Omnisphere 3

[Geoff Grace]

Spectrasonics has announced Omisphere 3, available on October 21.

New Features
• Thousands of New Sounds, Faster Access, Same Size
• New Adaptive Global Controls
• New Patch Mutations
• Quadzone Modulation
• 36 New Filter Types
• Circuit Modeled Saturation
• Dual Frequency Shifter
• Vintage Oscillator Drift
• New EDM Wavetables
• Unison Phase Scatter
• Classic Glide Modes
• Polyphonic Expression
• New Sampled Soundsources
• Expanded Hardware Integration
• Major Effects Upgrade with over 35 Effects
• New Included Omnisphere FX Rack Plug-in
• Redesigned Full Browser
• Extensive Implementation of Sub-Categories
• New Directory Tree interface in Full Browser
• New “Hide” feature - don’t show sounds you don’t need
• New Library images
• Simplified Tagging System with Keywords and Moods
• Full backwards compatibility with all previous versions



Pricing
Omnisphere 3 Full Product Boxed: $499 / €399
Omnisphere 3 Full Product Download: $499
Standard Upgrade: $199
Atmosphere Upgrade: $249

Best,

Geoff

[Guy Rowland]

They've forgotten about rhythm.

Well, it looks fun and some interesting new ideas. I like they're not doing the obvious thing and trying to turn it into Kontakt or anything like that. But with something like 20k existing patches inc third party all neatly organised by OmniTag, I'd like to hear a lot more about the full backwards compatibility...

[Guy Rowland]

Ah, so one thing I've worked out. The 18 new categories use a new tagging system and include many (or most or all of) the old patches in this new form. Then you can access the older libraries which seem to have the old system.

This means that the headline figure of 41,000 patches is a tad misleading - you might be stuck with a paltry 26,000.

[Lawrence]

They've forgotten about rhythm.

Well, it looks fun and some interesting new ideas. I like they're not doing the obvious thing and trying to turn it into Kontakt or anything like that. But with something like 20k existing patches inc third party all neatly organised by OmniTag, I'd like to hear a lot more about the full backwards compatibility...

Like Stylus RMX NEXT? Yeah, I think it aint happening’.

Still, maybe I’ve skipped Omni 2 for the perfect reason, assuming I can upgrade my Omni 1 for the same price…

Yeah, I gotta hear about backwards compatibility too.

Edit-I see you dug further..

[Guy Rowland]

Okay, I've wrapped my head around it I think - though there are still major questions that will need to be answered.

The new 18 categories I think include all the old patches in the new remastered form. They will have new tagging and global controls, but will they will also sound different - "All of the original classic Omnisphere patches have been carefully remastered and refreshed with the latest v3 features and Effects".

HOWEVER - The legacy section seems to contain all the original versions of the patches, with the old tagging. Will THOSE sound the same?

And a big CAPS LOCK HOWEVER - how will existing instances in projects open? Presumably they will load the legacy versions. But can we trust them to sound exactly the same? That's the big question all existing Omnisphere owners will want answered I think.

NOTE - patches can now appear in multiple categories. Ultimately that's a good thing, but it means the headline sky-high patch numbers don't reflect unique (or new) patches.

[Guy Rowland]

(psst Geoff, I've added the missing "n" in the thread title, hope that's okay)

[Guy Rowland]

Omni 3 manual online here - https://support.spectrasonics.net/manual/Omnisphere3/

[Geoff Grace]

(psst Geoff, I've added the missing "n" in the thread title, hope that's okay)

I appreciate you having fixed my typo, Guy. Thanks!

Best,

Geoff

[Jaap]

Just woke up and saw this news and just a first look at it makes me very happy, but what makes me even more happy is when I see the sheer enthusiasm on VI, Facebook etc about it. In times of AI, this gives me hope that people are raving about to get their hands dirty with it and have fun with it.

Time for coffee and and a deep dive into this!

