OMNISPHERE SYNTH SOFTWARE
“We’ve never felt that the worlds of software and hardware synths should be segregated into different ‘camps’. It’s hard to beat the immediacy of a physical synthesizer that you can touch! We are very excited to be able to finally eliminate that problem by utilizing the world’s finest hardware synthesizers to fully control Omnisphere.” said Eric Persing, Creative Director of Spectrasonics. “Since the beginning of computer-based music, the biggest limitation of software synthesizers has been the lack of physical interaction. The new sounds are available for all users, regardless of whether they use hardware or not. The new sounds feature a wide range of categories and many have a distinctly ‘classic analog’ flavor. Each hardware profile has a corresponding set of sounds in the Hardware Library which were specially designed using that hardware synth as an Omnisphere controller. Omnisphere 2.5 includes a new “Hardware Library” with hundreds of new patches created by Eric Persing and the renowned Spectrasonics Sound Development team using the Hardware Synth Integration feature. Over 50 new “Analog” Oscillator Wavetables are included and featured in the new hardware profiles. Newly-designed State Variable Filters are included, which were specially created for the OB-6 hardware profile and can seamlessly blend between low-pass, notch and high-pass filter modes.
OMNISPHERE SYNTH PATCH
Each patch can now utilize up to 12 envelopes, 8 LFOs and the Modulation Matrix has been doubled to 48 modulation routings. The new version 2.5 greatly expands the synthesis capabilities of Omnisphere by doubling Omnisphere’s voice architecture to Four Layers per patch. Most importantly, it’s easy for musicians to use – simply by selecting the hardware synth from the drop-down HW menu.
The new development system also allows Spectrasonics to add new profiles for new hardware synths in the future. This new system allows Spectrasonics to enable sophisticated interactions from a single touch of a knob, including the ability for Omnisphere to automatically recall entire FX racks, assign multiple scaled parameters and even instantly create complex modulation matrix routings on-the-fly. Under the hood, Spectrasonics’ development team has designed unique “Hardware Profiles” for each supported hardware synthesizer, making the special features of that hardware work seamlessly with Omnisphere, translating MIDI messages from the hardware into satisfying sonic results in Omnisphere. The new Hardware Synth Integration feature in v2.5 goes far beyond the typical “MIDI Learn” approaches that many software synthesizers employ.
The supported hardware synths cover a wide range of types and price ranges. The initial release will officially support over 20 popular hardware synthesizers from Moog, Dave Smith Instruments, Roland, Korg, Behringer, Novation, and Sequential, with more to come.
The new feature bridges the physical experience gap between software and hardware, allowing users intuitive control along with the ability to easily create and modify Omnisphere sounds by using the familiar layout of their supported hardware synth with minimal setup. With version 2.5, Omnisphere becomes the first software synth to offer a Hardware Synth Integration feature, which transforms well-known hardware synthesizers into hands-on controllers for unlocking Omnisphere’s newly-expanded synthesis capabilities.
OMNISPHERE SYNTH UPDATE
At Superbooth this morning, Spectrasonics announced a major update of its flagship software synthesizer, Omnisphere.