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Monkey if you want EDM sounds you really cannot beat Hive. It's on introductory sale still.
U-He are 100% the most trustworthy plug in manufacturer, they respond immediately to bug reporting, an update to newest OS etc. issues quickly. Truly a 100% honest and worthy company to spend money on!
https://www.u-he.com/cms/hive

Also they do IMO the best analog emulation synth out there in DIVA, and my personal favorite synth Zebra 2, a total sleeper, you think "Oh that's nice." No big deal right? then you realize you use Zebra on all your tracks with real analog synths and the like!

I'm a hopeless fanboy, I don't own all their stuff or anything, (Bazille, Filterscape, MFM2, Zebra, Hive), but I love Zebra and Hive, and both are outstanding. Bazille and the rest are great too, but for my own use it's Zebra and Hive!

Omnisphere is the greatest virtual synth of all times. Buy it and touch the face of God.

I re-tracked ALL of my Omnisphere parts a couple of nights ago, since none of them are in finished projects yet (that is, none of the projects it's used in have been mixed yet, as I've been prioritizing other people's projects for a year now).

It sounds different, for sure. Smoother and higher fidelity. But beware that the envelopes are different from before, and if you're using MIDI vs. live playing each time you render, you're likely to have to tweak note start times, note lengths, dynamics, etc. Not by much, mind you, but the phrasing won't sound quite right if you leave your MIDI as-is.

Default volume levels are fairly extreme now compared to before. It's funny how some vendors are pulling back on default volume whilst others are bumping it up a notch or two.

That's the way, Mark. C'mon mate, don't stop there... please!

Keep it comin', bro'...

Gravity Jim wrote:Omnisphere is the greatest virtual synth of all times. Buy it and touch the face of God.

This is just the sort of thing I need to hear to help justify my narrowly-focussed VI wish-list, which is still just the Spectra stuff, SM's brass instruments and some sort of acoustic drum thingy.

Thanks Jim! A-w-e-s-o-m-e!

Michael Canavan wrote:Monkey if you want EDM sounds you really cannot beat Hive. It's on introductory sale still.
U-He are 100% the most trustworthy plug in manufacturer, they respond immediately to bug reporting, an update to newest OS etc. issues quickly. Truly a 100% honest and worthy company to spend money on!
https://www.u-he.com/cms/hive

Also they do IMO the best analog emulation synth out there in DIVA, and my personal favorite synth Zebra 2, a total sleeper, you think "Oh that's nice." No big deal right? then you realize you use Zebra on all your tracks with real analog synths and the like!

I'm a hopeless fanboy, I don't own all their stuff or anything, (Bazille, Filterscape, MFM2, Zebra, Hive), but I love Zebra and Hive, and both are outstanding. Bazille and the rest are great too, but for my own use it's Zebra and Hive!

I totally hear you, Michael. I well remember u-he from the early days of free VSTs. I've also heard many good things said about the plugs you mentioned and others. Truly, as you say, a genuine company that's in for the long haul.

The problem I have 'though is that I'll be limiting my VI and plug purchases to the highest degree possible. I've hung out for 15 years mainly to see how the market developed, who emerged as "keeper" companies, and how legacy support and updates panned out. I spent all this time refining my hardware MIDI setup, knowing it could always be there and that it could well be a very long time 'til I was convinced it was "safe" to start introducing 3rd-party plug-ins to the equation.

Admittedly, the Omnisphere update, along with those to follow from Spectrasonics, has been the proverbial straw in this context. It does seem even to me now, the world's most stubborn VI sceptic and old-fangled fuddy-duddy, that these things have truly come of age. Even the CPU-power <-> hit ratio appears to be more realistic and practical these days. IOW, I'm finally sold on the idea of starting down this road, but the reticence remains in sufficient quantititties to ensure a softly-softly approach on my part. A minimalist one, if you will.

Obviously, I'll seek your and the other Unicorns' guidance before taking the plunge, and no doubt mid-journey, but for now I'm just glad to see the release of this behemoth; I want to see it deliver in every sense of the word...

Thought there was a separate thread on RapturePro, but since I mentioned my problems with the installer earlier in this thread, I should let people know that they are now resolved -- though at the cost of waiting until I could finally take a break in my project to safely upgrade my SSD so that there would be enough space to use it for the data (as the installers behave poorly and fail miserably if you try to point them to another drive).

I haven't had time to go through the libraries to compare yet. RapturePro is definitely the better deal of the two, in terms of bang-for-buck. But depending on needs (especially choirs), people may find Omnisphere more useful. They do cover similar ground, and Omni is a more sophisticated engine overall.

The Cakewalk Command Center is confusing, as there's a login dialog that appears to be for your Cakewalk account, yet gives no error messages and can't be dismissed except by the window closing icon, if that's the credentials you give it. Only last night did I realize maybe it needs my computer administrator credentials, in spite of the logo and wording in the dialog.

The VST3 version of RapturePro needs to be quarantined, or any program that uses VST3 (DP is not one of those) will crash at startup, and probably without helpful error logs. Be warned!

mhschmieder wrote: I haven't had time to go through the libraries to compare yet. RapturePro is definitely the better deal of the two, in terms of bang-for-buck. But depending on needs (especially choirs), people may find Omnisphere more useful. They do cover similar ground, and Omni is a more sophisticated engine overall.

I'm still tempted to pick up Rapture Pro, it's $99 if you own Z3ta+2.
Look forward to more info on Rapture from you.
In use is it basically a Romper? or does it feel like something you can tailor to your own?

Actually, it is more like a Yamaha MOTIF in that it has a lot of standard synthesis parameters compared to a typical sampler.

What Roland (err, I mean Cakewalk, or are they really now the same company?) did was to merge Dimension and Rapture into one product, and include all the original sound libraries of both in Rapture Pro (plus some new expansions).

At first glance, Rapture Pro seems to compare most closely with IK Multimedia SampleTank in terms of the nature of the content. But Rapture Pro is way more sophisticated. It might even be as much so, or more, than Omnisphere. Certainly more immediate, at any rate.

Not sure about format; I doubt you can import easily (probably not with STEAM for Omnisphere either). Pretty sure you're stuck with just the content they themselves product, in terms of libraries (vs. individual samples, which is growing your library the hard way).

Omnisphere now allows importing of audio; I haven't tried it yet, but recall viewing a demo in which Eric Persing uses imported audio as fodder for granular synthesis.

That's more like it, Sir Markus.

I wanna hear how ManySpheres is the greatest thing since JC walked on water... I mean, turned water (cheap) into wine (less cheap). Don't tell me how great such-and-such a VI is unless it's the blessed MultiSphere.

Please, bring on the PolyNuts love. Tell me that my first spattering of hittoons will be inspired by the new EDM presets, and that the moolah I'll subsequently earn will allow me to purchase further copies for, and get this... simultittytaneous multiple instances of ManyMultiPoly greatness!