I just can't decide whether to get Live/Omnisphere or Suite!

[Dhak]

Well, i've worked hard and managed to save up the money I need to purchase some software. I could have easily downloaded cracked versions of basically anything, but I decided to go to the legit route and actually purchase it.

With that said, these softwares aren't cheap and I want to make sure i'm spending my hard-earned cash on the right things.

I've done my research, I've used my 30 day trial of Ableton, and I've changed my mind about what I want to buy about 100 times.

I just can't seem to decide. First I was dead-set on getting Suite but after hearing other VSTs like Omnisphere, I had thought about getting just Live and something else like Komplete, etc. After using the demo, I felt like the Ableton Suite pre-sets were kind of weak. In fact I was convinced that the demo had restricted sound access and that when you bought Suite, you'd get a much bigger library of pre-sets to work with. It turns out that's not the case, what you see is what you get.

Which is why I changed my mind when I saw that for nearly the same price I could get Ableton Live and Omnisphere. After looking at and listening to the HUNDREDS of pre-sets that come with Omnisphere I was convinced that this is what I wanted. And to my ears I feel like Omnisphere sounded a lot bigger, realistic, and fuller then what I had heard in Suite.

And yet again I have become unsure. The nice thing about suite is that although the pre-sets aren't the best sounding, you can craft your own sounds with things like Operator (which has the drawback of taking a long time to learn. On top of that you get a huge drum library, but at the same time I myself am a drummer and within a few months will be purchasing a few mics and a nice interface to record my own drum samples/grooves.

So, I ask for your input. Basically at this point it's Suite vs Live/Omnisphere. I'd possibly consider getting a different VST besides Omnisphere. I don't hear much about that on here, is there a reason for this?

A little about me: I don't think this actually matters too much. I love making all kinds of music, fusing electronic stuff with live drums/guitar/ etc. It might matter if I said I was a trance artist looking for a specific sound etc. but i'm into everything.

[agent314]

I would say look at/try out Komplete and Omnisphere, as those are about the same price and will give a better/more fair comparison than Suite will.

For me, Operator and Sampler make Suite worth the price simply because of how powerful they are compared to how small their resource footprint is, not to mention how stable.

The out-of-the-box presets ARE kind of lame with Suite, but given how easily they integrate into racks and how easily they can be automated, it's pretty easy to get decent sounds as long as you have a basic idea of what you're doing.

I played with Omnisphere for the first time yesterday, and while it was really impressive, it didn't knock my socks off as much as I expected it to.

Between the two, I think I am more impressed by what Komplete offers in terms of sheer quantity and variety.

[kanuck]

Edit:

[agent314]

If you'd like to try Omnisphere legally and have a Guitar Center near you, most of them have an iMac set up in their Pro Audio section that has Komplete, Omnisphere, Trilian, and a bunch of DAWs installed that you can try out.

[McQ714]

Since it seems you are looking for synths with good presets my vote goes to Live 8 ($499), Rob Papen Explorer ($699), Komplete 7 Players (Free), and Alchemy Player ($59 or $149 with 4 soundpacks).

[Saxer]

it really depends what you´re gonna plan do. if your focus is on sound making and tweaking you should get operator. if your focus is on composing and writing songs komplete will give you anything (including drums). omnisphere is a mighty synth and has thousands of presets. the sounds of omnisphere are mostly impressing and ready to go but are often "overproduced" with efx and layering. you often have to reduce them to fit in a mix.
i don´t use presets of the suite. i don´t like them. but i use the instruments of the suite (sampler and operator). they are good intruments to start sound designig from scratch.

the live suite is like having eggs, salt, vegetables and meat at home. you can make better food but you must learn how to cook. kontakt and omnisphere is the freeze shop with anything ready PLUS the eggs, salt, vegetables and meat. you can choose from everything but you are in danger to get fat from pizza and cake.

[spektralisk]

I own suite but I barely use its intruments. Not they ain't good but I just focus at the moment on my other vst instruments. Presets are medium quality. But I am sure you can get some really good sounds on them. Maybe someday I will start using fully everything in suite. Thing is that you cannot learn all immediately. That's why it is better to stick with one or two instruments, master them and then go on.

