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

[glitchrock-buddha]

By far the best bang for buck in terms of realistic instruments, crazy weird synthesis, drums, bread and butter sounds, and interesting effects, as well as reasonable cpu load, is Komplete 7. Nothing comes close. Omnisphere is awesome and even more fun perhaps as Tarekith says. But even Omni can't compare to getting Reaktor, Absynth, Kontakt, Massive, FM8, Guitar Rig and all those soundpacks and effects kits. Komplete gives so many more types of synthesis. A much bigger library of realistic sounds as well as a rediculous amount of real and synthetic drum sounds, plus standalone effects of so many types, not the least of which is very good guitar sims. You simply can't compare it to even Omnisphere, unless you're using both for specific purposes (mainly synths).

[ze2be]

The only reason id consider Alchemy or Omnisphere is because of their tuning capabilities. But they are way too unreasonable system hogs, for my use. I cant lift of with whales in my helicopter. The Zebra interface is not my cup of tea. What else flexible is there with multiple lfos that can use tuning files? Komplete seem like a good deal..

[anybody human]

By far the best bang for buck in terms of realistic instruments, crazy weird synthesis, drums, bread and butter sounds, and interesting effects, as well as reasonable cpu load, is Komplete 7. Nothing comes close. Omnisphere is awesome and even more fun perhaps as Tarekith says. But even Omni can't compare to getting Reaktor, Absynth, Kontakt, Massive, FM8, Guitar Rig and all those soundpacks and effects kits. Komplete gives so many more types of synthesis. A much bigger library of realistic sounds as well as a rediculous amount of real and synthetic drum sounds, plus standalone effects of so many types, not the least of which is very good guitar sims. You simply can't compare it to even Omnisphere, unless you're using both for specific purposes (mainly synths).

Good point. If you're going for versatility that totally makes sense. When I started out I thought I needed to cover all the bases that way, but I've just found I don't really use it, but it's good to have. I think it's better to choose a few quality tools, or ones that fill a specific role or need. I'm always skeptical of bundles. Depends what you're doing musically and what your needs are though, as you guys have said.

[The Carpet Cleaner]

I vote Live + Komplete

[Kilroy]

A couple things come to mind. I have suite and find the sounds pretty inspiring for what I do. Your mileage may vary. I never use any of the suite instruments anymore, but from what I remember the abe instruments have very few (if any) effects on them, so adding some effects can open them up some.

As far as your first VST (or AU or whatever) Omnisphere is great, I own it, it is my favorite instrument by far. It finds it way into most every project I produce. But I don't know that it will stand alone as your first (and presumably for some time, your only) instrument. Which has been noted above. As far as Komplete goes, I own it as well, and despise it. I despise NIs "Service" Center, their tedious authorization, and their giant (>500m) updates. Plus to my ear, their sounds are universally substandard. They are the Behringer of sound sources to me. Again, just my opinion and experience. There are Komplete lovers in this thread, and on this forum, you will find two opinions for every person on here.

So as far as a first VST, may I recommend Eastwest's Goliath? It has a lot of bread and butter sounds, and it is kind of a greatest hits of a lot of their other packages. They run specials all the time, and most frequently a two for one or three for one deal where you could get Goliath plus two more of their packages for about $495. If you wanted to spend a little more ($799), you could get their Complete Composers Collection and get seven of their products and almost never get done exploring and learning all the sounds at your disposal. It is so much that that they ship it on a terabyte hard drive. In my experience, it is amazing. Eastwest and Omnisphere comprise about 90% of my virtual instrument usage. The rest is drum libraries and some of the other excellent packages mentioned by others above.