At Superbooth 2018, we talked with Spectrasonics head Eric Persing about Omnisphere 2.5, a free update that introduces some impressive new features.
Omnisphere 2.5 is the first software synth to offer a Hardware Synth Integration feature, which goes way beyond MIDI-mapping to let you use your hardware synth as a hands-on controller for unlocking Omnisphere’s newly-expanded synthesis capabilities.
Key Features of Omnisphere 2.5:
- Hardware Synth Integration
- New Hardware Library adds hundreds of new patches for all users:
- Over 13,000 Sounds total now included
- Vastly Expanded Synthesis:
- Four Layers per patch
- Doubled Mod Matrix
- New State Variable Filters
- 8 LFOs, 12 Envelopes
- FREE for all Omnisphere 2 users
Pricing and Availability
Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2.5 is a free update to all registered Omnisphere 2 users. Public Beta starts later this month, with an official release in mid-summer 2018.
For more information, check out the Spectrasonics website.
Can’t wait for this to come out – it’s amazing to see capabilities like this being added as a free update.
Novation has been killing it with the free Circuit updates, too!
I haven’t quite understood the point of this – you can emulate your hardware synth in Omnisphere? (then sell it? 🙂
Can you edit other Omnisphere patches using your synth’s control surface, using it as a controller with all the templates there?
Persing goes into these things in the video.
The update lets you use your hardware synth, very naturally and powerfully, as a controller for Omnisphere.
They’ve also sampled and modeled the hardware. But the point isn’t that you can get rid of your hardware, it’s to extend it so you can do things that wouldn’t be possible with the original hardware.
He also goes into how they’ve got presets specific to each synth, but that you aren’t any any way limited by that. At one point, he talks about how you could swap filters on the Minimoog and play it polyphonically – that sort of thing.
As always with Omnisphere – it’s some deep stuff!
No, that’s not the analog experience, it’s the hardware experience. Now if they made and mapped knob laden keyboard….hmmmm.
This looks as good as I had hoped. What a brillian approach. Those who want to keep it simple can and theres a wide variety of synths this works with across the spectrum of price points. The software interface mimicking hardware will be instantly familiar allowing those less advanced users to get creative trying to swap filters in and out etc…while power users look to have a great starting point. The main thing from spectrasonics point of view is that they became that much more interesting to all
The owners of moog/dsi/roland gear who don’t own them.
Absolutely brilliant, Spectrasonics never fails to surprise in such awesome ways !
This does look amazing. Never knew I needed hardware synth integration, but it looks like a killer feature.
Seeing him play chords on the Voyager – and having it sound like exactly what you’d imagine a polyphonic Voyager should sound like – is pretty mind-blowing.
The expansion of the core features, though, is probably just as important. Looking forward to learning more about that!
persing should team up with access music to release a HARDWARE omnisphere workstation. it seems as if the german synth manufacturer desperately tries to come up with a virus successor for years now… and can´t deliver. i guess with persing on-board it would be a matter of hours to find the right concept.
I need this now!
So this is just midi learn for lazy folks?
Didn’t watch the video, eh?
No not at all.. ironically you seem a bit too lazy to inform yourself before you make comments
What would be cool is if Omnisphere’s patch were replicated on the hardware synth, so the two sounds could be mixed together.