I know from my experience that if you have to much instruments you are going to be overwhelmed and it makes you less productive. I already own Kontakt4, Reaktor5, Absynth5, Alchemy and more + suite. It's really too much

My advice is:
- if you are going to use presets only - then go Omnisphere or Komplete (but it can overwhelm you)
- if you are going to create your own sounds you can get suite but personally I would recommend Alchemy - it's great for sound design, you can synthesize sound, resynthesize sounds from samples (you can import your own samples), possibilities are endless and you can focus really on one instrument

[Khazul]

Better question to help you decide -

Are you after normal synth sounds? odd and wierd stuff? quality sampled instruments?

Omnishere is good for synth sounds (especially for dance music genres) and odd and wierd stuff - very useable and interesting odd and wierd. Include quite alot of sampled analog synth type sounds as well. If you have trillian too, then it can use the trillian library as well when creating you own new sounds eventually. Im not sure it the best starting point if you want a good collectio to suit a broad range fo music styles while you find your feet etc. It is really excellent, but I have found Komplete far more useful (I do anything from soul and piano stuff through tech house, deep house, funky house, progressive house, trance, and a fair bit of cross over stuff - ie house and some other non-club genre). Omnisphere for me is great for pads, ambiences and trance/progressive house type leads, electro house basses etc, but TBH pretty useless when I just want conventional sounds, hence why I dont think of it as a good all round starting point. Its sounds tends to be very dense/fat/thick (whatever term might be meaningful to you at this stage) as well and so I often have to get quite brutal with EQ on them when mixing.

The other thing to seriously consider is NI Komplete 7 - have a look on the NI site for whats in it. The demo versions and player version of kontakt dont really do the sample library justice. Also with Komplete you get a bunch of extra sampled instruments as well. For a really good starting collection of synths and sounds across the board, you would be hard pushed to do better TBH - whatever genres you are into. Reaktor includes a bunch of very useful synths and FX. You get Massive and Absynth - both very powerful. FM8 of course is an FM synth like Operator. All have loads of presets. Loads of presets for massive can be found on the net as well. Other highlight are all the fx in Kore, Reaktor and Guitar rig. Battery drums are a bit dated and library seems a bit small. It feel like it needs an update with the sound libraries from maschine, but still lot of useful drums in it. What I do like about battery is the drum articulations (rolls, flams etc) and other bits that help with humanising programmed drums. Easy to make you own kits up from sample libraries as well. If you want accoustic pianos, then the grand piano in komplete are excellent.

I wouldnt waste money on the Live suite stuff. Sampler and Operator are the original and remain the only really useful bit of it. Analog at a pinch as well when you need something basic and trivial to program. Some of the EIC2 sounds are quite decent, but Kontakt has far better equivalent sounds in it.

A few others to look at in the future:
Alchemy - lots of good libraries for it, can do really excellent sample mangling with it as well. Quite complex programming because its so powerful (but time ivested in it is definately rewarded) - alchemy player is probably a better starting point.
Nexus - opinions on this are strongly divided due to it lack of progamming ability and high pricing - its a sample preset machine with sounds very much orientated towards commercial dance music. Great for dance music producers who cant be bothered to program sounds, or are working to tight deadlines etc.
Sylenth1 - excellent and quite easy to program virtual analog synth. Quite popular with people doing dance music.

[Pasha]

So, I ask for your input. Basically at this point it's Suite vs Live/Omnisphere. I'd possibly consider getting a different VST besides Omnisphere. I don't hear much about that on here, is there a reason for this?

A little about me: I don't think this actually matters too much. I love making all kinds of music, fusing electronic stuff with live drums/guitar/ etc. It might matter if I said I was a trance artist looking for a specific sound etc. but i'm into everything.

Let me answer differently. I got the Suite exclusively for the presets. Many of them simply do not cut it because still sounds that nobody will ever use but there's a fair amount of them very good or good enough as starting points.
Omnispehere is super for lush pads and evolving soundscapes but (don't get me wrong here) the real trick is the multilayer thing. You can have multilayer in Live by using Racks and this gets you mixing the capabilities of all instruments all together. If you are not the patch designer guy, you'll have plenty to consider in Ableton Live Suite.
However, for some flexible soundscapes I have to rely on Zebra2 (2000 presets from free libraries) and many commercial libraries that will not break the bank. I use two/three instances of Zebra in a rack to achieve the desired effect.
A friend which has Omnisphere commented on my Zebra Racks and found them very good, en pair with some Omnispehere sounds. Omnispehere does not provide a demo. What I would do is I'd give Zebra a try, it's worth it for the price. I think that Operator and Sampler can become sound horses for you. It all depends on the genre. Being you a drummer I guess you are less on 100% electronica and more on others so Session Drums in Ableton Live might not represent a good deal for you. However having many kits handy can let you write down basic tracks faster than with the real drum.

