Hello,
I installed Omnisphere 3 via upgrade from Omnisphere 2.
The upgrade didn’t upgrade in Cantabile Performer.
So, if I open my different Omnisphere Racks there is still the plugin of version 2 and not the new version 3.
The thing is: Omnisphere 2 doesn’t work further more after the upgrade. The patches haves now no waveforms behind.
The function (right click) “Upgrade Plugin” is grewed out in Cantabile Performer.
If I replace the plugin to Omnisphere 3 the Rack States don’t work (naturally).
Has somebody a workaround for this?
I would like to prevent to build up the Omnisphere Racks new.
the function “Upgrade plugin” is not for upgrading the version of the plugin. It is for substituting the VST2 implementation of a plugin with the VST3 implementation of the same version of the plugin.
I do not use Omnisphere so I can’t help you when it comes to the compatibility between the two versions, sorry.
If Omnisphere 3 is installed as a different plugin and does not overwrite Omnipshere 2, then you will need to upgrade racks manually.
I have just purchased the upgrade for Omnisphere V3, but as I have a gig in five weeks time, I am probably not going to install it until after then, as I have enough to do to get gig ready!
If anyone reading this has successfully upgraded Cantabile racks from Omnisphere 2 → 3 without data loss, I’d welcome hearing about your experiences.
I’m planning to upgrade, but I’m worried about breaking things. It sounds like Omnisphere 3 overwrites Omnisphere 2, which means my old racks probably won’t load, making it hard to recover/copy/migrate their settings once I’ve installed 3?
I’ve been researching this and as best I can tell, Omnisphere 3 is effectively a new plugin, and doesn’t replace old instances - ie: you can have v2 and v3 installed side by side and old songs will use the old version and new songs can use the new version.
I also looked for information on how users are supposed to upgrade existings saved instances and as best I can tell its just a manual process - delete the old plugin, insert a new plugin and reconfigure your patches etc…
Unfortunately, I’m not sure what Cantabile can do to help with this. It’s possible that the plugin might support loading old plugin data, but I’d need to confirm that with Spectrasonics first. But even then, it’d be weird hard coded edge case that Cantabile would need to implement specifically for this plugin.
If anyone has additional information on how this is supposed to work, please let me know.
In the meantime, I’ve reached out to Spectasonics asking for more information.
Q: Will Omnisphere 3 replace my existing Omnisphere plugin? A: Yes. Omnisphere 3 is the next version of Omnisphere. When installed, the Omnisphere 3 Upgrade replaces the Omnisphere plug-in and updates the sound library.
Omnisphere 3’s FAQ page confirms that v3 will load Omnisphere files saved with v2. So if v2 and v3 could run side-by-side then we can migrate by saving each v2 multi or patch as an Omnisphere file, and then load the saved file into a fresh instance of v3.
But the FAQ also seems to indicate that v2 and v3 can’t run together because the v3 upgrade installer replaces the v2 binary and reorganizes the Spectrasonics sound folder (including migrating all custom content) such that v2 can’t read it anymore. I was hoping v3 could load v2 states saved by the host (since they evidently made it able to read v2 files), but @Bladerunner’s experience indicates not.
So now I’m worried that installing v3 will lose everything that hasn’t been first saved as a standalone Omnisphere file. And there’s no way to go back and save one you’ve missed.
Sounds like I will not be upgrading from V2 to V3 until my gig in early December is out of the way, and I will have plenty of time to migrate (and I can also then look a the new version of Cantabile with the UI changes)!
Here an update for this topic:
The thing is, that during the “upgrade” Omnisphere generated a NEW folder ONLY for Omnisphere 3 under the main folder …Common Files/VST3. Therefore the old Omnisphere 2 version is still in the …Common Files/VST3 folder.
But, the old Omnisphere 2 version doesn’t work furthermore, cause the STEAM data are generated completely new. The new STEAM data are not “compatible” with version 2!
So you can open the Omnisphere 2 plugin, but it can’t load any patches.
If I had knew that before, I would have generated a new STEAM folder for Omnisphere 3 beside the existing Steam folder of version 2.
