Spectrasonics Announces Cross-Platform 64-Bit Support for Trilian and Omnisphere, new “Omni Live” iPhone App

January 20th, 2010 by Janice Brown

Spectrasonics announced new v1.2 updates for Omnisphere and Trilian — bringing full 64-bit cross-platform support for the complete line of their virtual instruments.

The new version 1.2 updates include several new features and enhancements to the Spectrasonics STEAM Engine including improved browser features, new synthesizer filter algorithms and a new ‘Sample File Server’ function giving the software the ability to go beyond 32-bit memory limits on Mac OSX systems.

Spectrasonics also demonstrated a new free iPhone app, Omni Live that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a wireless remote control for Omnisphere’s “Live Mode” page — allowing multi-touch sound selection of the software synthesizer in the user’s computer.

The Omnisphere and Trilian version 1.2 updates will be released first as a public beta on January 22, with the official release on February 22 as free downloads for all registered users.

While 64-bit support for Spectrasonics instruments on Windows has been available, the emerging OSX-based 64-bit DAWs — such as Apple’s recent Logic 9.1 update — are now fully compatible to take advantage of the 64-bit memory addressing of Omnisphere and Trilian v1.2. Any “plug-in host” that is 64-bit compatible on Mac can also utilize the new versions’ 64-bit capabilities, including Vienna Ensemble Pro.

Besides cross-platform 64-bit compatibility for Omnisphere and Trilian, the new version 1.2 updates also include new browser “Favorites” features that many users have requested for quickly organizing the thousands of sounds in these instruments in meaningful ways. With a single click, users can now assign ‘Star Ratings’ to any of the sounds, and then sort the library by their rated sounds. In addition, the new sound organizing capability includes a ‘Project’ button, accessible via a menu allowing the user to rapidly create a ‘Project Tag’ — to assign sounds specifically for a piece of music, a particular gig, a film cue or any kind of focus. User Projects can then be viewed and sorted from the first column of the Browser.

Spectrasonics’ new “Omni Live” App is designed to turn an iPhone (or iPod Touch) into a simple, wireless remote control of Omnisphere’s “Live Mode” page via the touch-screen interface. Having remote control of the Live Mode page allows a player to sit remotely from their computer, at their MIDI’ed piano, or across the room at a MIDI controller and instantly choose a patch or combination of patches in the Live Mode page simply by touching the patch names on the iPhone display. The patch names are sent from Omnisphere wirelessly back to the iPhone.