[Markus K]

They are all in for the classic analog model plugins. Can be even used in the DAW as plugin. I'm curious how they hold up against UAD, Brainworx etc. After all if they are good and you get Omni you have all you need in that regard.

[Lawrence]

I’m always afraid of breaking things, and I’m on Monterey. Does anyone know or remember what Ventura (the oldest version that works for Omni 3) breaks?

I also don’t have anywhere near enough space on my boot drive and am unsure what needs to be downloaded and eventually reside there.

[My name is Nobody]

Need to find out how 3d party presets from f.e. TheUnfinished will be found / catagorised..

[Guy Rowland]

Need to find out how 3d party presets from f.e. TheUnfinished will be found / catagorised..

Here you can see how things are arranged

As now, the third party stuff will appear in User Directories.

I've got all my libraries neatly organised using OmniTag. All that will still align with everything in the legacy factory stuff. But the new 18 categories will be totally different. Not yet clear on whether you can search all legacy and user (ie 3rd party) folders in one hit.

[soundbylaura]

JRRShop has the upgrade for $169 (no coupon codes allowed).

[Guy Rowland]

JRRShop has the upgrade for $169 (no coupon codes allowed).

Free shipping too (US only).

And just to add - all resellers are boxed products only, and - thus far at least - USA only.

Meanwhile, I did a little digging. Just as an example of how the patches in the new category system works, the patch Dolby's Guitaret is counted no less than 7 times, appearing in:

Ambient Dreams - Synths
Electronic Underground - Synths
Experimental Organic - Textures
Retro Vibes - Synths
Scoring Electronic - Synths
Warm Tones - Synths
Omnisphere Library - Retroland (legacy version)

This is a good thing! I don't think in Omni 2 I ever looked in Retroland specifically, so there's every chance I would have eternally overlooked that patch. Now it's possible to put the same patch in multiple places, there's a better chance of discovering it when browsing.

Of course the trade off is that those headline numbers ARE a tad misleading. Not every patch will appear as often as this, but every legacy patch appears at least twice - once in its original form and once in the new remastered one. So the 26,000 new patches in fact contain 9,000 remastered legacy ones, dropping that total to 17,000 new to Omni 3, and then there are multiples within that.

Note - they've changed default behaviour so when you open the patch browser, "All Spectrasonics" is not selected. You are encouraged to search one category at a time. That's likely the best experience for meaningful results. You CAN search ALL if you select it but, presumably, you might then get multiple appearance of the same patch (unless they coded that out).

[Jaap]

Only watched 10 minutes and will hopefully be able to watch it during the weekend, but for those interested here a vid from Sonic State with Eric

[Guy Rowland]

I got my coding-whizz son to do a quick analysis of the patches based on the library info on the website. The answer is - of the 26,421 new patches, there are 13,915 unique names.

That includes the 9,242 remastered legacy patches. So the total number of unique brand new patches is...

4,673.

And honestly, I'm not complaining. Far from it, that's an absolutely insane number of brand new patches from top designers. Imagine what it would cost from someone like The Unfinished - never mind all the brand new features. It's a steal.

I think for anyone that uses patches, it's going to take a while to get used to always starting with one of the 18 new directories (or legacy / third party). It's actually quite a big conceptual leap. I think there's going to be big plusses in patch discovery, but not easily being able to search multiple areas for a particular Type, or factory plus third party, could be minuses. I know there's still a search ALL button, but I think that will be pretty overwhelming and messy.

Only watched 10 minutes and will hopefully be able to watch it during the weekend, but for those interested here a vid from Sonic State with Eric

Eric's enthusiasm is always infectious.

[My name is Nobody]

I got my coding-whizz son to do a quick analysis of the patches based on the library info on the website. The answer is - of the 26,421 new patches, there are 13,915 unique names.

That includes the 9,242 remastered legacy patches. So the total number of unique brand new patches is...

4,673.

That is another application to use big data searches….. on Omnisphere patches ! Fortunate that your son has that skill.

Thanks for your earlier reply on where the Unfinished patches will be found.

