I asked Stephen Kay, master synth programmer for Korg and inventor of KARMA, “What did you see at NAMM that impressed you the most?” Without missing a beat, he said, “Spectrasonics’ new Omnisphere.” So I strolled over to the Spectrasonics booth to have a look for myself. I had already missed a series of full-length demos given to large groups of NAMM attendees, so company founder and creative director Eric Persing graciously agreed to give me a brief personal demonstration. It was his final demo during NAMM, so I shot him. We’ll try to post a video clip on this site within the week.

Omnisphere is the forthcoming flagship soft synth from the makers of Stylus RMX, Trilogy, and Atmosphere. Containing many times the sample content of all those programs, it incorporates the new STEAM Engine, which will also be the basis of future Spectrasonics products. Omnisphere combines just about any synthesis architecture you’ve ever heard of (granular, FM, polyphonic ring mod, timbre shifting, and lots more) with some very unusual samples, complex modulation routing, and a new technique for morphing one instrument’s harmonics into another’s. And I was floored by its method for drawing and assigning finely detailed modulation envelopes and arpeggiation patterns in real time. Just about everything else I saw this week had a projected ship date around the end of February, but not this one. Look for Omnisphere on September 15 (they promise it won’t be late), selling for $499.