Having owned Omnisphere for about 8 years, it's still got 'a sound' that I first became familiar with back in the '90's with my XP-80 and JV-2080 with various sound cards... that great Eric Persing influence on sound design and straight ahead instrument sampling. It never fails. But....don't turn it on late at night and start playing some of the pads... or you'll mesmerize yourself into falling into a trance and waking up with your head on the keyboard!
Woody, you’re smashing an open door: Omnisphere is an outstanding piece of software and I’m quite proud of having it among my virtual instruments. Perhaps, the sole downside of this great software is that you can spend literally tons of hours just listening to its presets, but at the end you come up with nothing but a great good time. They help a lot finding new ideas, every preset opens a possibility of new themes, the more you scroll the more you have suggestions, impressions and feelings.
LOL - that's nearly my reason for buying up so many late-80s to early-2000s ROMplers. 😊 I just love playing with them. Will I ever produce anything from the enormous evolving soundscapes in, e.g., some of the Korg racks? Nope. But I have a grand old time feeling tiny beneath a towering, larger-than-life multi patch.
Same experience here with Omnisphere, which led me to Woody's video to try and narrow the field and not get lost in the overwhelming amount of patches in there. Save some favorites and just use those as the building blocks
Yes that's exactly it. You open your DAW to compose something but instead you just spend that time browsing through Omnisphere. It gets even worse with Keyscape pianos and rhodes, they sound so good sometimes I just end up playing for a while without producing anything at all and that's it.
i bet they do, but there are a lot of very talented designers that contribute to the factory presets, pluginguru, the unfinished, howard scarr and mr persing himself.
@@WoodyPianoShack Yeah. You just can't compete with some of those gods of the industry. That's not to say other companies don't put love and sweat into their presets, but Eric Persing could probably step on a touchpad and configure a preset that anyone else would be lucky to achieve as a once-in-a-lifetime opus.
@@WoodyPianoShack I agree Woody and regret my harsh comment. I just love using their S88 controller with their software but always go back to omnisphere as it usually sounds so much better and inspiring. That being said, I love Noire!
You kind of have to look for those big awe-inspiring sounds. I remember being blown away by a few of the presets in Photone (for Reaktor 5.5). I've also come back to Reaktor and see a lot of potential in simpler factory content such as 2-OSC. Otherwise, most of it (Reaktor, that is) is curious sprinkles of DnB, techno, breakbeat, and idm friendly oddities. I will say that big cinematic pads featured in this vid are easy on the ears, but difficult to manage on the headroom (most of these Omnisphere showcases have too much reverb on them for a busy mix). I'd say that a sound designer is gonna get more out of Reaktor, while a soundtrack composer is going to get more immediate results out of Omnisphere.
It's actually quite amazing what you can do with your own Individual Samples from hardware synths when simply drop and dragged into Omnisphere. It really is a powerhouse of a VST for the price. I like Falcon 2.5 or 2.6 now I think, (can't remember which versiin update I did last). However it's much more complex and time consuming to use. I also like that with Omnisphere quite a lot of popular hardware synths are already pre auto mapped to Omnisphere controls. I have my Summit hooked up to Omnisphere as a combo. Soon as connect summit via usb it's already mapped. No messing or searching for CC, just done!!.
I remember when Atmosphere came out and that blew my mind. It was just the best feeling ever, at the time, to be able to play these sounds and it provided tons of inspiration for composing. Good to see you enjoying this amazing software.
I'm glad you're enjoying Omnisphere; it's easy to get lost in the sounds for hours. The gorgeous vocal patches are even more impressive when you realize that the vocal soundsources were originally created for hardware samplers, when RAM was pretty limited. Look up the sample libraries that Spectrasonics used to sell; most of them are part of Omnisphere now. That makes Omnisphere a much better deal, cost-wise, considering the price of all of those libraries.
I remember a few years back Woody how you said your favourite patch on the D-50 was Fantasia. You're showing some very real consistency with this one particular patch on 3.25!
@@WoodyPianoShack That's very true.. I had not considered that. Ooh before I forget, have you tried any of the Keyscape patches in Omnisphere yet Woody? Some of them go beautifully layered with 'Cathedral Strings' and reverb
Good sound engine. Brings me to an idea using the JV-1080 with up to 16 parts (4 osc each) in performance mode. It would actually eat up all 64 voices with one note. Never done it this way.
SERIOUSLY... what can anyone say about that synth??!! It is just SO POWERFUL!!! It is still blowing my mind after many years!! Great video, Woody!! ❣💛💚
P.S. And not that it's 'needed', but a touch of an Aphex Aural Exciter on the TH-cam video... brings things to another level. (Just a 'touch' though... because an Aphex is so powerful.)
@@WoodyPianoShack That's true! But, it seems like a lot of synths (particularly soft-synths) focus on being your bread-and-butter sound generators now. Whether that's a complex piano model, a huge drum library, or an analog modeling soft-synth. I miss the days of having banks of sounds that don't sound like anything else but what they sound like, and Omnisphere delivers that in spades!!
"Armand's granular garden" is my favorite here. :D I have been using Omnisphere since 2010 and I'm still learning new stuff, it can sound so massive and epic!
Thanks Woody for recognising that Omnisphere is more than just a sample based synth. Actually your video got me a little interested so I started looking into it myself. It's been on my bucket list for a while too but I took the plunge and got it. All I can say is OMG!!!! I must say it is one amazing instrument. So much so that I might stick my neck out here and say its got be either the best or one of the best software instruments in the world right now!. I have spent a lot of money getting software instruments. I have got over 350 of them now spread across 6 computers in my studio. I wish I had got Omnisphere first. So my advice to anyone out there with little or no software synths thinking of getting into them, is please buy Omnisphere first. Yes it is a lot of money but once you actually get it, you realise you won't need too many more after that. I wish I had bought it first! It's got the most beautiful sound. Eric's involvement with Roland definitely shines through but also goes much further. Also the Sonic Extensions are something else too.
yeah, i wish more soft synths had the combi/performance mode. it's been popular in hardware synths & workstations for decades, but not so much software.
