Spectrasonics Omnisphere

Eric Persing lives in this universe. The founder of Spectrasonics has always created products which defy expectations, whether they be the eclectic world-music excursions of Supreme Beats and Heart Of Asia, the Distorted Reality series or the hip, funky swirling beats on Liquid Grooves and Ethno Techno. Persing's imaginative streak was always harnessed to musical practicality, as evidenced by the huge collection of instantly usable, bang-on-the-money grooves found in Metamorphosis, Retrofunk and Backbeat. The quest to combine the unpredictable with the highly functional culminated in the first quarter of 2003 with the popular trio of virtual instruments Stylus, Trilogy and Atmosphere. Though all three have helped many a record into the charts, the sample-based Atmosphere synth seems to have made the biggest impression (possibly because prior to its release such lush, layered pads were the exclusive preserve of owners of several expensive keyboards and a posh reverb unit).

After five years topping the pops, Atmosphere has finally been discontinued and replaced by a far more ambitious instrument. Its name is (cue drum roll...) Omnisphere. Things have moved on since Atmosphere's heyday, and while Paul White's assessment of its 3.7GB sample database as "vast" was a fair comment at the time, Omnisphere's 42GB core library rather puts it in the shade. This 1000 percent increase in sonic firepower is merely one indicator of the new synth's superiority.

Spectrasonics have not left users out in the cold: Atmosphere owners wishing to buy Omnisphere are entitled to a significant discount which grows bigger if they also own Trilogy and Stylus. To further ease the pain of upgrading, Omnisphere incorporates Atmosphere's entire sample library as well as painstakingly recreated versions of all its factory patches. The only snag is that due to its new design, Omnisphere can't import Atmosphere user patches; to continue using those you have to either manually recreate them in Omnisphere, or simply carry on using Atmosphere (which will happily run alongside Omnisphere inside a project). Either way, Spectrasonics advise users to keep Atmosphere installed to recall older projects.

One limitation is that Omnisphere will not operate as a stand-alone instrument on your desktop — you have to run it as a plug-in inside a VST 2.4, RTAS or Audio Units host. For most people that will mean using it as a plug-in inside a sequencer. However, if you prefer to install Omnisphere on a different computer from the one which houses your sequencing software, a number of inexpensive VST hosts are available which can run multiple software instruments and samplers. (I often use Forte on my PC for this purpose.) Omnisphere runs on Mac OS 10.4.9 or higher and Windows XP SP2 / Vista, and requires a minimum of 2GB of RAM and 50GB free hard drive space for the samples. Spectrasonics recommend a minimum processor speed of 2GHz for Macs and 3GHz for PCs, and Intel Macs and G5 Power PCs are both supported.

Omnisphere ships on six double-layer DVDs in a blue cardboard box which can be used as a novelty hat once the contents have been safely removed. Having installed the player software and sound library (which took about 90 minutes) onto my Mac's external Firewire drive, I was ready to authorise Omnisphere. The procedure is straightforward: first open it as a plug-in inside your sequencer (in my case, Logic 7), then follow a simple on-line challenge-and-response routine at Spectrasonic's web site which asks for your serial number and then issues an authorisation code. All this worked without a hitch, and within minutes I was theoretically ready to rock. However, the rocking had to wait while I downloaded a patch library update which fixed a loading fault in the DVD version. Ho hum, such is modern life...

An Omnisphere patch contains two layers, each of which can contain either a synth oscillator or a sample-based sound. Up to eight patches can be combined in a multitimbral 'multi'. Stack mode allows you to layer or split multiple parts and add crossfades, while Live mode enables players to instantly switch between or stack up to eight patches via program changes, CC commands or keyswitches. Perhaps the biggest godsend of Live mode is that the sound doesn't cut off when you change a patch — release trails and reverb decays continue uninterrupted through patch changes, and you can even hold down a note on Patch 1 while switching to Patch 2. This is a terrific asset for performers.

There are currently 2019 factory patches (1027 of which are the original Atmosphere patches) and 144 factory multis, with the prospect of more to come from Spectrasonics. You can save limitless numbers of your own patches and multis. The only thing to watch out for when first saving a patch is that Omnisphere may ask you to create a user sub-folder on your hard drive — if this happens, you will have to spend a minute or two working out where the program stores its data on your drive so you can create a sub-folder in the same location!

The various category names (aka tags) applied to a patch or multi can be edited by users, so you can add your own search terms and create your own lists of favourites. You can also append personalised text notes, for example: 'Don't play this patch when grandma is in the room'. Spectrasonics supply copious notes on the origins and suggested usage of their sounds. They also incorporated images for each one, so when you select the multisample 'Stylophone' you will see a colour photo of Rolf Harris, which I trust will not dampen your mood.

My only criticism of the patch browser is that its large window completely obscures the STEAM player's controls and can't be budged out of the way. I therefore found myself continually opening the browser to load a patch, shutting it to fiddle with the controls, opening it again to load a new patch, and so on. I feel a movable window would be a lot more convenient.

