Unison

In vintage analog polyphonic synthesizers, Unison was used to trigger all of the voices cards of the synthesizer at the same time for a rich, detuned, monophonic sound. Omnisphere takes Unison to the next level by offering polyphonic Unison, with numerous enhancements and controls. Just a few or many Unison voices can be added, so each note played will trigger several voices—each with different detuning, spread, and octave.

POWER SWITCH

This turns the UNISON effect on and off to quickly A/B your changes.

DEPTH

The DEPTH slider controls the amount of UNISON voices added. Increasing the setting of this slider increases the number of UNISON voices. The more UNISON voices used, the richer the sound, but the higher the demand on the CPU.

The maximum number of UNISON voices is 8.

DEPTH is modulatable.

SPREAD

UNISON voices can be panned across the stereo image. SPREAD controls the extent of the stereo imaging. When the slider is at minimum setting, all UNISON voices are in the center of the stereo image. When set to maximum value, the UNISON voices are panned across the stereo field.

OCTAVE

The OCTAVE menu specifies at which octave the UNISON notes will sound—up to two octaves above or below the main Oscillator. This is not a traditional transpose control, as it only moves the UNISON voices up or down—the pitch of the Oscillator will remain the same.

DETUNE

This determines to what degree the UNISON notes will be detuned from the original Oscillator. This setting does not affect the pitch of the original Oscillator, just the UNISON voices.

DETUNE is modulatable.

FINE/COARSE RANGE

These mode switches determine the RANGE of the DETUNE slider. If FINE is selected, the DETUNE slider will only detune the UNISON voices as much as a half-step (99 cents) up or down. This works for classic UNISON and “SuperSaw” types of sounds.

When COARSE is selected, the range of the DETUNE slider is increased to a fifth or an octave above the note, depending how many are added. When the DETUNE slider is used in COARSE mode, the UNISON voices will gradually glide to the final chord, producing the classic “THX” logo effect.

DRIFT (SYNTH mode only)

DRIFT is unique to the SYNTH mode. It simulates the pitch movement that occurs naturally in analog synthesizers. The DRIFT slider controls how much the pitch of the UNISON voices will drift from the main Oscillator.

ANALOG (SYNTH mode only)

The ANALOG control option is unique to the SYNTH mode. It allows inconsistency to be introduced into the pitch and phase of the Oscillator, which makes Omnisphere sound and behave more like a vintage analog instrument. When the ANALOG control is set to 50% and lower, it destabilizes the phase of the oscillator. After 40% it will also destabilize the pitch. As the ANALOG control is increased past 75% the pitch will become heavily detuned.

This parameter is also present in the Layer pages and in the OSCILLATOR ZOOM MAIN page.

PHASE (SYNTH mode only)

The PHASE Control option is unique to the SYNTH mode. The Phase Control allows the initial phases of the Unison voices to be randomly spread across a range. The width of the range is controlled by stepping through the five PHASE Control options, which range from in-phase to 180° out-of-[hase. Perfectly in-phase produces results like digital synthesizers. Out-of-phase settings produce classic analog-like results.