Nice to see the Novation LaunchKey 49 doing it’s job. Still use mine all the time in the studio, but rely on 61 & 76 controllers for live or piano playing.
Omnisphere and Cubase have one thing in common: 90% of their owners know only abt 10 % of the features and capabilities of these great Programs. Proud owner of Omnisphere since 2015 and mapped my ROLAND SYSTEM 1 to handle the haptic feeling of knobs and faders. Even before Omnisphere started it with 2.5.
Great demo Woody, I love these sounds too. I've been using Omnisphere since 2015 and I'm still discovering new stuff all the time. In terms of CPU usage, I always recommend Omnisphere be run on at least i7 processors. Multis can cause CPU overloading if they have too many busy layers or if the polyphony is set too high - but the worst culprits are the Granular engine and the Innerspace effect, so if creating multis it's best to avoid these. (The Proverb effect can also be an issue, but it has a CPU knob on it to allow the user to specify how much of the available CPU power it should utilise.)
@@WoodyPianoShack That is true. Everything I said above relates to a single core. That is why all the PlugInGuru libraries now use multiple instances of Omnisphere within Unify if we ever want to create Omnisphere multis with more than about 3 layers.
With the push for a lot of software VSTs to become standalone in hardware, I wonder if Eric will ever decide to do the Omnisphere engine in a dedicated hardware synth. You can get close with things like the Prophet X and Quantum but I’d love to see how Eric would approach such a thing.
8:25 The effects of glitching aren't noticeable with only one patch. They start to occur when you have multiple tracks with a softsynth. I used a lot of Omnisphere back in 2013, but the 80GB it took put me off from installing it again on a new pc.
Impressive sounding. Can't wait to dig into mine. Just finished installing. Now I have about all there is with this, Arturia V Collection 9, Komplete 14 Collectors Edition and Reason 12 - to name the big ticket items. My early 66th b-day present (Aug 12). Sounds to last me the rest of my life and beyond... :) Enjoyed your video very much!!!
Nice sounds, I like it! By the way I can tel you something about the "Rompler" thema: ROM (read only memory was used in the old days. As an Engineer i can tell you its easy to make a sinewave generator, but difficult to make it good, because In analog technology it was always the hard part to minimise distortions. Digital technology made it easy to overcome distortion problems. What you probably not know is: In all PCs there is a math-processing unit within the CPU which is specialised to make math calculations, and to calculate a sine function it always uses a built in ROM integrated in the CPU. In this ROM there is a table where the CPU can look up every value for very many points of a sine function, and for points between the math-CPU interpolates. That is much quicker than to calculate sine by a series of quadratic terms and it is very accurate. So any software that makes sine waves and waveforms derived from that, uses the internal ROM in the CPU, this is unavoidable. But software producer are honest, if they say "we use no ROM" because they dont know that the CPU uses ROM internally, A ROM-pler in theyr mind is something that uses external ROM or something equivalent to create waveforms stored on Memory. So they are correct. A synth uses sinwaves only as basic waveform and does some processing with it to create complex waveforms. A real ROM-pler would rather be something that does NO digital signal processing to produce complex waveforms derived from the basic sine waves, but using sampled waveforms instead. It is just a funny fact, that ROM is still allways used in modern CPUs, especially always if sine waves are "calculated" and few people know that. But that "calculated" sine waves from the ROM in the CPU are "cleaner" and less distorted than any analog wave-generator could do it. So OMNISPHERE (as any software synth) produces cleaner and undistorted sinewaves than any analog synth. CDs are "cleaner" than old vinyl. Im not one of the vinyl fans, wo say "CDs have no heart", only somtimes (very rare times) I take out and play an old vinyl with scratches and distortions to remember how bad that sound was, and how lucky I am to live in the the digital age ;-)
ROMpler doesn't necessarily refer to everything that uses waveform data stored in ROM. A ROMpler is a "synth" that pitches samples up and down a range (often a keyboard), but doesn't have many parameters that you can modify beyond that. It doesn't even have to store the samples in ROM, in order to be called a ROMpler. The term itself is from a previous era of digital tech, and refers to outdated tech, but it has come to mean something that plays manufacturer installed samples across a range of pitches, but doesn't do much to modify them. There isn't, like, a strict cutoff between ROMpler and synth... it's debatable case by case, hence the debates....
Yeah, not sure I agree with a lot of that. But these terms are pretty vague and malleable, so it can get ambiguous. IMO, there's additive and subtractive synthesis that use one or more oscillators* which generate (either electrically or digitally) a simple repetitive waveform, and then use filters to shape that sound. Additive synths would layer these oscillators, and run them in various series / parallel / modulation topologies to achieve a characteristic tone. Subtractive synths would lean more on filters to alter the spectral characteristics. The key factor being that the sounds are generated in real-time from simple waveforms -- sine being one of them, but far from the only primitive at its disposal. Could be triangle, saw, square, pulse, any variable shape between, or any arbitrary repetitive waveform (i.e., "wavetable"), random noise, etc. Back in the day, when things were more discrete in nature (an analog synth was that and only that, and same for an FM synth, or an organ, or whatever), we added those new-fangled "samplers" to the tool kit. Usually digital, but not always (see: Mellotron.) That took a sampled waveform and could scale the speed up and down arbitrarily to change pitch. ROMplers were just synths with a sampler engine, but using built-in samples rather than sounds you recorded yourself. They may not be capable of sampling anything new, perhaps being playback-only machines. You got what you got for source material, but could usually tweak the patches to your liking -- anything from filters and effects, to which underlying ROM-based waveforms were being used. AFAIK, the ability to manipulate those sounds (via effects or filters or layering or anything else) was never part of the definition of a ROMpler. Really early, toy, or primitive ROMplers may have been little more than variable-speed digital tape players, but it got to be pretty much assumed that there would be a sophisticated effects engine on top of it. Some, as early as circa-2000, would even have built-in amp sims and such. So that's my lexicon, anyway. ROMplers are (fixed-waveform) samplers, thus samplers are not ROMplers, unless it's a ROMpler with sampling capability. They're all synths. The presence of ROM for the purposes of providing a digital CPU with code, or even resources like waveforms, look-up tables, patches, etc... that's not what anyone is talking about when referring to "ROM" with regard to ROMplers vs. samplers, etc. That's about as relevant as capacitors and resistors are to analog synths. It's just part of the bill of materials, not a categorical feature. * Side note: The term "oscillator" was later appropriated to mean "any old sound generator," including samples. It's a term people knew, and it was easier to describe new techniques using analogies rather than splitting hairs.