An international team of sound designers were given the brief of creating sounds from acoustic sources, using no plug-ins or synths. One interesting angle was to focus on the hidden frequencies of a familiar sound; for example, the dull clink of a tapped light bulb conceals a tiny, inaudible rattle made by the bulb's tungsten filament. After many stages of enhancement this micro-sound was transformed into a metallic, slightly wheezy pad sound which mutates into gigantic spacious chimes when played down a few octaves. The makers describe this uncovering of 'the sound within the sound' as 'psychoacoustic' sampling (a term used to describe the study of the perception of sound). While innately suspicious of industry buzzwords, I have to admit that the organic approach has certainly yielded some interesting results! The quest to avoid the obvious has produced many unusual samples: steel drums and piano recorded in a cathedral, an awesome-sounding sawtooth wave derived from a 20,000 Volt Tesla coil, a Tibetan singing bowl with an orange rolling around inside, a table full of children's toys, a Yamaha grand piano played with an E-bow and so on. Most dangerous of them all was the burning piano: for reasons best known to himself, sound designer Diego Stocco sampled a piano which he had just set on fire, thereby making himself a folk hero to legions of teenage boys. The Italian madman explains: "It was a nice day, you know, just a little bit of wind, and I, er, decided to burn my piano." (Kids, don't try this at home.) All I can say is, give that man a job at Steinway & Sons. I'll leave it you to imagine how a burning piano sounds, but the video of the event is pretty interesting.

The instrument's oscillator sync is an improvement on old two-oscillator synths — on those, sync was achieved by slaving one oscillator to the other, resulting in the loss of one as a master oscillator. Omnisphere gets round this limitation by providing a hidden, dedicated slave oscillator for sync purposes. I also feel duly obliged to mention the obligatory 'analogue' control which introduces the oscillator tuning deviations which were, frankly, the curse of old synths. (Use sparingly.) A 'phase' control offsets the start point of one oscillator against that of the other, which subtly enriches the waveform.

There are two filters, which can operate in series or in parallel — both have 17 possible types (including low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, notch and 'metal pipe'). Eric Persing being a keen fan of vintage synths, it comes as no surprise that the filters sound warm and fat and generate no digital 'stepping' when the cutoff is adjusted. Some filter types can self-oscillate, but (unlike on my old Prophet 5) the oscillation occurs at a civilised volume, thus safeguarding the hearing of future generations. Once you've adjusted the filter(s) to your satisfaction, the settings can be saved and recalled.

You can creatively mess up the sound of the oscillators by activating ring modulation (beloved of certain '70s jazz-rock keyboardists) and/or frequency modulation: both are useful sources of clangorous, DX7-style timbres, and the latter can also be applied to Omnisphere's samples. If pushed to the limit, ring modulation can produce some great '50s sci-fi effects. A 'wave shaper' is also on hand to distort the waveforms in various musically pleasing ways. If you want to introduce vibrato, tremolo, automated filter sweeps and auto-pan effects (or as we call them in the trade, wobble, shudder, wah-wah and shimmer), each patch has six independent syncable LFOs with a choice of nine waveforms.

A powerful unison mode instantly transforms a single-oscillator sound into a massive stereo sonic event. 'Harmonia' is an alternative, powerful multi-voice mode which allows you to stack up to four extra oscillators per patch layer — each one has its own level, tuning and pan settings. For the more adventurous, 'granular synthesis' can be applied to the samples (but not to oscillators). The manual describes this as "a powerful method of fragmenting pieces of sound into very small bits of audio called 'grains'. It's a useful technique for everything from evolving soundscapes to edgy, gritty glitchiness." That sounds exciting, but I must confess my initial attempts just made everything sound out of tune. Oh well, back to the drawing board...

If you check out the videos at www.spectrasonics.net/omnisphere_teaser/explore.html you'll hear (and see) how mod envelopes can turn a regular sustained synth sound into something irresistibly funky. Spectrasonics have supplied a large number of 'rhythmic envelopes' for this purpose, Diego Stocco's 'Plastic Boy Groove' being one of the outstanding specimens. I'm no dancing fool, but I have to say these wicked syncopated synth beats certainly set my toes twitching and my nostrils flaring. If you fancy a more random approach, constantly shifting 'chaos envelopes' generate unpredictable rhythmic results. The current version of the manual has no information on envelopes, but there's an excellent video tutorial at http://support.spectrasonics.net/instruments/omnisphere-tutorial-videos.php.

Omnisphere's modulation facilities are so extensive that the company dreamed up a special name for them: Flex-Mod. (Hmm, needs some work.) Basically, you can modulate just about anything with just about anything else: 28 possible modulation sources (LFO's, velocity, pitch wheel, aftertouch, random, mod envelopes, and so on) can be applied to any one of over 60 modulation targets, including coarse pitch, unison detune, sample timbre, oscillator symmetry (useful for pulse width modulation effects), filter cutoff, pan, and so on. Twenty-four simultaneous modulation routings are available per patch — you can see and edit them all in the 'mod matrix zoom' window.

A good example of modulation at work is the patch 'Workin' The Synthetic', which adds seven modulation sources to a huge-sounding distorted solo synth. The combination of modulators constantly changes its pitch and timbre, producing a driving, aggressive, hard-edged Nine Inch Nails-style riff. Though such sounds are somewhat labour-intensive to program, they're instantly gratifying to play.

I'm happy to say that this product more than upholds Spectrasonics' fine tradition of providing beautiful, creative, practical and playable sounds. I expect it will win admirers for years to come; if you're thinking of buying it I suggest you don't hang about, as the rest of your allotted three score years and 10 may not be enough to explore all of the wonderful sounds lurking under its bonnet.