Plugin Review: Spectrasonics Sonic Extensions

August 8th, 2023 by Matthew Wang

Omnisphere is a plugin that’s loved by music producers, film composers, and sound designers. While the software comes with a wealth of sounds and presets, Spectrasonics Sonic Extensions offers exclusive effects, custom controls, and multi sampling with new banks of sounds to explore.

Today we will go over the currently available in Spectrasonics Sonic Extensions sound libraries Nylon Sky, Seismic Shock, Unclean Machine, Undercurrent, and Twisted Trees.

Features and Use

Spectrasonics Sonic Extensions offers a number of new features that fit a range of genres. Nylon Sky provides nylon guitar sounds, and Seismic Shock explores hard-hitting electronic sounds through Seismic FX.

Unclean Machine features lo-fi sounds that go from gritty to chill. Undercurrent creates moods and textures perfect for scoring and film/TV sound. And Twisted Trees offers a look into the process of sound designer Diego Stocco and his dark cinematic productions.

Nylon Sky

In particular, I love the Karaoke Delay lo-fi pluck sound and An Eno Sky presets which lets you play and hold down a few notes, enveloping them in a warm guitar-verb texture. There are also a lot of ARP + BPM patches focusing on cool guitar motor sounds like the syncopated rhythm patch Triple Crown and more realistic guitar strumming patches like Gentle Nylon Strummer.

As a guitar player, I find that even the more “realistic” strumming patches won’t replace the need for a real guitarist. But they can be very handy for adding a guitar layer to your track if you don’t have any way to track an actual guitar.

Seismic Shock

The patches for Seismic Shock include a lot of ¼ note side-chain compression sounds like the energetic bass patch Kicked Up or the aptly named Pump Pad. Plucky EDM patches like Poly Pro and Juno Mystics also make me realize that Omnisphere combined with this Sonic Extension might replace my need for Sylenth1 and Nexus in future productions. The only thing to note is that there are no subtle sounds in here, but I like that!

Unclean Machine

Unclean Machine is my favorite of all of the Sonic Extension libraries so far. I feel like it covers “vibe” pads and plucks, lo-fi atmospheres, and much more in a cool way. The Chimeatron presets feel like a reinvented Mellotron for the modern producer, the CZ patches remind me of my youth making music on a Casio CZ keyboard, and the Retroactive Bass and Run patches sound like the next Cliff Martinez film score to me.

Undercurrent

As a film and TV composer, Undercurrent brings some incredible presets that I could see myself using in my work. I love the pensive vibe of presets like Homesick and Equilibrium Point as these pad sounds feel layered in sound from the acoustic and digital/synthetic worlds to create something new and interesting.

There are also darker, brooding sounds such as Bad Intentions or Contorted Ego that give some pulsing energy as well. The FX in Undercurrent like Under Fire (saturator/compressor/EQ) and Under Echo (pitch-shifted ambience) blend well with the modular synth multi sampling to create immersive and evolving sounds like those found in the preset Modular Garden.

Twisted Trees

The latest Sonic Extension, this one focuses on making sounds entirely out of wood, sticks, leaves and trees. Baby Tree Flute is an interesting preset for low ominous pads and Lamentations of the Firebeast raised my anxiety to new levels. There are also a ton of PERC patches that have an Earthy quality about them. Drone patches like Burned Ground and Valley of Shadows also added a lot of discomfort and unease to a track I was working on.

To Be Critical

While I love most of these Sonic Extensions, I can understand that the $149 for each of them, plus the fact you need Omnisphere to run these which costs about $479, can make this a hefty investment.

Having said that, you can get a 20% discount when you buy 2 extensions, and a 30% off all additional extensions if you buy more than 2 at once. These discount rates also apply to future purchases.

While I love Twisted Trees overall, I also feel like some of the presets are more foley than music. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A lot of the Perc sounds were very similar and I think this extension would benefit film/TV composers mostly, as the sounds could be a bit too jarring for other applications.

Summing it Up

Spectrasonics Sonic Extensions are a great concept, and they bring new life to the already impressive Omnisphere 2 plugin. It will be interesting to watch and see what new sounds future extensions offer in the future. I can’t wait to see how they can bring even more life to Omnisphere!

Matthew Wang is an LA-based guitarist, producer, songwriter, film composer, and SonicScoop contributor.

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