@@nickwallette6201 I Agree, and I did know most of this, of corse the key factor being that the sounds are generated in real-time from simple waveforms -- sine being one of them, but far from the only primitive at its disposal. thank you for the very detailled answer. I see you have a lot knowlege.
I hesitate for years to get it.. meanwhile i bought everything on arturia, NI etc.. but i think im gonna take omnisphere, i think this is the best vst flr sound design
@@fredycate2329if it’s in your price range, then yes. There’s gonna be a whole host of sounds that are either very dance musicy or experimentally cinematic, and might be off putting when looking at such a massive amount of sounds. Despite that you can learn all the basics of synthesis techniques in this software plus you have a massive amount of samples organic sounds to add to that
So funny when you grimaced at 3:33, I didn't understand why - it sounded great to me ! And so true about 'instant soundtrack', but it does kind of take away from musicianship - for good or bad. I'd imagine anyone could come up with something really interesting without knowing how to play keyboards or any knowledge of basic music theory.
The biggest problem with Omnisphere is finding the moment when you stop browsing the library because you are not sure if there is another great sound, even bit better than the one you found now :-) It is absolutely great instrument and I am very happy I paid its price. Imagine Omni as HW synth - would would it cost? 15k? AND - there is one hidden function: While browsing the library you can assign patches to PROJECTS, which is very very helpful.
Have been tempted by this for while. Partly as I have synths that have automatic mapping to match some of the engines! Maybe buy it soon... I know its more than a rompler but it reminds me a great deal of presets of the likes of the Triton or D50. Some great heritage in here.
I have a strong feeling that, in the end, you're liking a lot of "rompler" patches/multis ;D (for reasons, don't get me wrong!) but i stand with you that one of the most powerful mode of Omnisphere is being a "Sampler", not just a synth :)
Thanks for this. I may buy this one day. Top tip though: you may want to record some of your voice overs in rooms with less natural reverb. It doesn’t sound nice at all.
Thank you Mr. Woody. yes I did enjoy. If Atmosphere would have been a hardware synth like the Waldorf Quantum/ Iridium, it would have sold even better than the Quantum. I own 2 of the Omni sources: The Roland JD990 and the Oberheim M1000
I'm fairly convinced that Eric could see the potential of CPU power and software synths on the horizon and moved out of Roland to create one of the best software synths known to man. The architecture (of layers, patches, multi, etc.) looks like it comes from his Roland days, I actually wonder what the benefit of this is vs. Yamaha/Korg's way of building a sound (8 elements vs 4 partials, not sure if partials/parts are stereo, L&R thus 4 but anyways). That Big Square Pad sound at 6:33 is such a thing of beauty.
Great overview 👍. I’ve owned Omnisphere for years, but I very rarely use it and I don’t really know why. Possibly because the load times between patches frustrate my “now now now” personality!!! I had completely forgotten about this feature though, so I’ll definitely be diving back in for a renewed look. Thanks Woody !
yes, the loading times were quite surprising. and then you see 237MB in the patch notes, and that explains it I suppose. but it's a bit alarming when compared to other softsynths. just gotta deal with it.
Important to understand that you can play any sound in a second or less! Even though it may still be loading, that’s often just additional detail that loading up in background. None of that prevents you from playing the sounds. Some people wait until the loading completes before playing the sound, but that’s really not necessary
Nice demo - thanks Woody! I like the synth, but just a note that the numbers (of parts) only sound impressive initially, e.g. the Yamaha MOD-X has sounds with eight parts, each part made up of eight elements, so potentially more flexibility (though limited by the 128 poly limit in practice). The quality of the component sounds/samples is key and Omnisphere does seem to have a whole lot on offer there! My problem is that of having time to understand the sound engines of the things I have (rather than just using presets) - adding this might just exceed my brain capacity as well as that of my wallet!
The same guy who runs Spectrasonics is the same guy behind the Roland D-50, so I thought I'd watch this video because I was curious how THIS is. I heard of Omnisphere a few or so years ago when Roland did an anniversary series of videos of the D-50 with one including the D-50/Spectrasonics guy Eric Persing. Was wondering if this is like the technology of the D-50 of the future. It did seem to have similar essence but with newer quality & technology.
Lovely stuff, Woody. Sorely tempted to get the wallet out, but as I recently splurged on both a Komplete upgrade and the Arturia V Collection, I better hold fire for a bit!
You can do monstrous layering with Unify (Pluginguru) with any of your plugins , effortless and it's recursive..the only limit is your computer's memory/chipset..
I dive in and favorite patches every once in a while, probably got a couple hundred after a few dozen hours of swimming around in those preset banks. Guess what? There's hundreds of samples and phrases not even used in the ridiculous amount of presets already there. If you start making your own you can take it really far, turn it into a modern JV/wavestation hybrid beast with crossfading between layers.
yeah, i agree. i think you could quite easily make your own sounds by combining some samples, or even making your own multis. you actually don't get many multis, just a few hundred, which was surprising.
@@WoodyPianoShack That's the magic! you are a great musician, a great learner and teacher, and you engage with your videos. Probably you know better but I can just sit back and relax and listen and learn. On these days engagement is very hard, it's hard to concentrate or just enjoy what one love. Even when you are dealing with an Indian pop star with a love for keyboard demos 😂. Let me give you an example ... you take a TS10, go out and enjoy, my take away is I have a TS10, but I am forgetting to enjoy what I love. There are many take away in your videos my friend.
