Omnisphere and serum: Two giants of the software synth world.
We’ve all wondered how they compare to each other, and today, after thorough analysis of both, we will come up with a winner.
Omnisphere 2.6 includes a stunning new “Hardware Library” with over 1,600 new patches created by Eric Persing and the renowned Spectrasonics Sound Development team. Each hardware profile has a corresponding set of sounds in the Hardware Library which were specially designed using that hardware synth as an Omnisphere controller. Dec 04, 2018 Omnisphere vs Nexus 2. I am in the market for a new 'synth' for making beats. I heard that Nexus and Omnishphere are both some of the best. Nexus is on sale for 200$,while omnishpere is $400 on sale. Should I get nexus and save or just go ahead and buy omnishpere and skip nexus?
It is, however, important to note that this article isn’t an attempt to determine which one of these beastly VSTs are ‘the best.’
What is actually the best is far too subjective for any one person to ascertain.
What you are about to read is merely a comparison of 2 industry leading virtual instruments in order to help you understand the differences and similarities between them.
If you’re on the fence about purchasing either one, or if you own both and struggle with which one to use for a particular task, you could benefit from the information in this article. https://covevale.weebly.com/blog/izotope-mastering-free-download.
If you’re not familiar with either of these, we strongly recommend checking them out.
You should also check out splice, where you can try out serum and other plugins for free for 3 days and then pay a monthly fee starting at 4.99$.
We’ll start with the most obvious differences, then we will break things down into various sections:
Obvious Differences
Omnisphere 2 is an 8-part multitimbral VSTi, meaning you can play up to 8 different sounds at once with one instantiation.
Serum can only play one sound at a time, so if you want to play more than that, you’ll have to have to use a different instantiation for each different sound you use from it.
Spectrasonics hasn’t provided a demo of Omnisphere 2 yet, so there is no way to test it out unless you buy it. A demo version of Serum is available with Splice.
To get more acquainted with each synth, please check out the links below:
Oscillators
Omnisphere 2 comes withover 400 new waveforms each of which is a morphing wavetable.
Ethnic instruments and unusual sound sources like a burning piano are also included and can be used as oscillators.
Additionally, you can add your own sounds and use those as oscillators or mangle them in the granular synthesis section.
However, when compared to other dedicated granular synths like Mangle or PadShop, Omnisphere 2 falls a bit short in terms of editing features.
Nexus 2 Vs Omnisphere
Serum on the other hand, comes with 144 wavetables and also gives you the ability to draw waveforms or load your own sounds and use them as oscillators.
Aside from being an “advanced wavetable synth”, Serum is also capable of performing additive and VA synthesis with classic waveforms (saw, square etc.) + a sub oscillator + noise oscillator.
Because of the array of waveforms and synthesis techniques that can be applied in both synths, they both could very well be referred to as modern hybrid synthesizers.
Filters
Serum has a variety of filter types. All the filters from Xfer’s LFOTool are included in addition to some new ones like Flangers, Phasers and the dirty sounding French LPF.
There are also Dual Filter types allowing you to morph between filter types.
Omnisphere 2 boasts a more flexible filter engine and 8 new filters giving you the ability to create your own filter sound with stereo control, drive and a host of other parameters to further customize your filters.
Also, it now includes all of the filters from GForce Software’s virtual synth, “impOSCar”.
![]() Modulators
Personally, my favorite thing about Serum’s modulators is how easy it is to drag and drop a modulation source to a destination.
This makes for a much faster workflow when creating or editing complex a patch.
Then there are the drawable LFOs, Envelopes and Macros which, depending on your preference, are more fun to play with than mousing around with percentages or virtual knobs.
Omnisphere’s Modulation Matrix is unbelievably massive and flexible!
Almost every parameter can be modulated and there are a plethora of modulation sources and targets.
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All 4 Effect Racks’ parameters, all the granular parameters, all the FM parameters, numerous parameters in the arpeggiator and envelopes can all be modulated by a multitude of sources.
But with all this modulation power, there is no drag and drop ability.
Effects
In addition to Serum’s classic synth effects and advanced effects such as a multiband compressor, Serum can be used as a dedicated FX processor as well.
Off the top of my head, the only other synths I can think of that have this feature are Native Instruments Absynth 5, FM8 and Reaktor 6.
The results of running an audio source through an effect with synthesizer parameters can be extremely inspiring and a lot of fun!
Omnisphere 2 has a wider variety of effects.
Vintage effects like echoes, choruses and compressors as well as various reverb types are included.
And remember, all of the parameters in each effect can be modulated. This does come at the cost of higher CPU usage, however.
I’d be curious to see what kinds of sounds could be generated if Omnisphere 2 was able to be used as a dedicated FX processor, but that feature isn’t available.
Overall Winner
I think Omnisphere 2 has a better sound library and is well-rounded as far as sound selection thanks to some of the best sound designers of our time, Eric Persing and Diego Stocco. Therefore, it takes the prize.
Serum may have a more flexible wavetable engine and deeper sound design capabilities with the wavetable editor, formulas and additive engine.
Nexus2 is the kind of instrument that you go to when you don’t want to spend time programming – it’s a ROMpler rammed full of inspirational, pro-quality sounds.
Nexus is a next generation ROM synthesizer.
