After months of hype and teaser videos, Spectrasonics finally have released their latest synth, Omnisphere.  One part replacement for Atmosphere, and one part new synth, Omnisphere is said to use completely new ways of manipulating sound, along with some of the usual methods of synthesis. 

 

In keeping with the "as simple as you want it" programming mindset of this synth, each of the above sections also has presets to get you started.  So calling up a simple ADSR envelope for instance is a simple matter of selecting it from the drop down menu for that section.  This saves a lot of time when making patches, and there are dozens of presets to choose from for each part of the synth engine.  The filters, the effects, LFO's, every aspect of the synth has presets already created for you, and you can easily create and save your own as well.  On a synth this deep and complex, this can really speed up your workflow if you don't feel like getting too detailed each time you create a new sound, or find yourself using a common LFO shape often (for instance). 

FX: 

And that's not all.  Each layer in a preset also gets it's own effects rack (up to 4 effects each), as well as a 4 space rack that applies to the combination of both layers at the same time.  The effects are laid out like old-school hardware effects racks similar to something like Reason, with some cool graphics as well (I like the reference to the old Delay Lama plug-in used on one, very funny).  You can choose from 6 different dynamics processors (compression, expansion, etc.), 6 EQ types,  3 Filter modules, 3 types of distortion, 6 modulation based effects (phaser, flanger, etc.), 6 delay modules,  and 3 different reverbs.  All time-based effects can be synced to your host tempo, and the parameters of the layer effects can be modulated as well.  Each effect model is unique enough to distinguish it from the others, so there's not much overlap, and they all sound fantastic.  These add a lot of potential sound-mangling tools to your arsenal, I almost wish it was possible to route external audio through some of these, they sound that good!

 

Synthesis: 

A lot of the initial buzz around Omnisphere centered around the unique methods the Spectrasonics team used in capturing the samples that ship with the synth.  However, not only is Omnisphere a sort of super sampler player, it's also a full-fledged synth in it's own right.  You can choose basic waveforms to use instead of the sample-based engine, or even a combination of the two with samples on one layer and a synth engine on the second.  The basic synth section contains only 5 main oscillator types, SquareSawFat, SquareSawBright, Triangle, Noise, and Sine.  But these can be morphed and twisted in real-time by changing their symmetry, shape, or hard-synced to themselves, the effects of which you can view in real time in the synth display window.  You can even simulate slight random tuning variations ala analog style synths if that's your thing.

You also get a huge amount of sampled waveforms to choose from here as well, and in many cases Spectrasonics has even stated which synths they sampled the waveforms from.  For instance you can use a JP-8000 supersaw, or the Prophet-VS waves.  Add to this the fact that these sampled waveforms and the raw synth engine can undergo waveshaping, granular synthesis, ring modulation or be stacked in unison, and you get a lot of potential for some serious synth power!  All in all the synth section alone sounds fantastic, almost worth the price of the instrument by itself, even without the huge sample library.

 

 

 

All in all it's HUGELY flexible, and adds a lot more depth to the package.  However this does all come with a price, mainly in terms of CPU usage.  On my 2.16gHz, MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM, running more than a few patches in Multi mode really ate up almost all of my CPU power.  Some of the single Patches could eat up to 70% of my CPU power in Logic 8.02, so stacking more than 2 or 3 patches in multi-mode was just not possible.  Given that most of the Multi presets are only made up of two or three layers, my guess this is not that uncommon of an occurrence.  Just fair warning, you'll need an extremely fast computer to take full advantage of all 8 layers using more than some simple patches on each layer. 

Browser: 

Of course having thousands of patches and samples on hand is worthless if it takes you hours to find what you need.  Like Native Instruments did earlier with their Kore line up, Spectrasonics has gone through and tagged all of the presets and samples with attributes and descriptive names to help you find exactly what you need.  At the top of the browser are 4 panes where you can define search criteria to help you narrow down the search for the specific sound you're looking for.