Great stuff there Woody! Out of interest how much ram have you? also what CPU? Just to give us a benchmark, for all we know you could have a Threadripper. 🖖🎶💯
well it's not this one, I wouldn't consider OS an all-rounder "bread&butter" workstation. i think this is a category that the software vendors have neglected. maybe roland zenology, or korg triton vst if you wan't that 2000 sound. any other suggestions people?
I wish omnisphere had a more minimalistic interface. For example the word omnisphere is in big caps and very large on top taking up a lot of valuable space. The interface is like too flamboyant and big looking for my taste. I also wish that sounds we're not by default limited to such low polyphony. It would also be nice if when switching instruments the previous instrument would not cut off.
After inputing Omnisphere VST, after closing the file, then reopening time, it doesnt play back.... Any help Sir?? The Midi is intact there...but will not play...
At this point, what's the difference between a hardware synth, and a computer you dedicate to the purpose? That's usually what hardware is now anyway. Granted, there were (once? maybe still...) external DSPs that were just VST hosts in a box. You could treat them like hardware, if you were specifically looking for a fixed-purpose appliance. You miss out on the lovely interface though, being forced to configure everything via the VSTi's exposed automation parameters instead.
Okay I’ve tried to post two times, that when you are done with Omnisphere you should take a look at UNIFY by Plugin Guru. That could continue to blow your mind.
@@WoodyPianoShack Okay I’ve tried to post two times, that when you are done with Omnisphere you should take a look at UNIFY by Plugin Guru. That could continue to blow your mind.
According to the features of U-HE Hive and Spectrasonics Omnisphere your statement is incorrect. The samples alone delivered with Omnisphere are so outstanding according to its competitors. So, they are different beasts with some similarities and both are great tools 🙂
Lol Hive isn't anywhere near Omnisphere mate. To the piont I'm simply assuming your just joking with your comment. Now if you said Falcon 2.5 on the other hand!! But Hive lol....Nah!!
@@WoodyPianoShack Right on. I do love Hive, it's my fav. But in actuality I really use my Kurzweil PC3 for all the "sample-ey" sounding stuff. I'm not a power user as in making my own programs, but for now the existing programs are enough for me.
Having owned Omnisphere for about 8 years, it's still got 'a sound' that I first became familiar with back in the '90's with my XP-80 and JV-2080 with various sound cards... that great Eric Persing influence on sound design and straight ahead instrument sampling. It never fails. But....don't turn it on late at night and start playing some of the pads... or you'll mesmerize yourself into falling into a trance and waking up with your head on the keyboard!
Woody, you’re smashing an open door: Omnisphere is an outstanding piece of software and I’m quite proud of having it among my virtual instruments. Perhaps, the sole downside of this great software is that you can spend literally tons of hours just listening to its presets, but at the end you come up with nothing but a great good time. They help a lot finding new ideas, every preset opens a possibility of new themes, the more you scroll the more you have suggestions, impressions and feelings.
ye yeah, i realise I'm 15 years late to the party! i fully agree with your experiences so far.
LOL - that's nearly my reason for buying up so many late-80s to early-2000s ROMplers. 😊 I just love playing with them. Will I ever produce anything from the enormous evolving soundscapes in, e.g., some of the Korg racks? Nope. But I have a grand old time feeling tiny beneath a towering, larger-than-life multi patch.
Same experience here with Omnisphere, which led me to Woody's video to try and narrow the field and not get lost in the overwhelming amount of patches in there. Save some favorites and just use those as the building blocks
Yes that's exactly it. You open your DAW to compose something but instead you just spend that time browsing through Omnisphere. It gets even worse with Keyscape pianos and rhodes, they sound so good sometimes I just end up playing for a while without producing anything at all and that's it.
I wish native instruments put this much love into their presets!
i bet they do, but there are a lot of very talented designers that contribute to the factory presets, pluginguru, the unfinished, howard scarr and mr persing himself.
@@WoodyPianoShack Yeah. You just can't compete with some of those gods of the industry. That's not to say other companies don't put love and sweat into their presets, but Eric Persing could probably step on a touchpad and configure a preset that anyone else would be lucky to achieve as a once-in-a-lifetime opus.
@@WoodyPianoShack I agree Woody and regret my harsh comment. I just love using their S88 controller with their software but always go back to omnisphere as it usually sounds so much better and inspiring. That being said, I love Noire!
You kind of have to look for those big awe-inspiring sounds. I remember being blown away by a few of the presets in Photone (for Reaktor 5.5). I've also come back to Reaktor and see a lot of potential in simpler factory content such as 2-OSC. Otherwise, most of it (Reaktor, that is) is curious sprinkles of DnB, techno, breakbeat, and idm friendly oddities. I will say that big cinematic pads featured in this vid are easy on the ears, but difficult to manage on the headroom (most of these Omnisphere showcases have too much reverb on them for a busy mix).
I'd say that a sound designer is gonna get more out of Reaktor, while a soundtrack composer is going to get more immediate results out of Omnisphere.
It's actually quite amazing what you can do with your own Individual Samples from hardware synths when simply drop and dragged into Omnisphere.
It really is a powerhouse of a VST for the price.
I like Falcon 2.5 or 2.6 now I think, (can't remember which versiin update I did last).
However it's much more complex and time consuming to use.
I also like that with Omnisphere quite a lot of popular hardware synths are already pre auto mapped to Omnisphere controls.
I have my Summit hooked up to Omnisphere as a combo. Soon as connect summit via usb it's already mapped. No messing or searching for CC, just done!!.
I remember when Atmosphere came out and that blew my mind. It was just the best feeling ever, at the time, to be able to play these sounds and it provided tons of inspiration for composing. Good to see you enjoying this amazing software.
This is such an amazing synth. It's great to see you diving into it. More videos of you diving even more into this synth is absolutely a must!!
i've got a couple more in the can!
As a sound designer, i use Omnisphere daily, it's by far the best software sampler/granular synth out there.
nope. that´s not correct. I´m a sound designer too.
@@Byron101_ in your opinion.
I'm glad you're enjoying Omnisphere; it's easy to get lost in the sounds for hours. The gorgeous vocal patches are even more impressive when you realize that the vocal soundsources were originally created for hardware samplers, when RAM was pretty limited. Look up the sample libraries that Spectrasonics used to sell; most of them are part of Omnisphere now. That makes Omnisphere a much better deal, cost-wise, considering the price of all of those libraries.