Don’t know how others perceive this, but at times I cannot escape the feeling that after using various synths like Diva, Omnisphere, Refx, Vengeance, Arturia X……. are there still ‘new’ patches or sounds to appear….or have I heared them before?

Nothing negatively ment at all, but more like variations of the same dish with a bit more or less salt & pepper or other ingredients, bit it’s still the same dish….

So if the number of new patches is 4673 like you say…… will there be actually new in there?

Anyway…..I probably still will buy the upgrade sooner or later ;-)

[Tanuj Tiku]

I am still using Omnisphere 1 (rarely) but this may be worth it for me because it provides a lot of great sound sources and inspiration. I sort of left omnisphere years ago as I started heavily using u-he and recently some pigments from Arturia.

The sound source and organic/hybrid patches is something that always made omnisphere unique for me. With version 3, I will also be able to important sounds so it looks like an attractive option for me today.

I still use Stylux RMX sound sources on some things - I hope they will do a new version of that as well!

[progger]

Gonna wait to upgrade because I use Omni 2 ALL the time and I want to wait and see how reverse-compatibility really sorts out with users. But I'll almost definitely be doing this, there have been numerous excellent updates to Omni 2 and it's helped me make my living for almost a decade. I'll be happy to toss Eric P some shekels for this update, he's earned it as far as I'm concerned.

(Small discount ordering through things like Sweetwater, it seems, too)

[Guy Rowland]

FYI - it's available to buy now, 24hrs early. A soft launch is probably a good idea...

I've pre-ordered my physical copy, it'll be a few days for me to update.

[Guy Rowland]

A very nice Livestream playing through the Ambient Dreams and Organic Vibes directories. Lovely stuff here.

https://www.youtube.com/live/vqNWnXLQz_ ... GpK_uhQCRY

[Guy Rowland]

I've been playing around with Omni 3 for a couple of days now.

PROS

INSTALLATION
Download and install were a breeze. Everything worked first time

SONICS
The sonics have drawn near universal praise, and it's easy to see why. Both the new filters and the new effects have got gentle saturation nailed. There's so many ways to just give that bit of character, warmth and dirt. There's also new analog pitch drift which adds a subtle chorus effect if pushed too far and fully detuned if pushed even further, but at moderate levels again adds to the character.

There's around 4,600 new unique patches of every type and variety, and many of these are weep-inducingly gorgeous (and some of course are just weep-inducing at the aggressive EDM end of things). There seemed a lot more organic-sounding drums than I remember - while they do seem to have forgotten about rhythm in terms of a Stylus replacement, there's now a lot of cinematic / world stuff that has snuck in here.

NEW FX AND PLUGIN
35 new effects which can now be hosted in a brand new effects plugin (up to 4 per instance). There's a large range of classic emulations (LA-2A, API, Neve and Paultec EQs plus some more interesting creative choices. Inversions is a reverb that can do delays and reverse effects; Solar Shimmer is a beautiful shimmer verb, Refraction is a blooming delay and there's some gorgeous saturations and distortions. A small gripe on the Swiss Army Delay - you have to switch to the hidden Page 2 to change the mode which is absolutely fundamental on how it works (on the front page there's no way to unlink L and R for example - and for Swiss Army operations that's a problem).

Then yes, you can load all these racks into a separate fx plugin for use on absolutely everything. For some, worth the upgrade price alone.

GLOBAL CONTROLS / CONTROLLER INTEGRATION
This works surprisingly well. Every patch - including user, third party and legacy - now has global controls available on the main page. ADSR, filter, vibrato, unison, tone, ambience and limiter. This might feel so-whatish at first, but it's doing a lot of under-the-hood magic. The ambience is a macro for ANY reverb in the system, and also mic positions where available, all reduced to amount and length controls.

But the fun part is that most controllers can get hard-wired to these new controls. I have a Novation Launchkey 88 mk3 with 8 knobs and 8 sliders. So if there's a patch across 4 layers and I need to increase the attack, I just dive for that slider and it works every time (in theory). In practice it's a bit sticky, you often have to retrigger a note to wake it up, but it's a good workflow boost.

