The purpose of this thread is to help those members that are experiencing issues with Spectrasonics' Omnisphere 2. More specifically, I am limiting the scope of this thread to Omnisphere's loading time and performance.This thread is not intended to serve as an installation guide per se, so I will appreciate that comments and questions are kept within its scope. I encourage members to submit their tips for and I will gladly add them to the list and credit you for it.

System recommendations. The starting point for the proper functioning of any plugin is its manufacturer's system recommendations. Spectrasonics recommends the following:

• 2.4 GHz or higher processor

• 4GB RAM minimum but 8GB or more is recommended

• Microsoft Windows 7 or higher

The above recommendations are the minimum system requirements. The performance of Omnisphere 2 depends on your system and mainly on the speed of the drive that the STEAM data is stored on.

Omnisphere 2 Updates. Make sure you are running the latest Omnisphere 2 software,soundsources and patches. As of this writing they are:

• Software.............2.4.1d

• Soundsources.....2.0.1c

• Patches...............2.4.0d

Tips that will improve your Omnisphere 2 loading time. The following tips and recommendations are a must do if you want to experience improvements in the time it takes for Omnisphere 2 to load up.

• The Omnisphere 2 dlls must be on your C: drive. Do not install the Omnisphere 2 plugin on an external drive.

• The STEAM data folder should be stored on a separate physical drive --- preferably a SSD or a fast 10,000 rpm or 7200 rpm.In addition,

• It is strongly recommended that the STEAM data folder be placed on an internal drive, using an internal bus such as PCIe or SATA.

• If you must place the STEAM data folder on an external drive, a fast connection such as Thunderbolt or USB3 is recommended.

• Keep your STEAM data folder drive defragmented and/or optimized.(a must if you are sharing it with other libraries)

• Do not disable the Pagefile (If you want to read more extremely detailed information about how virtual memory and your pagefile really work, be sure to check out Mark Russinovich's article on the subject at https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/markrussinovich /2008/11/17me. /pushing-the-limits-of-windows-virtual-memory/)

• Clean your Windows Temp Folder by removing temporary files in C:\Windows\Temp

• @taskforce says: Thunderbolt drives may appear as external but Thunderbolt is practically is a PCI-e connection @ 40gbps (Thunderbolt3, 5gb/sec theoretically) and even the fastest single ssd isn't able to saturate the port at max speed. So TB can be as fast as any internal ssd and in the case of laptop producers, it's a much desired feature.

Tips that may or may not improve your Omnisphere 2 loading time. The following tips have shown improvements for some users when used either separately or in conjunction. Try them to see whether or not they work for you.

• ASIO4ALL has shown issues for some users with Omnisphere 2. Try a different ASIO driver.

• Open Omnisphere 2 go to SYSTEM and turn off "Switch to layer upon activation" write previous in caps

• Try using the 32 bit version of Omnisphere and wrap it with Jbridge

In FL Studio

• Open Omnisphere 2 and go the VST Wrapper Settings>Processing and enable (1) allow threaded processing and (2) use fixed size buffers.

• Go to the "More" Tab and check mark process maximum size buffers.

In Studio One

• Deactivate compatibility mode in Studio One shortcut.

In Ableton

• Switch off "Multicore/MultiCPU" in Settings>CPU.

Tips for CPU Optimization & Conservation. The following tips come from Spectrasonics. More details can be found at https://support.spectrasonics.net/manual/Omnisphere2/?v=24&l=en.

• Enable Sample Thinning. If you encounter audio glitches related to streaming, the first step is to thin the samples. Thinning only helps for sample-based patches: it has no effect on synth-based patches.Thinning is enabled by turning on the Lite Version button at the bottom of the Patch browser window.

• Limit Voices. Reducing the Voices limit can significantly reduce CPU usage. Reducing “Voices” to 16, or 10, or even fewer is an early action you should take to eliminate CPU overload

• Terminate Other Applications. Terminate as many applications as you can, including browsers, mail tools, etc.

• Increase Host Buffer Size. Increasing the buffer size diminishes the CPU load and reduces audio glitches,but at the price of increasing latency. Increasing the buffer size diminishes the CPU load and reduces audio glitches, but at the price of increasing latency.

• Check Host Sample Rate. Omnisphere has been designed for optimal playback at 44.1k or 48k sample rate. If a host’s project sample rate is higher than this (88.2k, 96k, 192k, etc) it can significantly reduce Omnisphere’s performance, without any real sonic benefit. In fact, certain patches may not play correctly at higher sample rates.

• Disable Effects. Disabling some effects – particularly reverb effects – may greatly reduce CPU load.

• Adjust Unison and Granular. When using Unison and Granular, the Depth sliders control the number of simultaneous voices that are playing, and can have a big impact on CPU usage. You can often achieve the desired effect by using a lower Depth setting.

• Review Oscillator Sub-Pages (FM, RING, WS, UNI, HARM, GRN). It’s easy (and fun!) to use all of the oscillator sub-pages at the same time, but used together these can demand a significant amount of CPU power. Using them sparingly will often lead to better sonic results and be easier on the CPU load.

• Reduce Two Layers to One. There’s a lot that can be done with a single Layer.If you can achieve the desired sound or complexity using one Layer instead of two, it’s likely that a significant amount of CPU power can be conserved.

• Prefer Common FX Rack Over A/B Racks. Using Common or Aux FX racks whenever possible is a great way to save CPU power.Instead of loading separate delay units into each Layer FX Rack, try sharing a single unit in the Common or Aux FX Rack.

