When SO3 first ‘dropped’ I watched the Spectrasonics crew run a flashy wooshing sports broadcast of the new features. I’m sure that worked for a particular industry audience – to me it looked like hot shit through a tin horn. Nope.
I’ve slaved as a commercial sound designer and instantly had flashbacks of the ad men sitting on the leather couch behind me snorting lines of coke while berating me to make it MORE BIGGEREST. I have a sound library of whooshes for radio segues COMING TO YOU LIVE. It comes to mind every time we WHOOSHed back and forward between Eric Pershing and his elves. WHOOSH.
Is this the same crew that made Atmosphere, the burning piano, the bowed bowler hat? It is. But times have changed and we do not seek difference now, we seek solutions. There are mouths to feed, programmers to pay, advertising to provide. Electronic music is normative. The so called EDM is normative.
If you make commercial sound design just buy this, tick the box and move on. I salute you fellow worker, may your work still be audible behind the talking heads.
5 out of 5
I wasn’t going to review SO3 until I saw 5 out 5 reviews dumped out right after release – particularly MusicRadar which awards 5 out of 5 for any cat’s shit. Can I just remind people that 5 out 5 means this thing is entirely perfect in every aspect of its existence. Which is bullshit. I too used to review software for my income and would say the nicest things, but I never ever claimed something was God.
So now I’m pissed off. Because I have to tell it like it is.
I do not get any of this stuff for free. I pay for it. I owe nothing to anybody.
Telling it like it is
In the last update for SO2 I mentioned Sonic Extensions that add specific sounds and methods. If you need to make a lo-fi cassette sound there’s a sonic extension that handles just that. I found myself bypassing the extensions to get to the bare controls. The new SO3 is all about solutions and you will have to reach around that to get to the heart. There’s ‘mutations’ that smartly randomise your patches, things that make ‘appropriate’ adjustments, things that try to guide you. They are clever, they are useful, but they are things that an individual will have to defeat.
When the Roland TB303 Bass Line came out the intention was to create a portable bass accompaniment for traditional musicians. In that respect it was a complete disaster, leading to people like myself to develop a whole new ‘fuck you’ called Acid House. SO3 is more dangerous in that it works very well and more likely to be enough for the average labourer. Rebellion will be more difficult.
Good
Let’s just reach behind the macro and see what we get from this new version. Immediately I’m happy about their new effects and being able to use these effects outside of the SO3 ecosystem. Omnisphere effects are excellent fun. Right there are many new ways to torture your own sounds. โ๏ธ
You now get 36 filter types, oscillator drift, saturation – things that have been expected in analogue synthesis for a while now. You get an advanced moog frequency shifter. The ABCD sound channels can now be cross mixed by different controllers. โ๏ธ
You now have many more keyboards that you can use as controllers – including some that don’t have keys. Quite a few are a bit upmarket for the average enthusiast. โ๏ธ
And of course a truckload of new sounds and patches. I would suggest they were the best of the breed but that’s a matter of taste.
So there’s definitely advantages that come with the upgrade.
Not
There’s nothing particularly bad here, just missed opportunities.
There’s still very basic handling of your own samples, of the sort you got in old Roland racks. I’d be delighted if they offered spectral sampling, but even basic multi-sampling would be a win for creativity and there’s nothing near the spectral pitch shifting available in Padshop. They advise that you are not likely to use SO3 as your main sampler.
There’s 638 wavetables available so I guess you don’t need to add any more but some people will be disappointed there’s no custom slots or editing.
Some filters have names that are more appropriate for a dinner menu than a index – beefy, sauce, juicy, smooth – but they are quite good.
This is the Electronic Production category of your Electronic Production …
One gripe is that built in samples are categorised like a 90’s Roland library. Club Land or Scoring Electronic or Retro Vibes are good sales titles but where is the bowing a bowler hat in this system? You can search – it’s not a big deal. It just isn’t how I arrange things, being spoiled by Steinberg’s self defined management system. I also prefer some of the older weirder sounds from the Atmosphere days, and you don’t need OS3 for that.
Samples have been remastered… but your sounds have not changed. Both things cannot be true. Good news is that the samples are further compressed so that the hard drive footprint is no bigger than the old version.
Sum
It’s unfair to call this a rompler – you can craft your own excellent sounds without ever touching the samples. You could compare it to NI Komplete which presents as numerous separate plugins and see the advantage in one title doing the whole thing. So long as you adhere to the original concepts of subtractive synthesis you’re capable of a great result – but there is nothing of the new means of synthesis. It’s not Vital, Serum, PadShop, any of these specific work flows … it’s just a great big traditional tool.
Except for the effects – they’re crazy.