I would say that of the libraries, the Spotlight EDM stuff is probably the weakest overall - quite hit and miss. This is very much a matter of taste, but most of it feels like an attempt to do gnarly in your face type sounds. Those wouldn’t work for me anyway even if they were good, but I also feel you can get better and modern sounding versions of these in Serum, Current, Phase Plant etc.
Outside of that, it’s all pretty good. There are some good patches in Spotlight EDM, but it’s mostly the subtler stuff. Hardware library is excellent - some classic machines in there, and well sampled - these don’t get old. Omnisphere library has plenty of varied sounds, everything from classic sounds to world percussion.
For me the standout is still the Atmosphere library and also the atmospheric stuff in general. This is genuinley top tier stuff. It’s dotted throughout and is probably the main reason I fire Omni up - to grab an interesting/evolving sound out of there.
It doesn’t play well with macro mappings in Ableton so I basically never play with that stuff (like Kontakt, it’s a lot of having key sound parameters mapped to the modwheel type stuff.) If I could go back in time I’d skip the various Kontakt libraries and Komplete stuff I picked up (which has its place) and just get Omni. It’s a bit old looking now, but actually the consistent interface can be a benefit.
It sounds great but as others have mentioned: the UI feels old. Felt old when it came out. I think having to switch through as many tabs as it has just isn’t a good user experience. Serum 2 is better if you’re looking to do your own sound design.
But yeah, there’s so many patches in Omnishere that you probably wouldn’t actually need to do your own sound design. There’s no physical way you’d actually end up hearing every patch that synth has to offer and from a productivity side you’d probably pump out way more actual music if you stay focused and work with the presets in omnisphere.
Hmm, that’s a tricky one. In terms of specs, I’d say it has more in common with other “workstation”-style instruments like Nexus or Avenger than something like Kontakt, though you can absolutely cover similar ground with Kontakt and a decent selection of libraries… but, if you’re taking that route, that’s going to end up costing more than Omnisphere very quickly. All of these instruments mentioned cover different ground and are geared towards different styles and approaches.
In terms of out-of-the-box sounds and versatility there’s not really anything out there that has the same scope, IMO. I will mirror what has been said already though in that the UI is a bit old fashioned, though I have a bit of a soft spot for it. I also have a soft spot for Largo v1 so there really is no accounting for taste
I really, really, really love keyscape, and the interesting possibilities of what running it inside omnisphere might bring was really the catalyst that got me contemplating…
Anybody doing that or have any insights about it, or even does anybody have any ideas about running keyscape through something else that you think would rival running it in omnisphere?
I’ve been using Omnisphere and Keyscape for a decade now. Nothing has ever bettered it for me. I love the Hans Zimmer Legend to compliment it., And for keys ive got Garritan and Pianoteq etc. Pianos can be bettered yes. But the Rhodes holds its own nicely. Recently i needed a Rain texture and bombs exploding(realistic near and far for the intro to Blade Runner. And it got all the sounds i needed for the intro.(using Cherry Audio GX80 for the lead). It even had the beeps and bloops of a spaceship and landing and taking off. Theres nothing it seemingly can’t cover. Definitely my goto for quick results.
…there was a time, if u wanted to make sure to sound polished and expensive, u needed at least a little bunch of omnispehre sounds baked into ur sonic cake…
cpu usage was always a little expensive…but should be still the same while cpu’s came a long way in recent years…
spectrasonis service was very friendly when i had to re invoke my license after 2 years not using it and wnated to install it on another next level machine…
there are not too many classic classics in sonic software tools out there to find, but omnisphere is one of them…
I bought it 3 weeks ago and I’d say it’s well worth it. Especially if you don’t just use it as a standard rompler. It’s very impressive as a synth too, letting you select modeled waveforms from lot of great Hardware Synths such as OB-6, Prophet, Access Virus etc. Of course its full power is unlocked when you layer synth with samples.
And then you also have Hardware Integration which I’m currently using with my Yamaha Reface-CS.
My only complaint would be that it can be a bit menu-divey for a software synth. Quite a few menus and sub menus.
idk if i’m just not good at using it but i really don’t care for the sound of their VA synths in omnisphere, basses tend to come out super muddy sounding no matter what i do, even and especially when starting from presets. curious if other nauts have thoughts on the synths
but as everyone said for sample based instruments and sound effects nothing beats it, even in a hardware based workflow, omni sphere is so helpful to have around both for initial idea conception and finishing touches
Yep, I do that - it’s great! Having access to all of the Keyscape sounds as another standard sound source in Omnisphere is very nice, I don’t tend to use the standalone Keyscape instrument any more because there’s not a whole lot of point.
