From the reviews I read, this is supposed to be the Go To synth for film scoring and music making. I read that the patches were all first class and the sounds unmatched. With that in mind I have to say that I'm underwhelmed by this product. I use Reason to produce beats and I've heard better sounds in refills (Reason format sound libraries) that were FAR cheaper.

That's not to say that this product is terrible because it's not. I wouldn't have given it three stars if the sounds were actually bad. It just really isn't worth the nearly $500 asking price and I have buyers remorse.

GOD: Some prestes are super cool. Lots of features for sound editing. Some features could be used probably in next 5-6 years because they reuire super powefull PC and OS to support them. Otherwise your PC would be choocking quite often on many sounds and patches. SSD is must have to use it or I will get frustrated with load times. Amazing vairety of sounds, ability to stack sounds.

BAD: Lots of issues with interface. Support responsive but not very helpful. Installation HD useless (I had to download the whole60+ Gb from internet). That eats up lots of bandwidth and takes almost forever (even with my 100Mb/S speed). Issues with Ableton Live9. No NKS mappings for Kontakt. Lots of similar patches which sound almost identical. No standalone version.

If I were to recommend one, single software sound module/synth, this would be it. It's capable of just an incredible range of sounds, and at every level it sounds absolutely fantastic. Also programming it isn't very hard, considering it's software based. This is also backed by one of the most reliable and dedicated music software companies around in Spectrasonics. Did I say this thing sounds freaking fantastic?

Just to be clear, this plugin combines incredibly varied, and numerous methods of sound generation via oscillators that can produce an astounding amount of waveforms, from wildly pure to garish digital, to outstanding virtual analog. But it also comes with thousands of samples that can be used in the same way, many of these are terrific, pure sounding samples. If you don't find what you like, you can add your own even! All of this can be run through an impressive array of filters, then run through waveshaping, or granular alterations, ring modulation, FM, more. All of this can be controlled or modulated in any number of ways. There's also a series of outboard effects (reverb, delay, etc) that sound excellent as well. Plus a really impressive arpeggio. And before I forget, there's a terrific, free app that works as a controller for it, making it even easier to tweak and add to any performance.

The only reason not to consider this is if you are looking for a sample playback virtual instrument that does multi-sampling across the keyboard and velocity layers, or a drum kit/machine. Omnisphere isn't really designed for that. While it can sample, and has great samples, and has a lot of percussion and drum sounds, it's not a "rompler" in this regard. I could also see how an analog purist may wish a true analog synthesizer over this, if that's what you are aiming for. Outside of that, if you own any type of digital audio workstation and are looking to increase your palette, look no further. Just buy this, and be happy for the next decade.

One of the greatest single investments I've made in my music career.

I hope this review doesn't come across as a negative take on this instrument. I very much appreciate the work that went into creating it's sounds. But at the end of the day I had to step back and evaluate if it was actually helping (or hindering) my music making.

You can spend days auditioning and punching through the amazing sounds on this instrument, admiring at the creativity it took to produce such sonic textures. A truly wonderful work of sound design. Seriously, holding down a single note and letting it evolve forever has never been so gratifying.

But ... that doesn't actually mean you can easily use these sounds in an original composition of your own.

A lot of the sounds are so specific in mood and musical direction, they tend to dictate what the final piece of music will sound like. Rather than you using the sound to create an idea, the sound tends to override your ideas and dominate the composition. In fact, you might find yourself producing music that sounds a little too much like the demos on the Spectrasonics website.

Many of the sounds have also become heavily overused in television drama and action/horror movie soundtracks. So with their very specific texture and tone, it may be harder to craft your own original sounding ideas. Of course, any instrument or loop sample library you use holds that risk, but it's especially obvious here.

There are of course some instruments that are highly playable and interesting but for the price, you can probably get those particular sounds elsewhere.

All of this could have been okay, if the producers had adopted a different marketing strategy.

Rather than lump together an endless sound library that tries to cover everything from horror movie soundtracks to classical, pop and rock, (and of course charging a relatively high price for it) the producers could have broken it down into styles, moods and genres to be sold as smaller separate libraries at more affordable prices.

I can imagine most musicians will probably use a fraction of the sounds in this library, according to their style and musical genre, while finding the rest of the sounds, intriguing though not necessarily usable.

I don't often write horror soundtrack music so I don't actually need roughly 20% of the sounds in the library, but now I've paid for them anyway. Don't need Mongolian chants either, but here they are taking up some 500MB on my hard drive and I've paid for them, so ... I'll find myself auditioning them and playing around with them, rather than actually producing music with them.

So yes, this is a huge library and yes the sounds are very creative, but no, it doesn't actually lend itself well to real world music creation.