MOTUNATION (formerly UnicorNation) is an independent community for discussing Digital Performer and other MOTU audio software and hardware. It is not affiliated with MOTU.
Forum rules
This forum is for seeking solutions to technical problems involving Digital Performer and/or plug-ins on MacOS, as well as feature requests, criticisms, comparison to other DAWs.
danworks wrote:FWIW, I still have my Prophet 5 and a DK-Synergy, both w/MIDI retrofit
Wow - a Synergy! I loved that thing - you're lucky to still have one. It has a sound of its own, that's for sure. Cool-looking, too.
I paid a fortune for it on those days (1982-83) and I was the only one in Italy to own one which allowed me to work a lot thanks to the Donald Fagen album (lot of Synergy there). Unfortunately two things happened after a lil while: DK failed and Yamaha released DX7 at a fraction of Synergy price ... and size! Talk about luck
I'm getting in on this... I bought enough OBXs OB8s OBXas to own that company. And Big Wave Dave played most of them in the band we had. Dave's favorite name for one of the bands we did was The Balls... hahahaha
waxman
DP9.5, Macbook Pro (2018) Mojave, Slate VMS mic, Everything Bundle, Dual Raven MTI 2, Apollo Twin Quad, UAD Arrow, UAD Satellite Octo Tbolt and all the UAD plugs, NI Komplete 11 Ultimate & Arturia V Collection 6, Maschine Studio MK3 Hardware, NI Komplete Kontrol 61s MK 2, Spectrasonics Ominisphere, Superior Drummer, BFD3, Ozone 7, Altiverb, Sound Toys, Waves, Final Cut X. PT 11.
I just finished going through the overview movie. Eric doesn't step thru patches per se, but he goes through the interface, its components, and touches on what Omni is capable of doing. He should post that one on the site for all to see. I think it would address some of the questions about Omni vs. Atmosphere, "is it worth it", "what does it do / sound like" etc.
All I can say is:
If you liked Atmosphere, RUN - don't walk - and upgrade.
If you like RMX, buy it. The two will be amazing together. (And let's hope they either a] port some of the functionality to RMX v2 or b] assimilate RMX into Omnisphere.)
The thing looks like Atmosphere on mega steroids. The improvements to the interface, patch browsing and saving, programming and tweakability (a big concern of mine), the arpeggiator, MIDI learn, Live mode, stacks....it's really a quantum leap from Atmosphere. (Ok maybe just an order of magnitude leap, but still....).
musicarteca wrote:Has anyone tried it in a PPC with a setup similar to mine? I wonder about the performance: G5 2 gigs double processor, 4 gigs of ram, DP 6, Tiger.
I've used Omnispere fine on my PPC G5 QUAD, Tiger, DP 6.01, 6.5 gigs ram - it was even easy to play having the buffer set at 512. I had about 4-5 different tracks (and MIDI channels) going in one instance of Omni.
MacBook Pro 2021 (M1 Ultra) with 64 gigs RAM. DP 11.23
Alex, I have almost your exact setup but with 3.5 GB of RAM. So far I have only done a little testing and Omnisphere is definitely using more CPU than Atmosphere (considering it can hold 8 Atmoshperes). I will test more and get back to you on that, but so far, I see a new Mac in my future...
hammerman wrote:Alex, I have almost your exact setup but with 3.5 GB of RAM. So far I have only done a little testing and Omnisphere is definitely using more CPU than Atmosphere (considering it can hold 8 Atmoshperes). I will test more and get back to you on that, but so far, I see a new Mac in my future...
I guess you could now load an Atmosphere patch in Omnisphere and make sure all the FXs are turned off to see the difference in CPU. I'm sure some of those FX (reverb?) are sucking some juice seeing how each patch can have many going at one time.
Dave www.dbwproductions.com
10 core IMac w/128 gbs ram, DP11, Logic10x and PT 12, 4 room commercial studio (tuned by Bob Hodas) great for producers and composers!
PATCH LIBRARY UPDATE - ENHANCED ATMOSPHERE PATCH LIBRARY NOW AVAILABLE
Now available on the Updates page is v1.0.2 of the Omnisphere Patch Library, which includes the entire original Atmosphere Patch library in enhanced form.
