Spectrasonics Omnisphere VSTi RTAS v1.5.0f x86/x64. After many years of development, Spectrasonics is proud to release the brand new flagship virtual instrument. After many years of development, Spectrasonics is proud to release the brand new flagship virtual instrument Omnisphere. This epic ‘Power Synth’ breaks completely. Omnisphere 1.5 is available now from the Updates area as a free update for all registered users. Expanded Synthesis Omnisphere 1.5. After many years of development, Spectrasonics is proud to release the brand new flagship virtual instrument Omnisphere. This epic ‘Power Synth’ breaks completely.

Seeing its six DVDs of sound content, you might be tempted to duct-tape a key down and let Omnisphere finish your film scoring gig. While the director would probably love the results, you’d be missing out on the real fun. Omnisphere is bursting with perfectly crafted preset sounds. The now 8,000-plus library covers everything from classic synths to rich, cinematic textures so well that, if sound programmers had a union, they’d probably protest. I’m tempted to quickly play through a number of them just so I can start spotting them on TV. But in a release modestly titled “1.5,” Omnisphere hones its true talent: It’s a surprisingly powerful tool for creative sound design when you’re ready to go beyond those presets.

We loved Omnisphere’s sound design features when we reviewed it in December 2008. Now it’s even deeper.

By Peter Kirn Sounds and More Sounds Once installed, Omnisphere 1.5 passes the “play it without reading the manual” test with flying colors. You can, as I did, easily store its sounds on an external drive. You may want to dedicate an afternoon to that installation, but then you can begin dialing up well-organized presets and start playing immediately. As before, it provides both sampled and modeled waveforms, for all the capabilities of a high-resolution sample playback synth atop a full-blown virtual analog/digital hybrid synth.

When you do need documentation, it’s among the clearest and most thorough available, with hours of online video tutorials. Omnisphere resists the preset maladies that tend to afflict instruments of this kind. Yes, you’ll find endless ear candy and evolving pads. But you’ll also find raw waveforms for building your own sounds, bread-and-butter synths, carefully constructed vintage instruments, aggressive leads, and even utility patches for test purposes. You can let your freak flag fly, or build a Hollywood score, or use Omnisphere as a lead synth. You get basics along with your weird, plenty in between, and it’s all eminently playable. Leopard-10.5.2-amd-efi-rev2 Iso. Granular, Harmonia, and Waveshaper Hidden amidst innocuous-looking parameters are three soundsculpting sections with radical capabilities—Granular, Harmonia, and Waveshaper—with new “zoom” modes accompanying each for easy editing.

The Granular section is simply mind-bending, even if you’ve used other granular synths (see Figure 1 above). It can introduce subtle, shimmering timbres, as well as more experimental, extreme effects. New Speed and Position modes produce some startling, gorgeous results. Add the unique Glide parameter, and you can make some very odd sounds as the grain pitch swoops from one sound to another. Some parameters have unexpected names: Grain Depth is actually the number of Grains. (Careful with that one—it’s the parameter that’ll quickly bring your CPU to its knees, as with any granular instrument.) Intensity actually modifies grain size and spacing simultaneously.