Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2
A sample-based synth that arrived after years of waiting and became the reference point other soft synths got measured against.
Overview
When Pro Sound (August 2015, p.32) opened its review, the first thing it noted was the wait. "Several years," in the magazine's words, passed between the original Omnisphere and version 2 from Eric Persing and the Spectrasonics crew. This wasn't a quiet incremental update slipping out between trade shows. It was an event, and reviewers treated it that way.
Omnisphere 2 is a hybrid digital synthesizer plug-in built around sample-based synthesis. It is not a straight sample-playback rompler, and it is not a pure algorithmic synth either. Sampled source material gets fed through a synthesis engine, which is why it has a reputation as a deep instrument rather than a preset jukebox. Pro Sound (August 2015, p.32) reviewed it as a hybrid digital synthesizer plug-in and treated the release as a significant one, the kind of product a working composer or producer builds a template around.
The reputation is not universal. A later Electronic Musician roundup weighed Omnisphere 2 against a lighter-weight competitor. It called Omnisphere 2 the "daddy of sample-based synthesis" and also called it "nowhere near as friendly (or affordable)" as the alternative under review. That's the trade-off owners live with. The depth is real, and so is the learning curve.
Price is muddier. The sources here disagree: one Electronic Musician listing shows $387, while another shows $499. Pro Sound (August 2015, p.32) doesn't pin a figure in the excerpt available. The street price moved around over the product's life, so "reportedly in the $387 - $499 range depending on source and date" is the honest read.
Users point to how it bridges hardware and software workflows. One working player interviewed in Electronic Musician described using Omnisphere 2's hardware integration so that every note and movement on a physical synth maps to the software. Knob and slider gestures that would otherwise be lost get captured, then edited afterward in the digital realm. That same user reported running three instances live, manipulated from hardware over USB, outputting two to four channels through MainStage, and described the rig as working "absolutely flawlessly."
The engine kept pace with synthesis trends. When wavetable synthesis became a talking point again in the late 2010s, Omnisphere 2 was already on the list of software instruments offering it. Electronic Musician named it alongside Serum, Falcon, Nave, Pigments, Codex, and others when walking through wavetable-based options. A plug-in released in 2015 was still being cited as a wavetable-capable tool years later.
It also turns up in quieter jobs. An Electronic Musician tutorial on orchestral articulations in an electronic context used an "organic" pad from Omnisphere 2 to add a more electronic edge to a dance track built around Spitfire Audio string libraries. There it fills a timbral gap rather than starring.
The sources here do not establish any of the hard numbers a spec-minded buyer would want: polyphony, sample library size, patch count, system requirements, or supported plug-in formats. Those aren't documented in the available material, and this archive won't invent them. What can be said is this: a sample-based hybrid synthesizer, released in 2015 after a multi-year gap, priced somewhere in the high hundreds depending on source, praised for depth and hardware integration, and dinged for complexity and cost.
If the goal is fast, friendly sound design, the contemporaneous comparisons suggest looking elsewhere. If the goal is an instrument that can absorb hardware gestures, host wavetable work, and slot into an orchestral-electronic hybrid session, Omnisphere 2 fits. The wait Pro Sound noted in 2015 was, by most accounts, worth it.
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