What does “enhanced” mean? The patches have been carefully recreated to sound like the original Atmosphere library, but we’ve included many enhancements from the additional modulation and effects of the STEAM engine in Omnisphere to take them to a whole new level.
It sounds very good and it has some inspiring texture that it will rule the world of soundtracks in the next years. Nice design, easy to use without even looking at any tutorial n stuff. The new presets managements, which seems have borrowed some idea from Kore, is just great. From what I've heard there's also a sort of repackaging of legacy Spectra libraries (London and Jazzy choirs for example), quite handy to to have it in there. Definitely lots of talented people behind this instrument, so kudos to the main wizard at Spectrasonics Eric Persing.
Few cons too:
1- It's true that the future is toward faster computer, but many of us are still on PPC machine, not because we're lazy, but because everything works perfect in it while not everything works the same on Intel-Leo combo. Omni makes you feel your computer became suddenly obsolete: I've loaded presets (not multi) as big as 500mb (!) On most of them my G5 2.7 was able to play one - two note max before the DP's CPU gauge started to get very red.
2- while the Atmo translation is pristine, the difference on CPU weight between Omni & Atmo playing the very same preset is noticeable.
Anyway, it's a great instruments with tons of possibilities.
"Inspiring" is the right word indeed, Dan. I've just finished auditioning the entire Omnisphere Patch Library and found almost every sound fascinating enough to want to start a new piece with. I only had problems with two patches – Glitch String FX and Hammer Step Seq.
With Glitch String FX I just get some low-level modulated white noise (the SoundSource yields the same result when auditioned).
With Hammer Step Seq, when I raise the controller's mod-wheel to about 90-127, the sound cuts out and the only way to restore it is to change the patch.
The latest updates didn't solve these problems. Other than this though, I'm extremely happy with the new Spectrasonics monster.
Now for the Atmosphere Patch Library...
Kind regards.
Dave Bourke
– ideation –
Mac Pro Quad Xeon 2.66 GHz, 5 Gb, OS X 10.5.8, iMac 24" 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo, OS X 10.6.2, Mac G4 dual 800 MHz Quicksilver, DP 7.11, PCIe-424/24i, UAD-2 Quad/UAD-1e, PowerCore Firewire.
I went to a seminar this last Saturday and Eric gave a 3 hour tutorial on Omnisphere. All I can say is this thing is DEEP and I think I could spend the rest of my life creating sounds for this monster. He did say the sample library portion of Omni includes "best of's" from Bizarre Guitar, Distorted Reality, Symp. of Voices, Vocal Planet, etc - in other words all the earlier Spectrasoncs sound libraries. I asked if it would be possible to import our own samples and he said, no, but elusively indicated that importing samples could be implemented in the future or another instrument may be in development that would allow sample import. Even though Omni is amazing, I really wish I could import my own samples into it as the synthesis engine is so powerful that you could really take your own sounds to another level. My only negative on Omni is that the samples included seem to be primarily keyboard/guitar/efx/pad/string sounds and I wish they would have included more woodwind and brass sounds for starting points (yep, I'm a sax player and would love to morph some woodwind sounds into insane Omni patches!) On the positive side, the previous posters who felt that Omni would just be used for preset sounds (thus making everyone sound alike) will be happy to hear that it's very easy to modify an existing sound and with a few fast tweaks you can have a radically different sound so I think the "sameness factor" can be at a minimum as long as you take a few seconds to alter effects, filters, etc.
Just my 2 cents!
All of Friday evening, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, plus all of Monday evening and most of Tuesday.
And that was just the Patch Library. I haven't even looked at the Multis yet.
Kind regards.
Dave Bourke
– ideation –
Mac Pro Quad Xeon 2.66 GHz, 5 Gb, OS X 10.5.8, iMac 24" 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo, OS X 10.6.2, Mac G4 dual 800 MHz Quicksilver, DP 7.11, PCIe-424/24i, UAD-2 Quad/UAD-1e, PowerCore Firewire.
