I took a look at Omnisphere 1.5, the synth so big it’ll make your head hurt, for Keyboard in a story out now (and readable now). As I begin the story:
Seeing its six DVDs of sound content, you might be tempted to duct-tape a key down and let Omnisphere finish your film scoring gig. While the director would probably love the results, you’d be missing out on the real fun.
In other words, what I discovered in that review was that Omnisphere, particularly with additions in the new 1.5 update, is a powerful creative sound design tool, not just a preset machine. The highlights:
- Granular section, pictured, made nicer with the ability to combine with glide and intelligent parameter control design
- Harmonia, which allows you to control each harmonic component of a sound independently using individual oscillator and synth controls
- Individual independent arpeggiator, plus MIDI file drag-and-drop
- An Orb for exploring sonic capabilities – we’ve seen these sort of X/Y controllers before, but here you can even dynamically assign parameters in realtime, and add features like inertia and gesture recording
- iPad control via a really wonderful controller app
Being able to navigate multiple sonic parameters in real-time with touch, and combining sound-bending, far-reaching sonic tools like Harmonia and the granular features means you can really take sounds far from their original source – and sync them to tempo, if you like, with those MIDI and arp features. I need to pick up the whole tool again after the review and see what new sounds I can make; if there are any other users who wish to share, I’d love to hear what you’re making, as the possibility is really deep.
And yes, they now have done a dubstep bass tutorial, so everybody playing at home should take a shot.
Read the full, detailed review at Keyboard Magazine:
Spectrasonics Omnisphere 1.5 [Review by me for Keyboard]
How does it all work? Here are some relevant videos: