Omnisphere- To buy or not to buy

DAW & Software
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Hi all

As a lot of you are no doubt suffering the same fun isolation, the one bonus is its given me great time to work on my trailer tracks for submission etc. I am looking into buying Omnisphere, as most people tend to agree its a much have for ambient and synth sounds. I would love peoples opinions on it compared to other synths out here.

Also I realise its very expensive :frowning: does anyone know if they’re likely to do a sale on it ? or anyone have any discount codes for it at all?

Any help is much appreciated

x

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Hi @BenBeard!

I don’t have Omnisphere, as I don’t think my music will be “automatically better” after buying it. However, without a doubt, I do believe that Spectrasonics are making incredible products. These are the best you can ever get, even for that price. I like their price offers, there are “no price offers”. It shows that they can still take profit out of that and shows me and others that the products deserve to be at that price point too.

The library is huge, and with the 2.5 version they have made a big step forward in terms of original audio manipulation aka. using your own sounds to make it even more “original”, what HZ is always recommending to do.

I have “Iris 2” from iZotope and think it’s great even for what the regular price, however, PluginBoutique had a great offer last year to give it away for free. Iris has a lot to offer as well, and if you don’t have it, check that out as well, although I didn’t use it for trailer music.

If you actually have the NI bundle, you should have all sounds you need in order to succeed in that genre.

As I said: There will be never a 100% guarantee that your music will be “better” or more “licensable” after purchasing a specific product, so my only recommendation to you is that I do believe that investing in yourself (education) is in first place the better way to go.

What I hear in trailer music, and actually many others genres too, that the people who has more, have way more success, than the people who bought the whole “world” and think they are in advantage. However, skills will win all the time, no matter how much you have.

I am saying it to you, because I am not the only one who thinks that way. There are plenty of success Hollywood composers who think that way too, although they could buy anything they want. But they don’t.

Take care of yourself!
Alexey :slight_smile:

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I totally agree, its not the plugins that make the composer. :slight_smile: I have ANA synth from slate digital and alchemy has some decent stuff. I actually have IRIS 2, but I’ve never used it, got it in izotope bundle and haven’t messed about with it so maybe i’ll give that a go and see what it has to offer :slight_smile:

Stay safe! and thanks for info

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Spectrasonics is famouns for not doing sales… so don’t put your bets on that, but there are some resellers who have occassionaly a small sale on Omnisphere (Sweetwater for example).

The thing I really like about Omnisphere is that it is easy to create your own sounds. It comes with the option to import audio files (though not possible to deep sample them like a regular sampler), but it adds a lot, specially if you want to tailor your own sounds. It also comes with a library of 14.000+ presets and a ton of developers creating 3rd party sets in any given style. It’s expensive for sure, but Omnisphere is also a long term investment in my opinion as you can do so much with it and they keep updating it with big (and free) updates once in a while adding tons of extra features.

I fully agree with Alexy that there are tons of composers who do so much with so little, but Omnisphere is actually (in my opinion) one of those tools that you can bring you so far with only one synth. VPS Avenger and UVI Falcon are other contestants who can do the same amount of amazing stuff and that are great for creating your own sounds in any given style. They do have less 3rd party developers though (no idea if that is a dealbreaker or not), but worth to check out those 2 as well as they have sales as well on a more regular basis.

Just my 2 cents though. Stay safe and healthy!

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It’s a MUST and an industry standard. Check out this list: https://www.spectrasonics.net/company/filmtv.php

I bought it in 2011 and all the upgrades; in 9 years of using it, barely listened to 15 % of the total patches (it has almost 15,000…!) and am always discovering new sounds. The search engine and tagging are amazing and it sounds great out of the box. One of the best investments I made.

As for the pricing, they don’t offer any discounts or coupons as far as I know, but it was absolutely worth every single penny.

It’s 499$, if you think about it, if you score 1 movie, you already paid for it; and it’s way cheaper than famous hardware synths that have more limitations. :wink:

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I took the plunge and bought it :slight_smile: finally have all the plugins I could ever need haha

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It’s truly a great instrument. Remember to do this one thing - make a tonal snippet of some kind - could be just a held note from your favorite synth - and then import that into Omnisphere and use it for granular synthesis. And don’t forget to use the incredibly fun Orb interface.

The great strength of Omnisphere in my opinion - behind its ease of use and flexibility - is that it sounds good doing pretty much anything asked if it.

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It depends on what you want to do. For ambient, complex timbres it’s a good choice. But if you’re a skilled orchestrator and have good composition chops, it can be less useful. When timbres are as complex and full as Omnisphere patches it becomes harder to integrate into an orchestral mix. That’s why, after downloading the demo, I chose not to purchase it. But again, it’s all about your purpose and what you are trying to accomplish. I’d download the demo (if there is one) and see if you get excited using it. If you do, then you’ll probably make good use of it.

Jerry

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If you are a skilled orchestrator and have good composition chops, then a good-sounding flexible tool is always good, wouldn’t you think? Omnisphere doesn’t write for the user. It will however broaden the palette. How it’s used depends upon the composer’s goals, taste, facility, and ability to resist cool-sounding arpeggiation patterns. :smile:

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Omnisphere is my go-to synth for anything that’s not orchestral. When I need to do a hybrid score, this takes care of it. I have several other synths that came with Kontakt, that I haven’t used in more than 5 years. Also, Omnisphere comes with hundreds of excellent rhythmical patterns to quickly create a low-end ostinato for trailers and high energy cues.

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the software can help you.t’s called purity

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It really depends on what kind of sound you’re looking for and what features are important to you. There are many other software synths on the market, such as Serum, Massive, and FM8, that are also popular among producers. It may be worth doing some research and listening to demos of each one to see which one fits your style and workflow best. So it’s all up to you.