 

This greatly speeds up the process of finding the types of sounds you're looking for, you can even save your own patches with custom search criteria or your own name to make finding them later on easier. I also like that while the patches are organized alphabetically initially, there's a handy 'shuffle' button that randomly rearranges them for you.  It's a great way to find new patches or some you might have missed, because yes, the library is THAT large. I should note that some of the samples used in the presets can be quite large (over 500MB), so it can take a few seconds to load a new patch when you're scrolling through them.  It can be frustrating at times, but it's inevitable with samples of this size and thus quality.  There's a "preview" mode you can engage in the browser to cut down on this load time, but it works by only loading a limited keyrange of samples for the patch you're previewing. 

Sound: 

I'll cut right to the chase and say that Omnisphere sounds good, really good.  The synth section is aliasing free, and the samples are so clean it's scary.  Basses are deep and punchy, the pads are smooth and airy, and leads can have some real bite to them.  Because Omnisphere ships with all of the Atmosphere content as well, it can be easy to categorize this one as a pad and texture synth when you're just browsing the library.  Those types of patches SEEM to be the most prevalent with all the Atmosphere content.  However you can also choose to show only the Omnisphere patches (or only the Atmosphere patches for that matter) and here's where you'll find much more varied types of sounds.  There's plenty of synth, bass, lead, and even some acoustic instrument variations included.  They all sound fabulous, though I do think it's fair to say that some of the textures and pads are the real standouts in my opinion.  Some could almost be ambient pieces on their own, many of Omnisphere's presets continue to evolve and change for some time when you hold down keys on your controller. There's even some weird experimental noises for people doing film work, random stabs and stingers and the like, though I'm not sure how useful these are to the average musician.  On thing that did strike me about Omnisphere, is just how playable the rest of the patches are.  They can have such unique timbres and sounds, and yet still let you play them up and down the keyboard without losing their tonality, something other more esoteric synths don't always pull off. 

To sum up, I don't think anyone will be able to complain about the sound quality of this synth.  It covers a lot of sonic ground, and you can tell a LOT of time went into the presets.  If rolling your own is more your thing, there's so many options here for tweaking that you could get lost for months and never cover the same territory. 

Final Thoughts:

This synth has so much on offer that I didn't have time to cover nearly as much as I would have liked (it could easily go on for a dozen more pages).  I have not had a chance to cover the extensive midi control available, the fact that the mod-wheel is already premapped to the most important controls (allowing instant tweaking), or the extremely flexible arppegiator.  Suffice to say this is one DEEP synth.  I admit I was kind of skeptical of their marketing when they claimed it took "Years to create, but a lifetime to explore", but having used Omnisphere for a few weeks now, and only feeling I've just scratched the surface, I'm a believer. 

That's not to say this synth is necessarily hard to learn, or complex to use.  For much of the review I barely needed to glance at the manual, everything was laid out and worked in a logical manner.  In general the synth is nice and simple at first glance, but you can get deeper and deeper into the sound design aspects quite easily by expanding the individual sections.  Not only is it an amazing sounding synth, there's so much content included that you really could spend a long time before you feel like you're running out of ideas on this synth.  It's very much a sound design workstation. 

In fact the only real negative thing I can think of to say is that the library IS very large, and for laptop musicians this will likely mean a new internal hard drive has to be figured into the cost of the software.  Yes you can install the library onto an external drive, but not everyone carries an external drive with them at all times.  The other slight downside is the sheer CPU power needed to run Omnisphere.  All but the very fastest computers available will struggle to run more than 2 or 3 patches at once.  Again, that's what you get for such high quality sounds, but it definitely means you need a fairly new computer to use Omnisphere without running into that type of limitations.  The longer load times of some of the patches has to be mentioned as well.  There's no way around it for a sample based synth like this, but I could see some people getting a little bit frustrated by this if they're in a hurry. 

Still, I really like this synth, and I have a feeling this will be my go to softsynth for some time to come.  I was worried that it was going to be nothing more than a fancy ROMpler, and that a lot of people would be using the same sounds once it was released.  While I'm sure some people will gravitate towards the more obvious presets in the library, there's so much on hand here that crafting your own unique sounds is not hard at all, and if anything is more fun than you could imagine.

Tarekith

ALDJ