I remember a few years back Woody how you said your favourite patch on the D-50 was Fantasia. You're showing some very real consistency with this one particular patch on 3.25!
yeah, well, these patches could be programmed by the same guy, our beloved Eric!
@@WoodyPianoShack That's very true.. I had not considered that. Ooh before I forget, have you tried any of the Keyscape patches in Omnisphere yet Woody? Some of them go beautifully layered with 'Cathedral Strings' and reverb
This is hands down the BEST video review/test of Omnisphere I’ve ever seen. Thanks for all you do
Big square and Enyaesque pads every day! Beautiful sounds.
Good sound engine. Brings me to an idea using the JV-1080 with up to 16 parts (4 osc each) in performance mode. It would actually eat up all 64 voices with one note. Never done it this way.
it would indeed, at least here the only limit is your CPU.
Spectrasonics made expansion cards for the JV series, and Persing did a bunch of the factory presets :) the lineage is direct
SERIOUSLY... what can anyone say about that synth??!! It is just SO POWERFUL!!! It is still blowing my mind after many years!! Great video, Woody!! ❣💛💚
P.S. And not that it's 'needed', but a touch of an Aphex Aural Exciter on the TH-cam video... brings things to another level. (Just a 'touch' though... because an Aphex is so powerful.)
indeed. planning on shooting a new fun video today on omni actually, quite the coincidence
you mean this is something you do when playing back the video? why not!
Always, ALWAYS fun to watch you reacting to sounds you've neevr heard. Very entertaining! ❤
That's it, I'm buying this asap... I think I'm moving into the Omnisphere and live there for the rest of my life...
don't do anything too hasty! there's a lot of sonic ground that it doesn't cover... might compliment your other stuff nicely though. cheers xav.
@@WoodyPianoShack That's true! But, it seems like a lot of synths (particularly soft-synths) focus on being your bread-and-butter sound generators now. Whether that's a complex piano model, a huge drum library, or an analog modeling soft-synth. I miss the days of having banks of sounds that don't sound like anything else but what they sound like, and Omnisphere delivers that in spades!!
"Armand's granular garden" is my favorite here. :D I have been using Omnisphere since 2010 and I'm still learning new stuff, it can sound so massive and epic!
Thanks Woody for recognising that Omnisphere is more than just a sample based synth. Actually your video got me a little interested so I started looking into it myself. It's been on my bucket list for a while too but I took the plunge and got it. All I can say is OMG!!!! I must say it is one amazing instrument. So much so that I might stick my neck out here and say its got be either the best or one of the best software instruments in the world right now!. I have spent a lot of money getting software instruments. I have got over 350 of them now spread across 6 computers in my studio. I wish I had got Omnisphere first. So my advice to anyone out there with little or no software synths thinking of getting into them, is please buy Omnisphere first. Yes it is a lot of money but once you actually get it, you realise you won't need too many more after that. I wish I had bought it first! It's got the most beautiful sound. Eric's involvement with Roland definitely shines through but also goes much further. Also the Sonic Extensions are something else too.
These sound so badass! And up to EIGHT patches combined? That's so neat!
yeah, i wish more soft synths had the combi/performance mode. it's been popular in hardware synths & workstations for decades, but not so much software.
LayR for iPad user
Nice to see the Novation LaunchKey 49 doing it’s job. Still use mine all the time in the studio, but rely on 61 & 76 controllers for live or piano playing.
Omnisphere and Cubase have one thing in common:
90% of their owners know only abt 10 % of the features and capabilities of these great Programs.
Proud owner of Omnisphere since 2015 and mapped my ROLAND SYSTEM 1 to handle the haptic feeling of knobs and faders. Even before Omnisphere started it with 2.5.
that's probably true! i likely fall into the 90% category.
Great demo Woody, I love these sounds too. I've been using Omnisphere since 2015 and I'm still discovering new stuff all the time. In terms of CPU usage, I always recommend Omnisphere be run on at least i7 processors. Multis can cause CPU overloading if they have too many busy layers or if the polyphony is set too high - but the worst culprits are the Granular engine and the Innerspace effect, so if creating multis it's best to avoid these. (The Proverb effect can also be an issue, but it has a CPU knob on it to allow the user to specify how much of the available CPU power it should utilise.)
i heard from pluginguru that omnisphere only utilises one CPU core, even for these massive multi-part combos.
@@WoodyPianoShack That is true. Everything I said above relates to a single core. That is why all the PlugInGuru libraries now use multiple instances of Omnisphere within Unify if we ever want to create Omnisphere multis with more than about 3 layers.
With the push for a lot of software VSTs to become standalone in hardware, I wonder if Eric will ever decide to do the Omnisphere engine in a dedicated hardware synth. You can get close with things like the Prophet X and Quantum but I’d love to see how Eric would approach such a thing.
8:25 The effects of glitching aren't noticeable with only one patch. They start to occur when you have multiple tracks with a softsynth. I used a lot of Omnisphere back in 2013, but the 80GB it took put me off from installing it again on a new pc.
I've always enjoyed the way you play. Thank you for sharing your joy of music for us.
oh! thanks, appreciated.
Such an amazing synth! I'm sto late to the party and still discovering so many features, presets, etc! Thanks for sharing!
Impressive sounding. Can't wait to dig into mine. Just finished installing. Now I have about all there is with this, Arturia V Collection 9, Komplete 14 Collectors Edition and Reason 12 - to name the big ticket items. My early 66th b-day present (Aug 12). Sounds to last me the rest of my life and beyond... :) Enjoyed your video very much!!!
So pleased you have found OMNISPHERE . Love the fact you found Cryogenic Bells 'a bit hot ' . Cool man .
Nice sounds, I like it!
By the way I can tel you something about the "Rompler" thema:
ROM (read only memory was used in the old days.
As an Engineer i can tell you its easy to make a sinewave generator, but difficult to make it good, because In analog technology it was always the hard part to minimise distortions. Digital technology made it easy to overcome distortion problems.