- My 2 Cents
- Pasha

[razorblade]

At some point, you might want or need to use a different DAW...Suite only works with Ableton...The others will work with any VST/Au host.

[Liam]

Well, i've worked hard and managed to save up the money I need to purchase some software. I could have easily downloaded cracked versions of basically anything, but I decided to go to the legit route and actually purchase it.

With that said, these softwares aren't cheap and I want to make sure i'm spending my hard-earned cash on the right things.

I've done my research, I've used my 30 day trial of Ableton, and I've changed my mind about what I want to buy about 100 times.

I just can't seem to decide. First I was dead-set on getting Suite but after hearing other VSTs like Omnisphere, I had thought about getting just Live and something else like Komplete, etc. After using the demo, I felt like the Ableton Suite pre-sets were kind of weak. In fact I was convinced that the demo had restricted sound access and that when you bought Suite, you'd get a much bigger library of pre-sets to work with. It turns out that's not the case, what you see is what you get.

Which is why I changed my mind when I saw that for nearly the same price I could get Ableton Live and Omnisphere. After looking at and listening to the HUNDREDS of pre-sets that come with Omnisphere I was convinced that this is what I wanted. And to my ears I feel like Omnisphere sounded a lot bigger, realistic, and fuller then what I had heard in Suite.

And yet again I have become unsure. The nice thing about suite is that although the pre-sets aren't the best sounding, you can craft your own sounds with things like Operator (which has the drawback of taking a long time to learn. On top of that you get a huge drum library, but at the same time I myself am a drummer and within a few months will be purchasing a few mics and a nice interface to record my own drum samples/grooves.

So, I ask for your input. Basically at this point it's Suite vs Live/Omnisphere. I'd possibly consider getting a different VST besides Omnisphere. I don't hear much about that on here, is there a reason for this?

A little about me: I don't think this actually matters too much. I love making all kinds of music, fusing electronic stuff with live drums/guitar/ etc. It might matter if I said I was a trance artist looking for a specific sound etc. but i'm into everything.

Komplete is awesome. Reaktor alone is great. With thousands of library files free to use. Within Reaktor there is Prism which will keep you happily exporing and playing for months.

If you don't already own Live get both that and Komplete. Call Sweetwater or some other place and ask for a deal.

[Dayaoute]

Take also into account your configuration. If you go for Omnisphere make sure your computer has enough RAM and CPU to handle it and at least 40Go of disk space. Personally I use Omnisphere on a Macbook Pro and I think I can have it to play 4-5 sounds on different tracks but not more. If wanting more sounds I have to sample Omnisphere to decrease the CPU load. This said, this soft has the most stunning sounds I've ever heard on a VST! Powerful, rich, various. You have a huge soundbank with it but you can also create your own sounds just like with any other synth (it is not just a sampler).
On the downside I would say that Omnisphere is not easy to map on an external controller, as I find the map editor too messy and difficult to use.
I use also Komplete 6 but the sounds are cheaper, maybe Komplete 7 is better now. Concerning Live suite the most interesting stuff IMO is sampler and the sample banks you can get with Ableton.
Personally I would go for Omnisphere + sampler (or kontakt).

[AceLuby]

Personally, I'd go w/ the suite for many of the reasons already stated. Low CPU footprint w/ some very powerful tools to make some fantastic sounds. If you're looking for killer presets then look elsewhere, the suite is ideal for users that want to create sound from the ground up and not ideal for preset tweakers, which many users are. If you want to ever get into sound design the tools w/in Live are great to learn and create some really cool sounds. Sampler and operator alone make it worth it for electronic music IMO

[anybody human]

Live + Omnisphere. No question IMO. When you can afford to, buy Sampler individually. Then later maybe add Operator. Nothing else comes even remotely close to the quality and versatility of Omnisphere. Live's genius is the program itself, not the bundled content, although Suite is very good. Do not be swayed by people saying buy this VST or that VST, you've obviously done your research and are on the right track. Good luck and have fun

[Tarekith]

My vote would be Omni or Komplete. IF you need realistic instruments, orchestral things and the like, then definitely Komplete is the way to go. If you main use synths, then I think Omni is more fun to use versus a lot of different synths to learn in Komplete.