Omnisphere

[deeplfo]

> Anybody here installed Omnisphere yet? What are your thoughts?

So, I've been playing around with it since last week.  It is a *huge* install, but it's also a very huge and deep synth as well.   Right after you launch it, it feels like it's going to be fun, and it is.  Its huge number of sounds, the sound architecture, and the very nice UI begs it to be played and tweaked.  The sounds are really superb, and given it's part/patch/sound architecture, it's very easy to start with a given sound and completely mash it up in a matter of seconds.  There are two new modes, that weren't there in Atmosphere, the Live and Stack mode.  Live mode is a lot of fun, you put the synth in Multi mode and while playing you can modify the focus of which part is being played, while the keys you held from the last selected part are still playing.  You can get into some very cool jamming session in this mode.  Stack mode allows you to put any of the parts (8 of them) in a given key mapping, and overlaying,  to better manage your
 performance.  All the controls you need to move around parts and select/deselect stuff can be assigned to a midi control or note, which allows for easy access while you play.  

The one other major thing you'll start to notice as different from Atmosphere or Stylus RMX, is that there is so much under the covers of almost all aspects of the sound and modulation.  But not in the Reaktor way that is a bit daunting and comes with a higher learning curve.  It's all very intuitive and offered when needed.  Really nice design all around, you can tell it was designed by musicians.  Like I said the sound library is huge, and on first listen you get the impression that there are a lot of soundtrack-ish kind of sounds, but there is way more in the library, and tweaking these to get something different is really easy.

If you're getting it, make sure that right after you install that you apply the updates and library patches which are on the Spectrasonices' website.  The video tutorials on their site is really good too, but they've messed it up, some of the vids you can't hear the instrument while others you can't hear the presenter.  But you should really download and view them regardless.

I have already reported a bug that I caught while playing around with it in Live, and I suspect being as massive as an app that it is that there is probably a few more bugs lying around here and there.  But the fun factor of the instrument, it's layout and design, and the excellent sounds it produces makes it all worth while.  Score one for the Spectrasonics folks.


Mohsen