I'm a guitar player, however, I like to add strong exciting synth leads here and there in my songs...a 70's kinda thing.  I do not like or want any EDM sounds...more of a rock/prog guy.  With that in mind, I'm not that happy with most of the "onboard" synth sounds that come with SONAR.  Two questions:
 
1)  Is Omnisphere 2 worth the $$$?
2)  Will it meet my needs?

Hiya Al,
 
I haven't even demo'd Omnisphere but, from what I have heard and seen on YouTube it is one hell of a synth.
 
Personally, though, I prefer to have a lot of synths by different makers which it actually more expensive in the long run. I just prefer it that way.
 
What stuff do you do? I'm always interested to hear electronic stuff that isn't EDM.
 
 
cheers
 
andy

synkrotron
 
...What stuff do you do? I'm always interested to hear electronic stuff that isn't EDM.
 
 
cheers
 
andy

I would not call my music electronic.  My stuff is more like laid-back rock/fusion ... sorta.  I usually lay down a guitar rhythm part over a rock drum track and then record piano and string parts.  Next, I record some of the guitar lead parts.  At that point I'll look for sections that might benefit from a synth lead part, maybe in the bridge section(s) just to keep it interesting.  All the while, my bass player will stop in from time to time to lay down his bass parts.  Finally, I finish off the lead guitar parts and also listen for possible lead harmony parts and additional rhythm parts.
 
It's a labor of love.

amiller
 
I would not call my music electronic.  My stuff is more like laid-back rock/fusion ... sorta.  I usually lay down a guitar rhythm part over a rock drum track and then record piano and string parts.  Next, I record some of the guitar lead parts.  At that point I'll look for sections that might benefit from a synth lead part, maybe in the bridge section(s) just to keep it interesting.  All the while, my bass player will stop in from time to time to lay down his bass parts.  Finally, I finish off the lead guitar parts and also listen for possible lead harmony parts and additional rhythm parts.

 
Ah, right, thanks for making that clearer, Al... Still, I like my prog too, so hopefully see you in the Song forum at some point
 
cheers
 
andy

Omnisphere is an amazing product.  Sometimes too amazing.  It's capable of almost anything anyone would need in a synth/sampler.  That said, if your music is "prog rock" oriented you might want to also look at products like Arturia V5 or IKMultimedia's new Syntronik.  They'll give you all the old school synth sounds you could ask for plus modern stuff as well.  

And well worth trying out Cobalt, which is good for leads, and I have done some CS-80 stuff with it:-
 
http://www.lesliesanford.com/vst/plugins/
 
Oh, and it is free...

Al, I'm assuming you don't have unlimited funds at your disposal or you wouldn't be asking the question. Although I am a big fan of Omnisphere and use it often and across every genre, I wouldn't say it was the best use of your budget for prog-type synth stuff. Keep it on your wishlist for later, but a better bang for the buck, I think, would be Synthmaster plus some (no, ALL) of Nori Ubukata's patch libraries that emulate classic synth lead sounds. You'll get a lot of mileage out of that for a tiny fraction of Omnisphere's cost.
 
OTOH, if a scratch ticket was to suddenly pay off, then by all means - get SM AND Omnisphere, and throw in Keyscape while you're at it.

Yep, get SynthMaster with those Nori Ubukata soundbanks if you want a tiny footprint or Syntronik if you don’t mind filling your drive. Both are pretty, pretty good. And yorolpal is right about Arturia, should you want to get modeled emulations of the real stuff.

Omnisphere 2 is definitely worth the money and if you like to program synths it's a great product, but as others as said for prog rock it's probably not the best way to go. You may want to look at the Korg Legacy collection - the M1 and Wavestation, although definitely the 90's sound, can cover the 70's as well. If you like to program the Mono/Poly has a lot to offer. I think Korg usually has a BF sale.

For starters, I would agree on SynthMaster with the Nori Ubukata 'Historical Synth Giants' sound sets.  Lots of sounds from Floyd, Genesis, Emerson, Jarre, etc.  For the money, you cannot beat that.  $99 for the synth and the expansions are $8 each right now.  http://www.synthmaster.com/synthmaster.aspx
 
Nori knows a little bit about sound design. 
 
A little bit of Nori's bio:

Nori was one of the first official sound designers for Yamaha DX series. Later on, he worked for Yamaha and Korg as sound designer and also as developing adviser. He was involved in almost all of DX,SY and TG series, VL-1 and VP1 of Yamaha , Korg's T-series, O1/W, Wavestation and Prophecy. He published several optional voice programs for DX and SY series, Korg M1 and Ensoniq VFX/SD. In 2005, he started designing presets for Arturia products, being an official in-house sound designer and demo music composer. At the beginning of 2012, he became a freelance sound designer and musician. He mainly plays theremin with CV driven analog synthesizers and has released 3 albums so far in Japan.

 
And then I would recommend IK Syntronik.  http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/syntronik/
 
They even have a free version with no limits, that comes with a small set of presets from each of the 17 instruments.  You can buy individual full instruments for $49 each, or get the whole bundle.  They sampled 38 vintage synths to come up with these sounds, and added their own filter models for an authentic vintage analog sound.  Sounds very good!