What workhorse synth would you buy if you couldn't get Omnisphere?

[Jac459]

Btw Serum 2 will be a free update.

Strange you would put Diva, Repro and Model 84, as great as they are, but are virtual analogue emulations as workhorses.

But from reading your post, the only one I would recommend is Avenger 2. (though you would have ot catch it on sale for it to be under $130.
rsp

Fully agree.... If I were to start now with no plugins, I'd like somebody to advise me avenger 2...

[wayford]

Avenger is on sale Thomann's.

Good spot - £117 makes it a serious contender for the OP I'd have thought.

Thank you Examigan and noiseboyuk, I decided it still is too much for me, unfortunately. I'm in a really (and I mean really) unique situation, so I will just save up for it and buy it in the future. But it is a very good price for everyone who can afford it.

[LFO8]

Spectrasonics doesn't but some resellers have some options. Not rent-to-own in the Serum/Splice sense but more like instant loans with payment plans. Musician's Friend does that. Sweetwater has a deal for 36 month financing at $14/month (not having read fine print). If that's the case, $504 over $479 retail means $25 interest or 5.2%.

Forgive me, nothing against you or people who go for financing like this, but I just don’t get the thinking behind it. People aren’t willing to spend $479 on Omnisphere now but they are willing to spend $504 on it if it’s over 14 months? Surely that makes no economic sense. Just save up the $479 and pay $25 less.

I get that not everyone has the same amount of money but if you are in such a position that you have to take out a loan for a few hundred bucks then what the heel are you doing buying expensive plugins?

[wayford]

Sounds like a good idea, if it has to be Omisphere.

If a person is not opposed to Musician's Friend (owned by Guitar Center). They have a rewards program, and I was able to use those points on Omnisphere as well as Keyscape. Only way to get a discount. With Keyscape managed to get a MIDI keyboard with it too. Build points when they offer double points like right now on accessories (if you need cables or whatever).

That is a great idea, but unfortunately I couldn't be more physically far away from a place where any of these companies are based (I'm not in an english-speaking country or europe, for that matter), unfortunately. I am working on eventually getting there though. I guess instead of choosing what synth to buy, that should be my top priority

[CrystalWizard]

... ...

Omnisphere's main selling point is the sample library. The synth section is quite good but there's plenty of competition. imo of course.

i disagreed. Onmisphere is not Atmosphere (only based on sample) anymore . The hardware integration and library is something unique.

The hardware integration is unique. The library is unique, hence my comment.
The synthesis section is quite good but there is competition, which is what i meant when i posted that.

There is not so much competitor. In a way Falcon, Halion and Melda SoundFactory. May be Rapid

Hence my comment that names Falcon and Halion 7. I'm not that familiar with mSoundFactory but i doubt it compares in the samplesets But the synth engine maybe does...hence my comment.

...

[IvyBirds]

If a person is not opposed to Musician's Friend (owned by Guitar Center).

Woodwinds and Brasswinds www.wwbw.com is another storefront website owned by Guitar Center that's main focus is marketing to the educational band and orchestra market for schools like High School Band instruments

But they also have the full Guitar Center inventory including Omnisphere and other Spectrasonic instruments. If you register for their site site they will notify you via email of promo codes that they run often for 10-20% off any item which you can use for Omnisphere. That's how I got my copy and they send it boxed with the sample library on a SSD drive

[Ah_Dziz]

Did the OP say they have logic and therefore Alchemy 2? Does alchemy 2 come with the alchemy 1 sample sets from the "official" camel audio expansions? If so then it's not only a contender for workhorse/ workstation, it's probably the best thing around. Alchemy 1 is still one of my very favorite sample based synths and it does absolutely insane things with it's additive and spectral resynthesis. It also supports sfz sample maps so you could expand it far beyond the large included library with the tons of cool libraries that have been released as sfz. It also has just a super "regular" synthesis engine and a workflow kind of similar, but better than, in my opinion, Omnisphere.
The one thing that Omni really has over Alchemy is it's multi channel setup, which is very useful when composing, and also saves a bit on resources.

I own and use Omni and Alchemy 1. I'm a PC user so no logic for me. I'm not super into presets so the massive amounts of patches for both are not major selling points. When I'm in the middle of a job though and I have to just crank out a "club song" or "pop rap song" or I just need a little 16th note synth pulse sound to fill out a cue, then I can get what I'm looking for in either Omni or Alchemy.

If you already have alchemy via logic pro, dig into it and learn all about it. Learn how to import and mangle sfz patches. Learn to make bread and butter synth patches from scratch in it. I honestly believe that it's still one of the very best synth a on the market. I've been tempted to buy a MacBook on many occasions just so I could use Alchemy 2. If I could use it in other DAWs on OSX I would have bought a Mac already...... But oh well.

I'd also reconsider kontakt (especially picked up 2nd hand or on a major sale). The amount of included stuff is bananas and can be massively modified and reworked with tools about as flexible as any others out there. The GUI (actual kontakt GUI) is not the best thing in the work but for the level of control you have it gets the job done. You also mentioned you are a GUI programmer so you could easily script custom GUIs. Definitely get the free version along with the free library and see what you think of the sounds. You will also be opening up the entire world of 3rd party kontakt libraries, both free and paid.

This stuff is all true about Halion too, but I have no experience with Halion in the past 18 years or so.

[IvyBirds]

Forgive me, nothing against you or people who go for financing like this, but I just don’t get the thinking behind it. People aren’t willing to spend $479 on Omnisphere now but they are willing to spend $504 on it if it’s over 14 months?

It costs exactly $1.78 in finance charges each month to do it that way. So you need to ask yourself should I save up $36 a month for 14 months and then buy it? Or should I spend $37.78 a month for the next 14 months and have use of the program the entire time? Then own it outright?

If you love Omnisphere and think it can benefit your music isn't that worth an extra $1.78 a month more over the next 14 months?

Your time an opportunity has a value also. Certainly it's worth more than 15 cents a day

I would be right with you if it were hundreds more to do it that way, but it's not it's only $25.

To put it a other way if you could rent Omnisphere for 14 months for $25 would that be worth it?

[noiseboyuk]

Did the OP say they have logic and therefore Alchemy 2? Does alchemy 2 come with the alchemy 1 sample sets from the "official" camel audio expansions? If so then it's not only a contender for workhorse/ workstation, it's probably the best thing around.

You know what? I think we have a winner. This makes total sense.

Save all your precious money for Omni one day. For now spend nothing, except time getting to know Alchemy.

[Tj Shredder]

Synthmaster complete... Often enough on no-brainer sale...

[legendCNCD]

You'll get the Omnisphere.

[LFO8]

Forgive me, nothing against you or people who go for financing like this, but I just don’t get the thinking behind it. People aren’t willing to spend $479 on Omnisphere now but they are willing to spend $504 on it if it’s over 14 months?

It costs exactly $1.78 in finance charges each month to do it that way. So you need to ask yourself should I save up $36 a month for 14 months and then buy it?

If you’re asking for my opinion: YES, that is exactly what you should do because if you can’t pay for it now then you can’t afford it! We are not talking about taking out a mortgage on a house here, we are talking about taking out a loan to pay for a plugin, that you thought was too expensive to buy now but are willing to pay $25 more for in the end.

[wayford]

Well guys, some time earlier this week I became an owner of Serum. Now also waiting for Serum 2

[Gam456]

Synthmaster complete... Often enough on no-brainer sale...

I had many issue losing my preset with SM2

SM3 the new oscAnalog is unusable with a toon of aliasing, it will probably never fix.
The granular is not implemented yet in the beta. May be one day.

Well guys, some time earlier this week I became an owner of Serum. Now also waiting for Serum 2

That v2. Mmmm looks like a chimera

[mdx4ever]

SynthMaster 3 and Vengence 2
Sorry, that’s 2 not 1