8 channels, but even so these are beasts... around 1,600 parameters for the Moog Voyager for example.

Oh wow, that's useful. But how can a hardware synth with fixed controls send 1600 parameters?

[Orbit-50]

All that work on Omnisphere...

...so little attention to Stylus RMX...

God, this is long overdue.

[noiseboyuk]

Echoes and anyone else interested - very belatedly realised that Omni itself helps you out with the mapping info. Select a Hardware Profile, then in the utility menu, click Show Midi Assignments. This opens a report in your web browser. You can then save this as an html file. Excel can import this, which is a bit easier on the eye. Lots of repetition to cover the 8 channels, but even so these are beasts... around 1,600 parameters for the Moog Voyager for example.

Oh wow, that's useful. But how can a hardware synth with fixed controls send 1600 parameters?

It’s 1600 parameters in Omni, not the controller. There might be a dozen or more things going on for 1 control on 1 layer. Quite an eye opener actually, makes you realise just how much background stuff is happening.

On its own, it’s pretty daunting and confusing, but together with the midi implementation table in the hardware manual it’s really useful. In Excel I sort by CC number, and I delete all the refs to the other 7 layers, then there’s two lists that sort of correlate, and you can see exactly what Spectrasonics have done, how many clicks there are etc.

[Echoes in the Attic]

I just looked at the midilearnreport for the Prophet X and it makes absolutely no sense to me...

[Echoes in the Attic]

Ok after looking at the midi table for the prophet X in the manual, it makes more sense. So it seems, as you said, that all that stuff in the Omnisphere midi report is what's already set up and doesn't actually have to be used to set up a controller. Really you just have to set up your midi controller to send the NRPN values as described in the hardware program parameter data table. This actually seems pretty daoble. I guess the only problem with hardware that normally would have menus, such as the prophet x, which has 16 modulations sources/targets, is that you wouldn't actually get to see the values you are selecting from the lists on a midi screen, nor an ipad app I guess like the midi designer. But I suppose since the Omni screen switches to that page automatically you could see the list selection changing.

I personally don't think I would bother with one of the classic analog type synth layouts, since Omnisphere really doesn't do a better job at the analog sounds than many other plugins I have, however something like the Prophet X would be very useful because you actually get access to the samples and granular functions over 4 layers.

[pdxindy]

I personally don't think I would bother with one of the classic analog type synth layouts, since Omnisphere really doesn't do a better job at the analog sounds than many other plugins I have, however something like the Prophet X would be very useful because you actually get access to the samples and granular functions over 4 layers.

Prophet X doesn't do granular...

[Echoes in the Attic]

I personally don't think I would bother with one of the classic analog type synth layouts, since Omnisphere really doesn't do a better job at the analog sounds than many other plugins I have, however something like the Prophet X would be very useful because you actually get access to the samples and granular functions over 4 layers.

Prophet X doesn't do granular...

We are talking about hardware profiles for controlling Omnisphere, not the synth itself. The Prophet X hardware profile in Omnisphere does control the granular functions in Omnisphere. In fact I’m not not even talking about using the prophet x to control Omnisphere, just its hardware profile with a midi controller like Novation SL. Like what noiseboyuk did with the midi designer apps.

To me, so far the Prophet X profile seems like the most useful because it can control 2 oscillator layers and two sample/granular layers. So you get more control than most hardware profiles.

[noiseboyuk]

For me I’m almost the opposite Echoes, that the bigger synths become really clumsy, multi-page affairs with endless scroll wheels of menu options. That isn’t a very sastisfyung experience for me. The Prophet 12 or D-50 Midi Designer layouts are hugely impressive at how much they cram in, but are just a forest of tiny identical controls. But they are there if you want them.

The simpler synths... well, I really do like a lot of those sounds in Omni, so have no issues with having Omni’s take on them and building patches that adhere to the original synth’s architecture. Something across one or two pages, with a pleasing visual layout, gets you a very good spirit of the synth for me and is fun and quick to program.

All that said, I’ve been wondering about some performance layouts for the bigger synths, particularly those with idiosyncratic controls, to be used in tandem with Omni’s controls rather than fully replacing them. Makes most sense with controls that manipulate multiple Omni parameters simultaneously, makes least sense on controls which are menu driven.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Yeah I get what you’re saying but if I’m using a VA synth with a fun simple layout, I’d rather the authentic character of an old analog synth, like Repro, Odyssey, Tal Juno, a Roland cloud synth, etc. with Omni I’d like to take advantage of the hybrid nature of it and be able to use oscillators as well as samples and granular in particular. Don’t need access to everything but thenprophet x looks good because it lets you use a couple depending oscillators and a couple sample based sources plus two filters, some effects etc. D-50 profile might be cool too but I don’t think it controls granular.

I counted the controls of the Prophet X and I think there were around 300, which includes many buttons. I could probably make use of 25 to 30 per page on a Novation SL so 10 to 15 pages should do it. That’s not too bad really. And the nice thing with the SL is that you can hit a button to go right to a midi template page. So I’m thinking the Zero SL used in combination with something else with quick controls like Bitwig device controls on a push, or komplete kontrol, might give a great way to controlling a lot of Omnisphere entirely from hardware without owning an expensive hardware synth.

I am however very curious about how they mapped the Virus TI. Perhaps they assigned graintable functions to granular for example with could be really cool. I’d maybe buy a TI desktop if so, since I also wouldn’t mind having a virus.

[Musicisbest]

Best of all, Omnisphere 2.6 can now capture the MIDI data of what the arpeggiator is doing as a standard MIDI file, which can be dragged to any DAW for further editing!

Thats awesome!

Nice feature, very useful.