What you probably not know is:
In all PCs there is a math-processing unit within the CPU which is specialised to make math calculations, and to calculate a sine function it always uses a built in ROM integrated in the CPU.
In this ROM there is a table where the CPU can look up every value for very many points of a sine function, and for points between the math-CPU interpolates. That is much quicker than to calculate sine by a series of quadratic terms and it is very accurate.
So any software that makes sine waves and waveforms derived from that, uses the internal ROM in the CPU, this is unavoidable.
But software producer are honest, if they say "we use no ROM" because they dont know that the CPU uses ROM
internally, A ROM-pler in theyr mind is something that uses external ROM or something equivalent to create waveforms stored on Memory. So they are correct.
A synth uses sinwaves only as basic waveform and does some processing with it to create complex waveforms.
A real ROM-pler would rather be something that does NO digital signal processing to produce complex waveforms derived from the basic sine waves, but using sampled waveforms instead.
It is just a funny fact, that ROM is still allways used in modern CPUs, especially always if sine waves are "calculated" and few people know that.
But that "calculated" sine waves from the ROM in the CPU are "cleaner" and less distorted than any analog wave-generator could do it.
So OMNISPHERE (as any software synth) produces cleaner and undistorted sinewaves than any analog synth.
CDs are "cleaner" than old vinyl. Im not one of the vinyl fans, wo say "CDs have no heart",
only somtimes (very rare times) I take out and play an old vinyl with scratches and distortions to remember how bad that sound was, and how lucky I am to live in the the digital age ;-)
oh no, don't bring the rompler debate into this video too! actually, that was an interesting comment so thanks! I hadn't realised any of that.
ROMpler doesn't necessarily refer to everything that uses waveform data stored in ROM. A ROMpler is a "synth" that pitches samples up and down a range (often a keyboard), but doesn't have many parameters that you can modify beyond that.
It doesn't even have to store the samples in ROM, in order to be called a ROMpler. The term itself is from a previous era of digital tech, and refers to outdated tech, but it has come to mean something that plays manufacturer installed samples across a range of pitches, but doesn't do much to modify them. There isn't, like, a strict cutoff between ROMpler and synth... it's debatable case by case, hence the debates....
Yeah, not sure I agree with a lot of that. But these terms are pretty vague and malleable, so it can get ambiguous.
IMO, there's additive and subtractive synthesis that use one or more oscillators* which generate (either electrically or digitally) a simple repetitive waveform, and then use filters to shape that sound. Additive synths would layer these oscillators, and run them in various series / parallel / modulation topologies to achieve a characteristic tone. Subtractive synths would lean more on filters to alter the spectral characteristics. The key factor being that the sounds are generated in real-time from simple waveforms -- sine being one of them, but far from the only primitive at its disposal. Could be triangle, saw, square, pulse, any variable shape between, or any arbitrary repetitive waveform (i.e., "wavetable"), random noise, etc.
Back in the day, when things were more discrete in nature (an analog synth was that and only that, and same for an FM synth, or an organ, or whatever), we added those new-fangled "samplers" to the tool kit. Usually digital, but not always (see: Mellotron.) That took a sampled waveform and could scale the speed up and down arbitrarily to change pitch.
ROMplers were just synths with a sampler engine, but using built-in samples rather than sounds you recorded yourself. They may not be capable of sampling anything new, perhaps being playback-only machines. You got what you got for source material, but could usually tweak the patches to your liking -- anything from filters and effects, to which underlying ROM-based waveforms were being used.
AFAIK, the ability to manipulate those sounds (via effects or filters or layering or anything else) was never part of the definition of a ROMpler. Really early, toy, or primitive ROMplers may have been little more than variable-speed digital tape players, but it got to be pretty much assumed that there would be a sophisticated effects engine on top of it. Some, as early as circa-2000, would even have built-in amp sims and such.
So that's my lexicon, anyway. ROMplers are (fixed-waveform) samplers, thus samplers are not ROMplers, unless it's a ROMpler with sampling capability. They're all synths.
The presence of ROM for the purposes of providing a digital CPU with code, or even resources like waveforms, look-up tables, patches, etc... that's not what anyone is talking about when referring to "ROM" with regard to ROMplers vs. samplers, etc. That's about as relevant as capacitors and resistors are to analog synths. It's just part of the bill of materials, not a categorical feature.
* Side note: The term "oscillator" was later appropriated to mean "any old sound generator," including samples. It's a term people knew, and it was easier to describe new techniques using analogies rather than splitting hairs.
@@nickwallette6201 I Agree, and I did know most of this, of corse the key factor being that the sounds are generated in real-time from simple waveforms -- sine being one of them, but far from the only primitive at its disposal. thank you for the very detailled answer. I see you have a lot knowlege.
I hesitate for years to get it.. meanwhile i bought everything on arturia, NI etc.. but i think im gonna take omnisphere, i think this is the best vst flr sound design
Beautiful playing🎉
Simply.....
Outstanding..
Evolving.....magical.......inspiring....
I would love this if I could afford it......maybe one day..........
😀
10 year Omnisphere user
Any wise advice ?
@@Rami-bi9xj where can I start ...... need advice as a newbie or anything specific?
Would you recommend omnisphere to someone who is new to using daw?
@@fredycate2329if it’s in your price range, then yes. There’s gonna be a whole host of sounds that are either very dance musicy or experimentally cinematic, and might be off putting when looking at such a massive amount of sounds.
Despite that you can learn all the basics of synthesis techniques in this software plus you have a massive amount of samples organic sounds to add to that
Could you make a list of the patches you are using in this video?
So funny when you grimaced at 3:33, I didn't understand why - it sounded great to me ! And so true about 'instant soundtrack', but it does kind of take away from musicianship - for good or bad. I'd imagine anyone could come up with something really interesting without knowing how to play keyboards or any knowledge of basic music theory.
it wasn't the chord I had in mind.... :) i need to learn from miles, if it sounds wrong just play it again to make it right (paraphrasing)
Inspiring exploration sir, lovely preset variations there 🎉 yes, loneliness is a warm synth 🥂😇
Great review. I have had Omnisphere for about 5 years but neverr really dived deeply into it. P.S you look much more settled today.
haha, it was shot on the same day! but maybe i'd got into it a bit, always unsettling when red means recording.
