Spectrasonics has announced the next generation of Omnisphere, the company's flagship virtual instrument and software synth.
Ten years in the making, Omnisphere 3 arrives with "thousands and thousands" of new sounds, a new global control system, an expanded effects engine that can be used standalone, comprehensive MPE support, and much, much more.
Omnisphere 2 was already a powerhouse instrument with a colossal library, but 3 takes that to the next level. The factory library now contains over 26,000 patches across 18 curated collections spanning analogue and digital synthesis, acoustic instruments, ambient textures and cinematic sound effects.
(If you're concerned that all of this may not fit on your hard drive, fear not: thanks to Spectrasonics' new lossless optimization, the library takes up the same amount of space as Omnisphere 2, 64GB.)
All of the original Omnisphere patches have been remastered and refreshed to take advantage of the new features and effects, and a new organizational system has been implemented to make the process of discovering new presets faster and more intuitive.
Omnisphere 3's sound engine combines sample playback with wavetable, FM and granular synthesis. Now armed with over 600 morphing wavetables, including a new EDM-focused collection, the synth engine has been equipped with a new oscillator drift function and a dual frequency shifter that's fully modulatable and can be routed in parallel or series. (It's also polyphonic, so each note can be frequency-shifted individually.)
The new Quadzone feature allows you to creatively manipulate the four sound layers that make up an Omnisphere patch in a number of ways, unlocking a whole host of performative possibilities. On the Quadzone Grid, you can split and crossfade timbres across the keyboard, assign layers to different velocity ranges, or use a MIDI-mapped fader to control which zones in the grid are audible.
Omnisphere 3's new global macro controls enable you to customize any patch, quickly adjusting its most important characteristics without diving into a maze of menus. (The Ambience control, for instance, acts as a macro that controls all of the reverbs, delays and mic positions used in a patch.)
A new Mutations function creates variations on any patch at the click of a button, intelligently swapping out the wavetables or sound sources used under the hood. You have the option to choose between two Mutation levels, so you can go for a subtle variation or a complete overhaul depending on the amount of transformation you're after.
Omnisphere 3's effects engine has been expanded with 35 new effects, adding up to a total of 93 processors that can be chained together and applied to both patches, individual sound layers and auxiliary sends in the FX Rack. Among the new additions are four types of reverb, four types of delay, a 1176-style limiter, a tube saturation emulator and multiband compressor, alongside some more creative and experimental sound-shaping tools.
Spectrasonics has also made the FX Rack available as a dedicated effects plugin, allowing you to apply any of Omnisphere's effects to other instruments and sound sources in your DAW.
Omnisphere 3 brings support for MPE-compatible controllers, allowing for more nuanced expression across the instrument's patches through additional dimensions of control such as per-note pitch bend and polyphonic aftertouch. (There's a great demonstration of this at 17:30 in the video below.)
Spectrasonics has dramatically expanded Omnisphere's hardware integration with more than 300 new pre-mapped profiles for synths and controllers from 36 major manufacturers, including Roland, Yamaha, Native Instruments, Moog, Arturia and many more.
If that sounds like a lot, well, we haven't even covered everything. Omnisphere 3 is a truly monumental update that brings a vast amount of creative potential and sonic firepower to a plugin that was already one of the most powerful "do-it-all" software instruments in its class. Check out the walkthrough below to see Omnisphere 3 in action.
Available for macOS and Windows in AU/AAX/VST/VST3 formats, Omnisphere 3 will be released October 21st. It's priced at $499/€399 but existing owners can upgrade for $199.
Find out more on Spectrasonics' website.
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