Thanks Bit... that note about Keyscape pushed me over the edge.  OmniSynth is one of my favs and a real go to, so I did a quick search for a deal on Keyscape, and found it with a 15% off coupon at one of the big retailers.  Kind of surprised me that the coupon applied, and I fully expect to get an email saying that they can't apply the discount on this, but we'll see.  I'll either add Keyscape to the arsenal, or I'll have another reason to be aggravated with this particular retailer. :)

Anyone experience laggy stuff under studio one 4 and windows 8.1 ?

I've been drooling over Omnisphere for awhile now. I know I would never play all of the presets, even if you gave me 6 months, made 3 more of me and gave us a vacation house in the mountains. 14,000 patches? That's before you tweak anything. 
 
When you consider other decent synth packages  don't have half the mojo Omnisphere has, not even considering the ability to replace tons of expensive hardware. Can't buy even one decent hardware synth for that price. The program has more to offer than most will ever use/need. Five Benjamans is still five Benjamans though. I don't know how you can routinely pull out Benjamans and not feel any pain. I guess the upgrade is much less. My Benjaman just doesn't want to budge yet. Maybe soon. Three ibuprophen, a 1tb SSD, a weeks vacation and a clear head might do it.

Starise
I've been drooling over Omnisphere for awhile now. I know I would never play all of the presets, even if you gave me 6 months, made 3 more of me and gave us a vacation house in the mountains. 14,000 patches? That's before you tweak anything. 
 
When you consider other decent synth packages  don't have half the mojo Omnisphere has, not even considering the ability to replace tons of expensive hardware. Can't buy even one decent hardware synth for that price. The program has more to offer than most will ever use/need. Five Benjamans is still five Benjamans though. I don't know how you can routinely pull out Benjamans and not feel any pain. I guess the upgrade is much less. My Benjaman just doesn't want to budge yet. Maybe soon. Three ibuprophen, a 1tb SSD, a weeks vacation and a clear head might do it.

It mainly depend on what you already have ..omnipshere is a beast and i could easily only use it , but at the same time if you tell me don't use it no more i will not be impacted at all .... Kontakt would be another story ...
 
Ask yourself if you miss specific sounds or specific Tools when you produce , omnisphere is sounds and a way to handle them , consider both side , some synths offer a better workflow , but less sonic terrritory covered as soundsources ....even Alchemy  , or Falcon (witch is more powerfull when it comes to sound manipulation) .
 
Speaking your analogy with hardware , tru story , i went toa shop to get me a moog expender @ 800 euros if i recall well , i then waiting for a guy to serves me sat down and played with their computer , in it omnisphere and trillian (that i knew but never put my hands on) , i went out of the shop with Trilliand + omniusphere (both around 500 euros) and skipped the moog ... i then bought the moog tribute also to have more soundsources ...
 
It's real streinth is quality of sound design , and number of sounds ( not numbers but areas covered)
it's danger : number of sounds lol !!

Great story Zo.
 
Omnishere 2 can link up to the hardware of old synths. You probably already know this. If a person has a hardware moog they can use the moog patches in Omnisphere and all the controls on the hardware work the same only you are playing in Omisphere. No audio outputs. 
This isn't a feature everyone would use. I can see those who have a pile of hardware they are accustomed to using, they can keep using it but save the preset and keep it all in Omni 2.

Yeh, I'm not terribly excited about the ability of Omnisphere to replace some hardware synth that I already own. However, that feature also lets you use a cheap synth or full-featured controller in place of that expensive vintage synthesizer. And even if you do have a mint-condition Minimoog in the corner, emulating it via Omnisphere will result in a cleaner recording - and be polyphonic.
 
Omnisphere really is a beast of a synth. Somebody who's doing electronica exclusively could literally get by with Omni and nothing else. It's that deep. Personally, I'm more of a Kontakt guy because I rely mostly on organic natural sources. But regardless of genre, I always seem to end up with at least one Omnisphere track in every project. 
 
 

Please see my post in this forum regarding my experience with upgrading...so far.
 
Hint...it's not good.