All of it great, but the Echoes of Malice piece was something else 🤯
The biggest problem with Omnisphere is finding the moment when you stop browsing the library because you are not sure if there is another great sound, even bit better than the one you found now :-) It is absolutely great instrument and I am very happy I paid its price. Imagine Omni as HW synth - would would it cost? 15k? AND - there is one hidden function: While browsing the library you can assign patches to PROJECTS, which is very very helpful.
nice problem to have i guess!
Have been tempted by this for while. Partly as I have synths that have automatic mapping to match some of the engines! Maybe buy it soon... I know its more than a rompler but it reminds me a great deal of presets of the likes of the Triton or D50. Some great heritage in here.
i actually don't have any hardware that it maps to, surprisingly. but i had good success mapping to the launchkey here, video coming soon about that.
I have a strong feeling that, in the end, you're liking a lot of "rompler" patches/multis ;D
(for reasons, don't get me wrong!) but i stand with you that one of the most powerful mode of Omnisphere is being a "Sampler", not just a synth :)
yes, i hear a lot of samples in these sounds! i'm not complaining.
Amazing SOund ☺♥
Thanks for this. I may buy this one day. Top tip though: you may want to record some of your voice overs in rooms with less natural reverb. It doesn’t sound nice at all.
Thank you Mr. Woody. yes I did enjoy.
If Atmosphere would have been a hardware synth like the Waldorf Quantum/ Iridium, it would have sold even better than the Quantum. I own 2 of the Omni sources: The Roland JD990 and the Oberheim M1000
I'm fairly convinced that Eric could see the potential of CPU power and software synths on the horizon and moved out of Roland to create one of the best software synths known to man. The architecture (of layers, patches, multi, etc.) looks like it comes from his Roland days, I actually wonder what the benefit of this is vs. Yamaha/Korg's way of building a sound (8 elements vs 4 partials, not sure if partials/parts are stereo, L&R thus 4 but anyways).
That Big Square Pad sound at 6:33 is such a thing of beauty.
I'm just happy to see that multi-mode architecture in software, roland/korg/yamaha have had it for decades, but usually missing on software synths.
Have you looked into the live mode where you can have multiple parts loaded for fast switching, and the sustain overlaps when you do?
i did check it out yes! thanks.
Great overview 👍. I’ve owned Omnisphere for years, but I very rarely use it and I don’t really know why. Possibly because the load times between patches frustrate my “now now now” personality!!! I had completely forgotten about this feature though, so I’ll definitely be diving back in for a renewed look. Thanks Woody !
Patches using the dsp osc don’t take as long to load.
yes, the loading times were quite surprising. and then you see 237MB in the patch notes, and that explains it I suppose. but it's a bit alarming when compared to other softsynths. just gotta deal with it.
If you have it installed on an ssd it should only take a second or two
@@simplemindedspacetrash7499 I do and that's waaaaay too long 😆
Important to understand that you can play any sound in a second or less! Even though it may still be loading, that’s often just additional detail that loading up in background. None of that prevents you from playing the sounds. Some people wait until the loading completes before playing the sound, but that’s really not necessary
Hey Woody, nice video. I know you are a big Korg Wavestation fan, would you consider doing a video on the Wavestate ? Thanks
Among the mega-multi synths like Omnishpere, Pigments, UVI Unison and Logic Alchemy, I wonder which one is most popular?
Nice demo - thanks Woody! I like the synth, but just a note that the numbers (of parts) only sound impressive initially, e.g. the Yamaha MOD-X has sounds with eight parts, each part made up of eight elements, so potentially more flexibility (though limited by the 128 poly limit in practice). The quality of the component sounds/samples is key and Omnisphere does seem to have a whole lot on offer there!
My problem is that of having time to understand the sound engines of the things I have (rather than just using presets) - adding this might just exceed my brain capacity as well as that of my wallet!
The same guy who runs Spectrasonics is the same guy behind the Roland D-50, so I thought I'd watch this video because I was curious how THIS is. I heard of Omnisphere a few or so years ago when Roland did an anniversary series of videos of the D-50 with one including the D-50/Spectrasonics guy Eric Persing. Was wondering if this is like the technology of the D-50 of the future. It did seem to have similar essence but with newer quality & technology.
yeah, i would say that is a good sumup. in fact in recent years, eric added D50 sounds to the omni library, so I really must check them out.
Entertaining, less apologies required . . .
I am leaning more toward UVI Falcon in that sort of category. Have you tried Falcon?
no, i heard of it, but never been on my radar for some strange reason.
Lovely stuff, Woody. Sorely tempted to get the wallet out, but as I recently splurged on both a Komplete upgrade and the Arturia V Collection, I better hold fire for a bit!
don't worry about it, i'm sure there are some gems in those two, and plenty to keep you occupied for a couple years whilst you save up!
Having so much power that many modern synthesizers offer is like eating a hundred elephants. I can't even eat 1 elephant, let alone 12 or 100.
4:30 7:00 9:50 10:28 11:50 12:40 16:11
The multis falcon!
Omnisphere is the only synth you need
You can do monstrous layering with Unify (Pluginguru) with any of your plugins , effortless and it's recursive..the only limit is your computer's memory/chipset..
yes yves, that's a good call, john is doing some great work on unify.
comparing hydrasynth and omnisphere 2: which one would you prefer soundwise ?
soundwise, omnisphere definitely more powerful, flexible and varied.
I dive in and favorite patches every once in a while, probably got a couple hundred after a few dozen hours of swimming around in those preset banks. Guess what? There's hundreds of samples and phrases not even used in the ridiculous amount of presets already there. If you start making your own you can take it really far, turn it into a modern JV/wavestation hybrid beast with crossfading between layers.
yeah, i agree. i think you could quite easily make your own sounds by combining some samples, or even making your own multis. you actually don't get many multis, just a few hundred, which was surprising.
