The latest 2.6 added D50 samples and they are quite authentic – the D50 programs are nuanced to a degree that well exceeds the vibe of the original. The synth is very easy to understand and supports loading your own samples as well. I purchased a few third party libraries and there are some amazing sound designers pushing the envelope of its capabilities. I saved well over $100 on it by checking online retailers at holiday sales. I can use it all day long without getting fatigued on it like I do sometimes with other synths. If I had to chuck them all I’d be pretty satisfied with just Omnisphere.
not to mention Komplete and gig after gig of sample libraries plus endless plug-ins. I’ve own and have owned a ton of synths, including the Jupiter 8, Memorymoog, Oberheim OB1, OB8, OB6, Xpanders and digital stuff like D50s,JD800, and the better Korg ROMplers, etc. To be honest, it does not have many DX styled tones, which don’t really float my boat anyway. It is not at all one-sided or samey-samey sounding. The sounds are amazing and the sound programming is absolutely stellar. Omnisphere will kick start my creativity every time I load it up. Remember, Bob Moog himself was gobsmacked at what Wendy Carlos achieved with her early modular. I wouldn’t feel even halfway qualified to truly comment on Omnisphere until I’d been into it for at least a year. I would not have guessed it, but those two as a team contained a superior cello. I once had a Roland DEP-5 (IIRC) effects unit and a Juno-1. Even the most humble synth can rock if you allow for enough time to really learn the bulk of its abilities. Sylenth is a major beast of real merit, but its not built to apply bowed yew tree samples. That prominently includes well-designed acoustic sources. However, two points strike me: Andrew’s favorite synths are mostly “synth-y,” whereas Omni is a massive Swiss Army knife built for astounding layering above all else. There’s no sin in that! I give a few things the subjective stinkeye, too. If the base sound of Omnisphere doesn’t wow Andrew, so be it. Now im not saying that Omnisphere doesn’t, but you can’t deny that some sections of that synth are genuinely half baked. These synths have real sounds unique to them. Synths I like are Zebra2, Dune 2, Bazille, Sylenth1, Diva (Basically everything u-he), DCAM synth squad. Now im not denying that people can do things with it that are really great, but that being said, I just don’t like the DSP engines sound. I just don’t like the sound of the synth (outside of its fantastic samples). As I said before, the filters sound plastic, the oscillators don’t have a lot of body, the FM and AM is god awful, the unison sounds very one dimensional and cold and the granular is just bad and doesn’t give me any musicality out of it. That being said, as far as its sound when it comes to the DSP driven synthesis, im not very impressed. Things I like about it are its gorgeous samples, its depth of modulation capabilities, its massive fx and filter section and its arpeggiator. Ive spent a lot of time with Omnisphere and Omnisphere 2. They also shared a video introduction to Hardware Synth Integration: The new Hardware Synth Profiles added in v2.6 include:
Notably, the update takes Persing’s classic sound design work from the original 1987 Roland D-50 into completely new sonic territory with Omnisphere’s vast synthesis capabilities. Omnisphere 2.6 features a newly expanded “Hardware Library” with 600 new patches created by Eric Persing and the acclaimed Spectrasonics Sound Development team. The supported hardware synths cover a wide array of form factors and price ranges for different types of users. With the new 2.6 release, many requested hardware synth profiles have been added, including support for over 65 popular hardware synthesizers from Moog®, Sequential®, Roland®, Korg®, Novation®, Nord®, Behringer®, Access®, Studiologic® and Yamaha®.
Omnisphere’s ground-breaking Hardware Synth Integration feature bridges the physical experience gap between software and hardware, giving users intuitive control of Omnisphere by using the familiar layout of their hardware synth. Best of all, Omnisphere 2.6 can now capture the MIDI data of the arpeggiator as a standard MIDI file, which can be dragged to any DAW for further editing! Also included is a new Arpeggiator Preset Library that showcases all the creative possibilities. The many innovations include inspiring new Pattern Modes, Step Dividers, Pitch Slides and the unique ability to have altered Chord Voicings and Chord Inversions per step. Omnisphere’s renowned Arpeggiator has received a major update in v2.6 with all new creative tools, making it one of the most flexible arpeggiators ever. Here’s what they have to say about the new features: