Well September is shaping up to be a heck of a month for VI & VE releases…
Available Now!
First up is the much anticipated release of Omnisphere by Spectrasonics. Based on an in house software engine called ‘STEAM‘. (Get it? The STEAM engine? Hardee Har Har.) It looks to be a deep instrument with loads of efx on call.
The build up to this has been going on since the January NAMM show. And I have to say, I like the way they went about it: Every 6 weeks or so, they released video shorts on some aspect of the product. A couple of videos in particular stood out: One video provided a brief and well produced history of synthesizers and synthesis. (If you want to know why sound presets are called “patches”, check it out.) The other featured their crazy sampling approaches.
Personally, I’m looking forward to it. Eric Persing and crew do great work, so expectations are high. And they are particularly high for owners of Atmosphere as Spectrasonic’s intel Mac-based wrapper for the old plug-in leaves many cold. I hope that one can get into the sounds’ design to a great degree if only to “de-hollywood” them a bit. (IMHO Spectrasonic’s stuff has a very slick, made for the screen, heavily produced sound. Good for lots of stuff, but not everything…)
Ordered mine this morning. Look for first impressions soon after it arrives…
Automaton: Life for your DAW
Next, Audio Damage has released Automaton, a bizarre cellular automata effects plug-in. On the surface it reminds me of a Reaktor instrument called “Life”. It’s a little hard to wrap your head around what it does, but these videos from Audio Damage should help. As with all of their stuff, it’s priced at the very pocket friendly $49. Yay.
Obelisk: Spectral Fun!
Lastly, Obelisk is due out this month. It appears to be the second release of ArtificialAudio and looks great. From what I can tell, it is similar to iZotope’s Spectron but is more user friendly and interactive.
It’s due this month. I sent Bernd Burhoff (Obelisk’s creator) an email this morning asking for an update on progress. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.
Be sure to check out the video tour on the site.
Lotsa stuff, and more in the pipeline I’m sure.
Peace Out.