Nexus delivers complex, ultra-fat, contemporary soundstorms. A powerful and flexible architecture is the foundation that supports the immediately useful and spontaneously engaging design of the instrument. Every aspect of Nexus was built to produce music of the highest quality, quickly, with the least amount of fuss.
Nexus features a 32-step arpeggiator with note-transposition, a 32-step trance gate, reverb licensed from Arts Acoustic, and a sophisticated modulation-matrix that will help you sculpt the sound.
Nexus includes a comprehensive 4GB library of over 880 sounds driven by a friendly internal librarian to find the exact sound you need in the heat of the creative moment. Features like search, favorites, and categorization are standard not only in the factory library but in all available expansions. Nexus offers an array of expansions covering a wide gamut of contemporary music styles and produced by the worlds top sound designers.
Nexus is very frugal with the CPU and careful with your RAM.
Nexus is an accessible instrument with contrast controls and several skins available which can change the appearance from black, to blue, to C64 beige
The sounds
The Library tab enables you to browse the 762 factory presets via the faux-LCD screen. These are split into 16 subcategories, including Arpeggios, Dance Leads, Piano, Fantasy and Dream, Epic Pads, Gated Pads, Classical and more.
This amounts to 4GB of content created by Manuel Schleis, the golden-eared sound-wizard behind the acclaimed Vengeance series of dance sample discs. The manual says that “prohibitively expensive analogue hardware devices” have been sampled, and the kinds of synth patches that are tricky to recreate in software are much in evidence, such as Roland JP-8080 and Access Virus leads and pads.
Nexus2 remains a dance-music-focused product, and this is affirmed by the inclusion of an all-new expansion: Dance Vol. 2. This is in addition to the factory bank outlined above and adds 128 bang-up-to-date dance patches that are especially suited to trance, electro house and hard dance styles.
Tweaking potential
You can’t create sounds from scratch using Nexus2, or import samples into it, but there are sound-shaping options aplenty. The front panel knobs and buttons are unchanged since v1, yet the LCD panel offers some neat new tricks.
The Mod screen offers control over vibrato, portamento and pitchbend (now with a +/-48 semitone range), but the main point of interest is the spruced-up modulation matrix. This now has over 100 destinations, and all effects (except ensemble) have at least one modulatable parameter.
Mod sources include the mod wheel, aftertouch, pitchbend, CC and host automation, and twin user LFOs. When we used the first version of Nexus we grumbled about the lack of those user LFOs (they eventually debuted in v1.2), so this time we’re going to suggest that since the mod matrix is more powerful, there should be user ADSRs too.
Nexus2’s arpeggiator and Trancegate each have their own page and are among the best we’ve seen. As well as the usual arpeggiator modes for up, down, order, and so on, Nexus2’s has a mini-sequencer in which you can set the octave and – new for v2 – semitone transposition per step.
Sequences can be up to 32 steps long, and you can set the note length and velocity for each. The display zooms in and out as you adjust the length, so that the sequence always occupies its full width. Markers above the sequencer area show quarter-note beats and the current play position, and there’s a movable loop-point marker.
Fans of funk will enjoy the new Shuffle option, although we’d like eighth-note swing, too. Strangely, the random mode didn’t work – it gave the same results as the ordered one.
Whereas the arpeggiator triggers notes within the synth, the trancegate is an effect – it modulates the volume level, and can create choppy, gated trance pads. The length is now freely adjustable and new Delay and Fadein controls can introduce the gate effect gradually when a new note is played (we’d like this on the vibrato too). The marker and shuffle functionality of the arpeggiator are replicated here as well.
There are lots of preset patterns for the arp and trancegate, and you can also set odd pattern lengths for each to create shifting, prog-tastic polyrhythms.
Mix screen and effects
The Mix screen offers perhaps the most useful new features. Nexus patches are built from up to four layers, and you can now mute layers and set their volume, panning, transpose and detune parameters. This is most welcome, and by stacking Nexus2 instances, you can effectively combine layers from separate patches.
As well as the front-panel delay and reverb, you now apply two global effects, rather than just one. They are: chorus, flanger, phaser, ensemble, degrader, distortion, phaser, and, new for v2, a stereo enhancer and an analogue phaser. A new preset librarian stores/recalls effects setups.
The stereo enhancer is handy and works on a given frequency range, but the analogue phaser is the real star. It’s licensed from ArtsAcoustic (who also supplied Nexus’s fantastic, pro-quality reverb) and gives a lush, smooth tone that distinguishes it from the existing phaser. It has more controls too, with adjustable upper/lower frequencies and up to 16 stages. With the Speed set to 0, the phaser’s position can be directly manipulated using the lower frequency value, which is a destination in the mod matrix.
A proper parametric EQ has been added, with eight filter options for each of the four bands. Oddly, the values in the display don’t correspond to the frequencies affected – when we dialled in a 5kHz boost, the peak was actually at 1kHz.
Summary
For a huge bank of high-quality, ready-to-go synthetic tones for contemporary genres, it’s hard to beat Nexus2. Many of the sounds are instantly inspiring in themselves, and the slick interface and preset categorisation help to keep that inspiration flowing.
Omnisphere Vs Nexus Which Is Better
Virtual 8 dj 2020. We can’t say that about every virtual instrument and the majority of them don’t sound as good as Nexus2, either.
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