Pro tip - on the face of it there is no direct way to launch with your controller already engaged, but there is a trick for it - load it up and then save as Default Multi.

MUTATE
We've have Sound Match for years as a way to start from one patch and find others which are the same but different. The Orb adds fun variations of the parameters without doing any of the hard work, a roll of the dice and diving in is all it takes. Now there's a new kid in town, Mutate. This swaps out the sound sources for similar ones but keeps everything else the same. You can mutate mutations - if the patch is a simple one layer one, it starts to add more layers. You can also engage extreme mode where the variations are wilder.

It's a fun and effortless way to shake it up, and whatever you create here is unique to you. It's a bit unrefined in v1 - every mutation is automatically saved and named, and there's no way to delete / tidy without going into the OS and deleting them in Finder / Explorer. Also the ability to lock layers would be handy.

CONS

THE BROWSER
You knew I was gonna say this, right?

First a plus - the side browser is improved, you don't need the full browser so often now. You can now search by keyword, mood and, er, author right there, and sound match is available.

That, sadly, is the last goof thing I can say about the browser. The full screen one is nothing short of abysmal.

First, take a look at what they've done to the search box:

This is mind-blowing in its incompetence. It's hard to envisage a worse use of screen real estate. It's like a parody of bad user design. As a result, you can either have the tags or the search - but not both. Yet it is active if anything is in the search box - just invisible. So you keep getting hardly any search results and cannot see why. It's a recipe for rage.

All they'd need to do to create space for the box where it used to be in the header is REMOVE THE TAB FOR SEARCH BOX.

Gobsmacking.

Then there's the other problem - they've thrown out their old tagging system and replaced it with a new one. Which means, alongside their other products, you have two completely different standards. This is why they more or less force you to only search one location at a time - not so much OMNIsphere as UNIsphere. The default mode in Omni 2 of searching All Spectrasonics has gone completely because it would now look so bad. The only global search option left is View All, which is a dogs breakfast of similar but different terms:

Hits and Bits or Hits + Bits? Bells and Vibes or Bell Tones?

The exact same 27,000 patches (without the 4,600 new Omni 3 ones) in Omni 2 looked like this:

Much easier on the eye too, isn't it? This is not a good update for those with visual impairment of any kind.

Eagle eyed members might spot that Omni 3 has somehow hallucinated entire empty deprecated categories like ARP + Rhythm. Click on these and it stares blankly at you for a few seconds before jumping back to ALL.

Compared to Omni 2, this is a hellscape. I do have a suggestion for how to make this brave new world actually work - Custom Views, where users can select their own groups of directories. This simple feature would actually be very powerful - you could search all the classic synths in the main browser in a single hit if you didn't care about analog / vs digital or old vs new - search 3 in 1. You could put together all the non-Omni 3 Spectrasonics products - Moog, Sonic Extensions, Trilian and Keyscape. You could make a little list of all The Unfinished libraries. And you could even have Omni 2 Mode - using the legacy versions of the original patches it should be possible to make it behave in the exact same way.

VI Control thread on that here - https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... er.167319/


CONCLUSION
There is so much to like in Omni 3, and if you roll your own or want a simple, self-contained quick way to search their patches in simple lists then BUY NOW. But if you are a heavy browser user - especially if you have a lot of other Spectrasonics / third party products - I'm not entirely sure it is worth the colossal hit to the workflow right now. Here's hoping 3.1 makes things more manageable.

[progger]

Ugh, I still love the UI in Omni 2 and seeing all the new screenshots from Omni 3 makes me hesitant... I've loved O2 for YEARS, I don't want change!

[Tanuj Tiku]

I just upgraded to omnisphere 3 (from 1) and it is all new for me but I don't have the baggage of omnisphere 2. Hopefully, I will get on well!

Thanks for the review Guy!