July 12, 2011 Posted by 16dollarbeats in Software Reviews

Spectrasonics Omnisphere Virtual Instrument Synthesizer Review

Spectrasonics Omnisphere review Courtesy of ProducersMagazine.com

Spectrasonics Omnisphere Virtual Instrument Synthesizer

It’s not a whole lot of fun to write a review for a product that doesn’t need one. When it comes to the new flagship product from Spectrasonics, what’s left to guess about. That’s a horrible start, let me try again. At winter NAMM 2008 Eric Persing unveiled a sound design workstation and sample assisted synthesizer instrument that stole the show. The two hour demonstration [available on our youtube.com/griffinavid channel] left everyone convinced that a great and terrible beast was coming. The six month countdown began. The buzz began to build- fueled by the video episodes on Spectrasonics.net and a remix contest using Spectrasonics Omnisphere sound clips. The hype and user expectations were exceedingly high and they should be. This is the return-to-market product from a company that doesn’t do entry-level, fun toy or I’ll-outgrow-this-someday. They don’t bunt or think second base is good enough. They have very few products, but each one is swinging for the fences. Let’s take off and see if Spectrasonics Omnisphere really does belong in the clouds.Bespin and Best in the Bin.The six-disc install took over 2 hours. I expected this from my prior experiences with Atmosphere and Trilogy and was prepared with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Registration and authorization was a snap with a quick copy and paste. Next we updated for a few fixes, a reference guide and over 1,100 new patches including the complete Atmosphere Library. We open up on the MAIN CONTROLS screen with general settings including Layer Mix, Master Filter, Pitch and Scale, Arpeggiator and its preset bank. The Edit Page is where most of your sound sculpting will occur. The panel is divided into 5 sections. The centered Modulation, Oscillator and Filter are layer specific and the outermost Mix affects the entire engine. We know from basic synthesis, modulate means to cause a change and many synthesizers are lauded for their modulation and routing abilities. A full bank of options is available from the Edit Page. Zooming in to the Mod Matrix puts 24 modulation routings at your finger tips showing 12 per page. With over 60 different destination Targets available, you’ll be here a while exploring. If this sort of control is a little too much, you can simply right-click any parameter and use the drop down menu as a short cut. Think of modulation assignments as automating knob tweaks and letting different aspects of the sound dictate the pattern of your tweaks.

Spectrasonics Omnisphere Morphing flex Modulation mayhem

The far left modulation overview area is an indicator as to “what’s doing with your mods". You’ll want to Zoom in to the Matrix view to see all the assignments. The light blue titles always indicate the currently active layer and a blue horizontal line under the parameter tracks the amount of the modulation. Morphing between settings or patches in Spectrasonics Omnisphere is nothing new, but Omnisphere adds the ability to morph/crossfade between two modulations. Here, I’ve chosen to split the modulation duties between Velocity and filter envelope and targeted cutoff. The wheel is going to be my method of switching between the two modulation sources. [Insert audio example]. As I rock the wheel left velocity is modulating the cutoff and right switches to the filter envelope. Obviously these routings are more pronounced on the synth patches where modulation is useful for adding character and movement. You can hear in these audio examples how the same mod settings affect a core patch and one of my own synth patches.

Spectrasonics Omnisphere Arpeggiator

It’s the magic button on your sequencer that separates the notes of a chord and creates a musical phrase while you …well, do nothing. The Mode features popular choices from synths past and present like up/down, random and a new repeat X2 and X4. Clock decides the number of steps. Length is note duration and a swing for enhanced grooviness. It’s a very simple interface that’s intuitive and easy to use. An added bonus is groove lock which matches the rhythm of the ARP and syncs the timing to MIDI grooves from STYLUS RMX [and any other MIDI file- GA] via drag and drop. Audio example 01 uses the expansion library Retro Funk and the second [Audio Example 02] uses a loop from my custom bank. The potential expands exponentially when you consider the available 8 parts, each able to use its own arpeggiator. Yes, you can construct an entire song using just the ARP page and when combined with Stylus RMX and its own 8 slots for multis…