So this might be the solution, to run separately the “old” Omnisphere 2 beside version 3.
Meanwhile I’m nearlly finsish with the manual upgrade of my several Omnisphere racks.
If I had the time, I am happy to step ahead to V3 and remove V2 from my computer, but I do not need to be “bleeding edge” right now.
I can wait, and my gig on 6th of Dec will have been and gone before you know it. I have quite a backlog of things to do in terms of upgrades, so this is just one to add to that backlog.
@brad
This is the first time, where I have problems with an upgraded plugin.
Normally CP works pretty good in upgrading plugins without any problem in
e.g. already generated racks.
Spectrasonics added a new dedicated folder only for Omnisphere 3 in "Common Files/VST3.
This is unusual in comparision to other plugin providers providing plugin upgrades.
Exceptions: plugin providers works generally with folders in VST3. But then the upgrades overwrites the existing plugin in the folder.
The second thing with the Omnisphere 3 upgrade is the complete overwriting of the Steam folder,
which leeds to the fact, that Omnisphere 2 can’t work with the new data.
I got a reply from Spectrasonics in which they said:
As a next step, if someone is an Omnisphere owner and is looking for support, please let them know that they can reach out to us directly at info@spectrasonics.net and we’d be happy to work with them.
I think now the main unanswered question is whether v2’s remembered Steam folder location can be different from v3’s. For example, if you rename the Steam folder to “STEAM2” and then open Omnisphere 2, it should prompt you to locate the Steam folder. Select STEAM2, then close and reopen v2 to make it save the new location. After that, does opening Omnisphere 3 now ask you to find the Steam folder, or does it already point to STEAM2?
If v3 already points to STEAM2 then we’re stuck because it means v2 and v3 share their folder location settings, making it impossible for v2 and v3 to have different Steam folders. But if they can have different Steam folders, then maybe it’s possible to safely upgrade by making a backup copy of the v2 Steam folder before upgrading to v3, and then repointing v2 to it after the upgrade.
Let me know if Spectasonics can’t help with this and I’ll dig deeper. It’s still not clear to me if this is supposed to work as an upgrade, or if it’s just a separate plugin that needs manual intervention.
I had a similar Problem in cubase. For me, the problem was that omni2 had installed a vst2 and a vst3 version. Omni3 only has a vst3 version, thus there were problems.
What I did: save multis, reload omnisphere, load multi. Finished.
I “re-arranged” all the racks some days ago, where Omnisphere is/was included.
I consequently replaced in the racks the O2 with the O3 version.
All racks works as before.
So, this was not really an upgrade O2 to O3 like it happens with other plugin providers. Normally I have through updates/upgrades of plugins nothing to do.
Off-Topic (belongs also to the new O3): Unify also “upgraded” from version 1 to version 2. Also this not really an upgrade. It works separately to version 1.
A lot of Unify patches depends on the Omnisphere plugin/patches. All the patches, which depends on Omnisphere didn’t work furthermore in the new Unify version 2.
Problem is meanwhile solved: I only installed Omnisphere 3 with the VST3 plugin instead also install the Omnisphere 3 VST2 plugin.
Omnisphere helped me in sending a special O3 updater which only inludes the install of the VST2 plugin version.
Now everything works as it should.
Omnisphere 3 is fully backwards compatible with version 2 projects and patches, and all your projects/patches will load the same as they did with Omnisphere 2. When installed, the Omnisphere 3 upgrade replaces the Omnisphere plug-in file in your projects automatically and updates the sound library.
As an extra precautionary measure, you can also back up your Omnisphere 2 STEAM folder. That way, if you run into any issues following the upgrade, you can roll back if needed.
There’s not a super quick way to switch between Omnisphere 2 and 3, but it can be done. … You could remove the Omnisphere 3 software files from the computer, run an Omnisphere 2 software update, then link the Omnisphere 2 software to the original STEAM folder if needed.
So it sounds like it’s safest to backup the STEAM folder before upgrading. But the upgrade is intended to load v3 directly in place of v2 instances within DAW projects, and it’s all supposed to work correctly without any manual migration steps.
