As far as synths go, Omnisphere has always been a, likely the, leading synth. There are lots of sounds that you just cannot get out of other synths. However, for a few years there has been no updates, but at NAMM they are going to announce Omnisphere 2.
They key bits for me are
You can now import your own audio files and morph them
The sound finder (media bay) application now has some very advanced features - making it easier to find exactly what you want. You can take an aspect of a sound and find all other sounds that share that aspect, or, you can take an aspect of a sound and then morph/find all other sounds whilst fixing that aspect to be the same across them all. Very new concept and very powerful.
I want this so badly, I almost pulled the trigger on Omnisphere 1.5 about a month ago and so glad I held off now. Looks like they really beefed up the synth capabilities so it’s much more versatile now!
IMO: The reason why omnisphere sounds are so good is that they incorporated warped natural sounds. Probably for marketing reasons they left out the ability to import wav files from O1. It seemed to me to be so obvious that they should include it.
Now Omnisphere does include it, and has a new granular synth. It was already the best synth you can buy, but now, it’s better. I don’t think the upgrade is worth as much as they are charging, as apart from these features, there is not too much to tell, but the one killer feature is importing wav files, it’s going to make a huge difference to the sounds that can be achieved. I shall definitely be first in line for the upgrade.
I cant wait
just purchased Omnisphere after seeing the vids for version 2. Installed and ran through the distortion patches first and the sound blew me away. There are similar base sounds on other synths but Om just has so much depth and movement in the patches. Synthetic patches are excellent and there are a mountain of them. I keep getting lost in the GUI as i dont think this is layed out very well. The thing I found and i have not fully explored is that I could not find any usable piano, I would rate the piano as very poor but i could be wrong as like i say not fully explored.
I have Halion 5 which has pretty good natural sounding pianos and variants so I am not too bothered.
I have quite a few add ons and so was originally looking at getting the very expensive Access Virus Ti2 Desktop.
When i lost out on a couple of bids I took the plunge and went for Om and dont regret it at all.
Also there are No drum kits at all, certainly none worth using. As I have also just purchased Groove Agent 4 I am kind of happy that I am not duplicating synths etc.
I have new inspiration to knock up some dance tracks now, Prodigyesque sounds as the distortion sounds are very good.
With V2 being a free upgrade and the promise to import samples plus more I would recommend this to anyone with £280 to spare. No I dont work for Spectrasonics, I am quick to critise when things are not good (Cubase 8 issues for example) so by the same token I am happy to publish positive comments.
One thing that did put me off before buying was the lack of demo’s on youtube showing the standard patches.
There are a few video’s but none that do it justice with regards to the standard supplied sounds.
If i get time i may post a vid showing off say my fav 30 patches.
One thing i forgot to mention above is that there is a new way of finding that right patch. with the use of Persing magic you can now with O2 search for sounds sonically. This is the first synth to my knowledge to offer this feature and it seemed to work on the demo video (on Spectrosinics site).
A major obstacle for the use of synth sounds in tracks is finding that preset - there are literally thousands. This feature could lead to a whole new way of sound seeking. There is already a feature where you can find all sounds with a group of settings.
I have a feeling that there has been a lot of work on this aspect - sound seeking
