Omnisphere comes with literally thousands of new sounds and features that you’ll find to be useful and practical for just about any musical style you’re producing. For those who enjoy or have a passion for programming sounds, or doing sound design, Omnisphere is a virtual dream come true given the number of features available to let you customize or design from scratch. Rather than taking up space to list what you can read for yourself, just click here to read Spectrasonics’ list of product features especially the number of programming features and controls. It’s lengthy and impressive.

That said, if you’re a composer who’s never tweaked a sound, or if you’re a composer who’s never had any desire to tweak a sound, or if you’re a composer that only wants to do the most basic tweaking (like me), you’ll really appreciate Omnisphere because of the quick way you can do simple things to create big results.

The organization of Omnisphere I have to classify as being ingenious. All of the sounds can be found under three different browsers. Keeping it simple, the organization of the browser works much like a blog in that for each sound there are tags. Type a tag name into the search engine, and it brings up all the programs attached to that tag. You can also create new tag categories to customize how you hear sounds.

Installation

Omnisphere comes with a library of over 43 GB of sound sources in its library. The initial install, which comes on 6 DVDs, includes several thousand patches (with more in the patch updater). The library includes some 2700 sound sources, including unique psychoacoustic sounds (blowtorch, bicycle wheel, burning piano, to name a few of the more esoteric ones), and patches designed by a number of respected sound designers.

Interface

Belying the instrument's incredible complexity, Spectrasonics has designed the interface with progressive levels of sophistication. This means that a beginning user can load multi-instrument patches or individual "Parts" and use the synthesizer immediately, without having to learn about a lot of the deeper functionality right away. Experienced users can use the same interface to dig deeper into the sounds and customize them for a completely unique experience. All features are laid out in a simple, logical format, with access to deeper functionality readily available from the panels that support them.

Key Features
Harmonia
One of the new features of Omnisphere is the Harmonia. Harmonia is similar to a pitch effect, but it's actually built into the synthesis engine (instead of as an effect) so it can be used for additional oscillation. Up to four of these can be used per layer, bringing the total of possible oscillators per Part to 10. The really cool thing about this is, because it is not an effect, its features can be modulated as well.

Filters, Envelopes and Chaos
Omnisphere takes a real unique approach to envelopes. There are up to 8 available envelopes per layer. There is a traditional ADSR setting as well as slots for complex filters; these can even be combined. The complex envelope filters allow you to add points to the envelope with assignable shapes. You can load and store preset envelopes, and you can combine ADSR elements in the complex envelopes. Another cool feature of the envelopes is auto-Chaos. When this is active, it randomly adjusts points and curves in the grid, thereby creating a continually morphing and unpredictable behavior to the envelope. If you don't want the sound to continually change but just want a bit of unpredictability in sculpting a sound you can setup a filter and press the chaos button. It will redraw the envelope with a random variation of the filter you've created.

Arpeggiator
Omnisphere also sports a full-featured arpeggiator. I won't spend a lot of time talking about the arpeggiator because it is very similar to those you are probably familiar with on other instruments. One cool thing worth mentioning here, though, is a feature called Groove Lock, which allows the arp to sync the "groove" of a MIDI file, and when used with Stylus RMX, the MIDI file for the active loop can be dragged and dropped directly into the arp.

Effects
The effect slots can be applied to one or the other layer, in common for both layers on the Part level, and also as auxiliary sends for instruments / Parts on the multi-instrument edit page. The 33 effects, which range from emulated vintage effects to modern effects, are grouped by type ---limiter, compressor, gate, for example, in one section; EQs in another; delays in another, etc. The effects are highly tweakable, and like nearly everything in Omnisphere, can be assigned a MIDI parameter through the MIDI learn function and can be modulated as Part of a patch. The effects themselves are first-rate. My personal favorites are the tempo delays and the studio quality reverbs.

MIDI functionality
There are, literally, thousands of adjustable parameters in Omnisphere. Nearly all of them can be assigned to a MIDI controller by using the MIDI learn function and twiddling a knob or fader on your controller. This is really useful for live use because you can setup entire maps that you can save and recall.

My views:

Omnisphere is a beast. It comes with a comprehensive library of sound sources and amazing patches straight out of the box. Along with each patch, there is a description that explains a few key facts about how the patch is routed and what MIDI controllers are preset to dynamically change the sound. The patches can be located by mood, type, sound designer, and other variables that allow you to quickly zero in on a type of sound that may be applicable for your sound.