Review: Cloud Atlas by Triple Spiral Audio

by Steven McDonald

Very focused and unified variety of sounds in Omnisphere’s most useful categories.
Strong uses of modulation and orbit features for dynamic sounds.

Some patches are overly busy with those dynamic elements, making them hard to use in an existing mix.

Cloud Atlas features some very inspiring “retro-futuristic” patches to add some extra juice to Omnisphere 2. If you like analog flavor mixed with modern sound design, this is a good place to look.

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Review: Cloud Atlas by Triple Spiral Audio

Inspired by the titular novel, Cloud Atlas, this Omnisphere 2 soundset focuses heavily on blending retro analog synths with modern sound design into a dystopian atmosphere. There is a good variety of patch types that covers Omnisphere’s most useful categories, and a strong unifying “retro-futuristic” flavor that ties them all together. Although I found myself skipping over some overly complex patches with too much going on, the vast majority of these sounds can be very useful to a modern media composer.

Cloud Atlas sells for €44.95 from Triple Spiral Audio

Thoughts

The first thing I always look for in an Omnisphere soundset is whether or not it plays nice with Omni’s standard categories. Cloud Atlas gets a gold star for this.

There’s a good amount of patches here to work with in each category, so I’d say that for the money, this is definitely a good deal content-wise.

Standout Patches:

Katapult – This a great pulsing arp patch that features a warm and fat low end pulsating in fast triplets. It’s a simple enough pattern to adapt into lots of mixes, and it really has an analog synth feeling from lush timbre.

Mirrored – A pad patch with a full and rich sounding fundamental. But what’s fun is the swirling upper harmonics that seem to endlessly move about. They’re subtle enough that they aren’t distracting, so they just add an element of movement that doesn’t force your ear to latch on to it.

Projector – This is like an even simpler version of the above sound; a very warm and rich pad with a slow attack. It sounds great playing slow, evolving chords with this patch, which is very inspiring. There is some very subtle filter sweeping in the higher frequencies that add a dynamic element. This patch gave me Blade Runner 2049 vibes!

Waiting – This one is a polyphonic synth that is kind of like a keyboard sound with a sharp attack. It has a fairly dark low end with timbre that varies thanks to the orbit system. The high end is airy and feels very spacious. I think I prefer this one with the orbit system turned off though, just for the sake of a more consistent timbre.

Whistleblower – This is a good “instant tension” patch. It’s a playable texture that focuses mostly on mid-high end with some modulated distortion that adds grit and movement. There also seems to be some subtle reverse elements that come in and out. Again, not overly complex, so it’s adaptable to many situations while still being interesting on its own.

I will say that some patches are too busy for my taste, with too much modulation and effects processing going on – those sounds are hard to implement into an existing track, and may require some toning down, such as removing delay effects and turning off the orbit feature. But, those are not the majority, and they certainly don’t weigh this product down to an unworthy purchase.

The unifying element across all of these patches is the analog synth flavor combined with interesting modulations and effects that old synths aren’t capable of. It’s a cool approach that sets itself apart from some of the more modern focused expansions that are out that there. For example, a patch might consist of a warm and fat analog strings sound with a fluctuating and crunchy pulse swirling around in the background. Omnisphere’s detailed modulation and Orbit features are a great way of creating a more avant-garde take on classic synth sounds. If you’re working on a project that needs a touch of the 80s or an interesting sci-fi sound, there’s a lot of good stuff in Cloud Atlas.

Facts

Cloud Atlas brings 250 presets, 60 multis, and 120 sound sources (with the free update) to Omnisphere 2.4.1d or later. The installed library weighs in at 480 MB

The original sound sources used for this expansion include retro synths such as the ARP Solina SE IV, Roland D50 and several more.

Cloud Atlas sells for €44.95 from Triple Spiral Audio