• Adjust Waveshaper. The Waveshaper is a great feature, but it can be very CPU intensive, because it is polyphonic.To save CPU, you can try alternate approaches to achieving the desired sound. For example, try experimenting with the Toxic Smasher effect unit first. You could get similar results without putting as much demand on the CPU.

• Adjust FM/Ring Mod. Both FM and Ring Mod have dedicated oscillators, thus using additional CPU power. Combining these with additional oscillator features like Waveshaping or Unison can add a lot of required processing.

• Remove Unused Modulation Routings. Modulation routings sometimes use CPU power, so be sure to remove any unused routings. For example, if you are modulating FM Depth with a Mod Envelope, but then decide to turn FM off, remove the modulation routing to further reduce demand on the CPU.

• Turn Unused Aux Sends Off. If you are not using the AUX Sends on the Mixer Page, make sure all of them are off(all knobs turned fully counter-clockwise). When all of the Aux Sends are off, the entire AUX system is disabled, which saves CPU power. If any of the Aux Sends is on, the entire Aux Send system on all Racks and Parts is enabled, even if no audio is passing through it. View the Aux Sends on the MULTI MIXER page.

• Adjust Streaming Pre-Load memory Size and Steam Brake settings.Streaming permits samples to largely reside on disk. In this way you can use large samples with a relatively small amount of memory. Recommended values for the Pre-Load Memory Size are between 22,000 to 66,000, with 60,000 as the standard default value. If patches make use of Timbre or Sample-Start, this parameter might need to be raised over 40,000.The Steam Brake should generally be set to a moderate value around 0.1.Values above 0.5 may lead to streaming glitches due to deferring streaming reads in order to give priority to other processing operations in the application. Turning it down to zero may cause glitches in other operations due to the streaming monopolizing the CPU. There is a relationship between this parameter and the Num Bytes Per Read parameter. When that parameter is turned up,this parameter should generally also be turned up.

• Use a single instance of Omnisphere.If you have multiple MIDI tracks each with a dedicated instance of Omnisphere, it may be more efficient to instead use a single instance of Omnisphere in multitimbral mode. Load the various Patches into Omnisphere’s parts,and route the multiple MIDI tracks into the single Omnisphere instance using distinct Channels. On the other hand, if your host supports multi-core processing, it may be advantageous to use multiple instances of Omnisphere and spread patches across the multiple instances. The host may allocate each instance of the instrument to its own core, which could improve software performance.Distributing instruments across multiple cores is managed by the host (not the instrument).

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 21, 2018

Thanks for the tips!!

 

Thanks for your token of appreciation. If just one person benefits with a thread's content, the thread has served its purpose.

 

Good info thanks

 

Awesome tips there...
Several i had already implemented and I've not really had many issues since moving Omni to SSD, but clearly more can be done if needed!!
The lack of additional user questions asking 'But how?' just goes to show how well written your post is... if only every post was as concise ;)

 

Thanks for your kind words. Using an SSD for Omnisphere, Kontakt or any other plugin with a vast library is the way to go for maximun performance. Alternatively, a high speed HDD (7,200 0r 10,000 rpm) also will show improvements, albeit not as much as an SSD.

 

@TonyG
Totally agreed with Ozmosis, great and comprehensive guide. Congrats. I just wanted to add that Thunderbolt drives may appear as external but Thunderbolt is practically is a PCI-e connection @ 40gbps (Thunderbolt3, 5gb/sec theoretically) and even the fastest single ssd isn't able to saturate the port at max speed. So TB can be as fast as any internal ssd and in the case of laptop producers, it's a much desired feature.
All the best

 

@TonyG Thank you. This thread is a must for any Omnisphere 2 user. It was taking me 30 seconds to open it up. After moving the library to external 10,000 rpm and implementing tips for FL Studio it now opens in less than 5 seconds. Thank you. By the way, you are correct. I should have used the search option.

 

Last edited: May 21, 2018

I am glad that things work out for you. Did it also solve the problems with Spectrasonics and Ableton?

 

cheers people...info stolen and duly distributed.....job done

 

Yes sir! It surely did. Everything working flawless. I sent you a video showing how fast it opens now and how slow it was.

 

Thanks a lot @Tony,I have disabled "execute Studio one in windows 8 compatibility mode" and now Omnisphere loads presets in quarter a second!Before that omnisphere took 30 seconds to load a preset.

But now I can't open Softube plugins from audio*topia anymore.Does somebody know what I could do to get them working again,without ticking "open S1 in windows 8 compatibility mode",please guys?

 

A little late here, I have STEAM on a Samsung 850 pro with no bottlenecks. Still kind of choppy, but fast enough. Wondering if a NVMe SSD would improve this? OS disk is also a 850 pro samsung

 

NVME definitely would be faster than SSD. However, you probably wouldn't notice the difference quite as much as switching from physical platters to SSD.

 

Try a different DAW.

When I was trying to use Omnisphere, I had such issues trying to get it to run faster when using Ableton Live. When I installed Bitwig though, Omnisphere suddenly loaded and went through patches very fast.

 

I have this program installed on an internal Samsung PCIe M.2 SSD and it still loads kind of slow.

 

These are all great tips except for that last one, you almost never want to run one single instance of omnisphere with different midis. Multiple Omnisphere instances will always perform better and stress the CPU less than a single instance with multiple sounds. (Tested on FL 20)
Cheers

 

I did all these but on sessions with few or more tracks omnisphere takes few seconds to open and switch between parts even when no patches are loaded.

 

Hello, I have a small question please, is it normal, if omnisphere STEAM library is installed on a PCIe 4 NVME, takes about 3 sec to load a preset ?

 

Yes, that’s fast and it’s normal.