gear purchase, some questions

[sklawlor]

ve been taking another look at Omnisphere and there have been some good things happening with the accessibility of this synth for screen readers that someone in the blind community has been working on in terms of being able to get at elements regarding sound design.

I'm thinking that a dedicated pc with omnisphere, sonar and the CakeTalking scripts (which is a third party accessible solution for the application) as wel as a midi controller would equal or come in under the price of the Access Virus TI II. The one thing that still attracts me to this synth is all the knobs for realtime control but I have to ask myself, is that realtime control worth all that money if I can program evolving sounds with omnisphere.

Also, since the virus is a virtual analog synth, things like pianos, woodwinds and the like I don't believe are as readily available or able to be programmed and if I remember right, doesn't Omnisphere have all those sorts of acoustic and orchestral sounds as well as sounds for lots of ambient sort of composing keeping in mind that ambient often uses acoustic sounds?

Basically, I'd like to get the best synth with the most flexibility that will give me the ability to follow my musical voice, wherever it leads. Since I've been out of composing music for so long, I have a notion of what I'd like to write but I can't say I know for sure if that makes sense.

From what I've read, people who have the virus, some of them also have Omnisphere. Obviously I can't afford both so I've been trying to look at the options from the economic aspect of things and the artistic side in terms of flexibility and accessibility. I know there have been a lot of discussions about omnisphere versus the access virus and I understand that they're both different so I'm not trying to get people to compare the two

In terms of how much pc I'd need for omnisphere, we all know the minimul requirements by software manufacturers rarely address real-world scenarios so for you guys who have this synth, can you give me some details about optimum pc setups to look into, provided I go that way?

And to add to this list of questions, which keyboard controller would be a good fit for omnisphere? If possible, I'd like to get something where I could have some knobs to change effects or other sound mangling possibilities so I don't have to use the pc and sure, you could probably say, just get the virus if you want all that with the knobs. The problem as I see it with the virus is that it's plug-in interface isn't accessible os doing things like searching for sounds would be hit and miss, like say I want to find a choir sound. With the virus, as far as I know, there's no direct dial way to get to the sound, but with omnisphere and the access technology, I could get to category search or to the browser page as far as I can tell and at least have a starting point.

Also, I've read that some people say that the DAW's from sweetwater are overpriced and under perform and I'd like to get people's input on how good their systems are for that purpose.

Thanks for giving me your feedback on this issue.