REVIEW: SOUND FX VOL 1 - OMNISPHERE 2 SOUNDSET by ROCKY MOUNTAIN SOUNDS

Sound FX Vol 1 for Omnisphere 2.6 investigates the universe of inventive field recording. A basic thought - record an assortment of household doors, drawers, and more in professional 24-bit/96khz. The samples are then utilized by the power of Spectrasonics Omnisphere's effects and tools.

OVERVIEW

Custom Soundsources

66 field recordings and processed synth hybrid samples

Recorded in 24-bit, 96Khz for optimum extreme pitch stretching

Processed with industry standard tools providing professional quality raw soundsPatch Categories

ARP + BPM - 61

Hits and Bits - 50

Keyboards -1

Organs - 5

Pads + Strings - 3

Percussive Organic - 157

Synth Bass - 5

Synth Pluck - 8

Synth Poly - 4

Textures Playable - 11

Textures Soundscape - 15

Transition Effects - 52

REVIEW

Sound FX Vol. 1 is created by Sound Designer and musician Jason Schoepfer of Rocky Mountain Sounds. The first time I learned of Jason was from his Omnisphere 2 soundset 'Northern Lights' released through Plugin Guru, which is a fantastic Omnisphere library. There are other 3rd party releases that I own where Jason's name has popped up as a contributor of patches for those libraries. There is no doubt that Jason is a seasoned sound designer with a hefty amount of soundsets released under his belt.

This release was created organically with 66 original soundsources using doors, drawers, and other household field recordings. The first category I began playing was the ARP+BPM, which has a gratifying amount of bass and drum grooves perfect for hybrid scoring. There's also a variety of synth plucks that alternated between multiple waveforms, BPM textures, and Rhythmic tick-tocks.

Hits and Bits has a wide variety of impacts, deep kicks, and sound effects. The Keyboards category  contains only one preset that is a Nord Lead. Inside Organs, there are five patches layered with door rattle sound effects. The Pads+Strings section contains three pads that are notably designed and made me want more.

The largest category of patches is the Percussive Organic section that includes a large collection of SFX (157 total) that mainly consists of doors, boxes, and a couple of oven strikes. The Synth Bass portion has five powerfully usable bass patches that also had me wanting more.

There's a total of eight Synth Pluck presets, and four of them called Wide Shapeshifter are beautifully crafted with a melodic attribute. There are also four brass Synth Poly patches.

Moving on, I want to cover the Textures Playable and Textures Soundscape categories. There's a nice assortment of tension driven and dark ambient components excellent for underscoring.

Lastly, there's a large collection of Transition Effects Fall (downers) and Riser. Even though there is plenty of interesting and well designed transitional cinematic fx sounds, I felt many of them sounded slightly repetitive. One part of this soundset I need to point out is that there are no multis. It's not a huge deal, but I always look forward to seeing a collection of multis for quick inspiration.

There is a lot I like about Sound FX Vol. 1, and I think it has the potential to invigorate your compositions. Unfortunately, there are a couple of things that hold it back from getting a perfect score, in my opinion. The positives do out-way any shortcomings, and you should give it a look. 

Jason Schoepfer is an excellent sound designer and did a great job on this soundset. I can only imagine what he has planned for Volume 2, but until then, go have some fun with Sound FX Volume One.

4 OUT OF 5 STARS 

AVAILABLE HERE: ROCKY MOUNTAIN SOUNDS

Written by Steve Montgomery

(Infinite Mindscape  and Darkmood)