New Spectrasonics Synth Announced...

It's much further off than I expected it would be, considering how long it has been getting developed for already. It's a shame they haven't indicated a ballpark upgrade price for Atmosphere users, as it would be interesting to know if it will be within my price range (the RRP would suggest it is going to be around $200+).

'Steam' engine, huh?... I wonder if it comes loaded with all the sound effects from Half Life 2...

I read enough to make me wish I hadn't read anything!

The Spectrasonics stuff all sounds so glisteny, shiny, Hollywood TV music wannabe whatever style is happening today but with no soul. I'll stick with Rapture.

I was at NAMM yesterday and saw the demo. it's pretty awesome. It is a full blown Synth, with what they call a 'progressive' interface, meaning that you can use just the presets, or dig in as deep as you want. The deeper you go, the more complicated things get. The front page looks very similar to Atmosphere.

Another feature of it they championed was the category search for presets, which is sort of reminscant of 'Massive', but a much cleaner interface, and more details.
All in all, it looked very impressive.

How many people are working @ Spectrasonic, anyway? One?

Can't be very many...
It's been years and years with Trilogy and Atmosphere, and they finally get a "wrapper" for Intel Macs. I didn't hear anything about this wrapper's replacement for Trilogy, and I guess Omnisphere is the next Atmosphere, so I suppose Trilogy is wrappered for all of it's near-mid-term future on Intel Macs, and another 9 months of the wrapper for Atmosphere while waiting for Omnisphere.

I don't know. I LOVE Stylus RMX, I really do.
But, I'm a little worried about the future stability of Spectrasonics. From where I sit, they sort of look like they're hurting coming up with something to do, and worse when it comes to actually getting it done. What have they been doing, anyway?

I would imagine their financials are kind of hurting.
I mean, the age of Trilogy and Atmosphere, though stellar plugins, can't help their Windows-side sales, and I have to imagine that since all Macs have been Intel for well over a year now NO ONE on Mac is buying either one of them with the goofy "wrapper" thing.

That leaves them with their primary revenue stream being Stylus RMX and the libraries. Given the blow-out library sale with Stylus RMX and the libraries, I'd say they're trying to milk that one to make it through to develop Omnisphere. I found it interesting that if you bought the SAGE expansion pack deal, you gave up the right to EVER transfer Stylus RMX to anyone else.

But honestly, with ONLY Omnisphere, and no Trilogy update or Stylus RMX update in site, I just don't see how they're going to stay afloat AFTER omnisphere in the event it's not the saleworthy beast it's probably expected to be.

Sorry for being pessimistic. I'm just thinking while typing.
I'm just starting to become a little averse to buying their stuff and hoping I'll be in a better camp 18 months from now than the Intel Mac guys have been for the last 18 months. That's REALLY bad, IMHO, and I'll probably not buy anything else from them until their future looks more sturdy.

What do you guys think?
Do they seem... healthy?

- zevo

Here's a video from SonicState:

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/shownews.cfm?newsid=6006

Only 12 more days....

What is impresses the hell out of me is how HUGE the presets sound. It's unbelievable.

I wouldn't bother. Have had Atmosphere pretty much since the beginning. Anybody remember the stuff mentioned on the Spectrasonics website that it wasn't a closed system and there would be goodies for it down the line? Anybody ever see any further development of add-ons for it? Never happened. Sure, Atmosphere sounded good at first, but it wasn't anything NI's Absynth couldn't do, and Absynth works in standalone mode, Atmosphere doesn't.

Then I'll take some strawberries, blueberries, etc.............

Ed

Nice, they gave a grace period discount for all Intel-Mac Atmosphere users.
They deserve it, and a bit of my faith in Spectrasoncis is restored.

Bummer that I don't have anything to upgrade from. $499 is pricey.
cryo, you gotta give us the skinny once you get it, right?!

- zevo

Here's a link that was posted elsewhere.

Here are a couple patch tests I did. Note: patch tests, not musical compositions in any way. I finished installing my copy ca. 5 PM PST yesterday and some people asked for patch tests on another forum.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=827555&songID=6898325

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=827555&songID=6899313

Jack, I take it you've not played with the knobs, buttons etc, or tried mixing different patches. Wasn't the tagline a thousand sounds a million possibilities?

I can't get behind a product that the programmer promises great things for and never delivers. There was NEVER anymore development after Atmosphere's initial introduction, and given THAT track record

Ah, I see, I didn't know that.

Mind you, you are in the Project 5 forum