Omni TR was designed to make the iPad the ideal control surface for Omnisphere’s innovative new ‘Orb’ feature. The ‘Orb’ is both a remarkable sound manipulation tool and an intuitive performance interface — it can be thought of as a ‘circular controller.’ Now with a single gesture, the user can instantly customize the sound in Omnisphere. Best of all, the Orb automatically works with every patch a user has, there’s no setup necessary. As the Orb moves and orbits around the concentric circles, it morphs between automatically generated parameter scenes in Omnisphere’s STEAM engine in a highly intelligent and musical manner, all patch dependent — manipulating the sound in subtle or radical ways appropriate to that particular patch.
If the user doesn’t like what the Orb has created, a complete new set of manipulations can be chosen by simply rolling the “Dice” button, which instantly creates a brand new group of intelligent sonic modifications and effects to try. There’s no limit to how many serendipitous sonic variations the Orb can create – opening up the vast power of the STEAM engine to every user, regardless of synthesis knowledge.
The tactile experience of moving the cursor around the Orb space on the iPad with a finger to create variations in the sound is remarkably musical. Where standard controllers might change one or two simple parameters in a linear manner, the Orb morphs a host of parameters that are patch specific, and easily changed on-the-fly.
The Inertia slider of the Orb allows the user to create a ‘movement trail’ after letting go of the Orb, just like a ball might roll and bounce off the walls of a circular enclosure, adding a musical symmetry to the “performance” of an Orb interaction.
Users can also record their performance movements directly into the Orb and play the performance back in sync with their controller or host. The Orb’s movements and sonic results are saved within the patch, multi or the host’s session for later recall. The movement of the Orb can also be automated in the user’s host.