Awesome video! Thanks Woody!!! ☺also the sound is amazing, you found out a secret recipe to win the battle to TH-cam's audio compression!!!
not doing anything special on my side! thanks :)
@@WoodyPianoShack That's the magic! you are a great musician, a great learner and teacher, and you engage with your videos. Probably you know better but I can just sit back and relax and listen and learn. On these days engagement is very hard, it's hard to concentrate or just enjoy what one love. Even when you are dealing with an Indian pop star with a love for keyboard demos 😂. Let me give you an example ... you take a TS10, go out and enjoy, my take away is I have a TS10, but I am forgetting to enjoy what I love. There are many take away in your videos my friend.
@@ICanFixThat2 words of wisdom right there! hey, but what's this ts10?
@@WoodyPianoShack The Ensoniq or it was a TS 12, can't remember my dear maestro.
11:41 Rammlied Flashbacks
I thought you were only using Hive and Diva?
Now I know how Omnisphere sounds roughly speaking.
Have anyone guess when v3 will be arriving?
i bought the box more than 10 years ago... somehow i discontinued using it... will reinstall it😊
Great stuff there Woody! Out of interest how much ram have you? also what CPU? Just to give us a benchmark, for all we know you could have a Threadripper. 🖖🎶💯
good question, W11 with 16GB ram, mid range ryzen from a few years ago. nothing special and my pc and omni, reaper and obs is cruising nicely!
sounds as good as an Iridium imo.
3:33 that was no mistake, just a happy little accident.
Woody, what do you recommend for a high quality all rounder vst work station? I need keys, bass, plucks
well it's not this one, I wouldn't consider OS an all-rounder "bread&butter" workstation. i think this is a category that the software vendors have neglected. maybe roland zenology, or korg triton vst if you wan't that 2000 sound. any other suggestions people?
@@WoodyPianoShack thanks saved me 320 quid !
@@leejohnson197733 look at the electraX & dune synapse 3 , both amazing vsts!
I wish omnisphere had a more minimalistic interface. For example the word omnisphere is in big caps and very large on top taking up a lot of valuable space. The interface is like too flamboyant and big looking for my taste. I also wish that sounds we're not by default limited to such low polyphony. It would also be nice if when switching instruments the previous instrument would not cut off.
some good suggestions there, I agree. different themes or color palettes would be appreciated too.
Is the sound from 1:09 to 1:16 experiencing a technical glitch, did the CPU go to 100% usage?
my cpu did not max out afaik, and I could control it with mod wheel, so I think it must be the sound design!
@@WoodyPianoShack Listening with headphones I hear apparently a glitchy sound but it could have been designed that way.
After inputing Omnisphere VST, after closing the file, then reopening time, it doesnt play back.... Any help Sir??
The Midi is intact there...but will not play...
that's a tricky one, I can't help with just that information, sorry!
Woody….now you have seen the light. Where are you from? Watch Eric’s demo showing the ultra multi. Cannot remember the name.
It’s called Phoenix rising…
th-cam.com/video/C1c1kGhmy9M/w-d-xo.html.
ok, i think i already seen everything with eric, but i'll hunt it down. i'm from south wales/south england
i thought that fluff up sounded awesome
I wish Omnisphere would release a hardware synth
Do you have $10.000 in your bank account?
At this point, what's the difference between a hardware synth, and a computer you dedicate to the purpose? That's usually what hardware is now anyway. Granted, there were (once? maybe still...) external DSPs that were just VST hosts in a box. You could treat them like hardware, if you were specifically looking for a fixed-purpose appliance. You miss out on the lovely interface though, being forced to configure everything via the VSTi's exposed automation parameters instead.
I like to see a bigger screen on the vst itself.
hmm, well the size of the vst is scalable, but not the components inside it, the layout cannot be changed. not quite sure what you mean though!
@Woody Piano Shack I mean showing vst in full screen but showing you smaller. So we can see what you do on vst.
@@ntxoovvwjmusicstudio1942 ah i got you now! thanks for the feedback!
when is your score coming out 👍
i really want to do a cinematic ambient album, just need to stop making videos to find some spare time!
Great but how about wooly bully watch it now 😅
hmm,. puzzled about that comment! :)
Put some OTT on that! i use to laught when i hear that but now i'm the one saying it... Its free. Xfer Records OTT.
Have you been forgiven for calling it a Rompler yet? ;)
still working on it...
12:25
Sounding pretty good maybe someone might create some song for world war three ,,,I am having a hard time now even thinking about music ...
i would suggest playing music to take your mind off ww3, best wishes.
@@WoodyPianoShack I might do that Woody your the coolie man
Why are my comments removed?
not by me and I see this one...
Okay I’ve tried to post two times, that when you are done with Omnisphere you should take a look at UNIFY by Plugin Guru. That could continue to blow your mind.
@@WoodyPianoShack Okay I’ve tried to post two times, that when you are done with Omnisphere you should take a look at UNIFY by Plugin Guru. That could continue to blow your mind.
Shiny, shiny, shiny. Fk all character?
Sry but nothing Hive can't do. :)
According to the features of U-HE Hive and Spectrasonics Omnisphere your statement is incorrect. The samples alone delivered with Omnisphere are so outstanding according to its competitors. So, they are different beasts with some similarities and both are great tools 🙂
Lol Hive isn't anywhere near Omnisphere mate.
To the piont I'm simply assuming your just joking with your comment.
Now if you said Falcon 2.5 on the other hand!!
But Hive lol....Nah!!
google Dunning Kruger!
I think ivan is teasing us. i love hive too as you know :D
@@WoodyPianoShack Right on. I do love Hive, it's my fav.
But in actuality I really use my Kurzweil PC3 for all the "sample-ey" sounding stuff.
I'm not a power user as in making my own programs, but for now the existing programs are enough for me.
A lot of these sound dated. Like something you’d hear in a James Cameron movie from the 80s.
Now U talking.
This sh... software is totally overrated. Bad programmed and muuuccch too expensive Hands off!!!!
ouch! well, i admire your directness :)
Annoying