Review: Expanse for Omnisphere 2.5 by Luftrum Sound Design

Expanse features cosmic and otherworldly sounds, expanding Omnisphere 2.5’s offerings with simple and incredibly useful synth-based presets.

Jump to the Videos of Expanse for Omnisphere 2.5 by Luftrum Sound Design

Jump to the Demos of Expanse for Omnisphere 2.5 by Luftrum Sound Design

Review: Expanse for Omnisphere 2.5 by Luftrum Sound Design

Expanse is Luftrum’s second release designed by Echo Season. This Omnisphere 2.5 soundset has a fairly limited scope and size, but its focus and simplicity make it incredibly useful. All of the sounds invoke a sense of cosmic wonder or even fear, using mostly analog synths as sources. Among the 100 presets are 54 atmospheric pads, leaving less room for Arps, Leads, and Basses. But every patch in this library is useful, and you won’t find any “filler” presets to bolster the overall number. If you work on science fiction inspired music, Expanse will prove to be an excellent resource.

Expanse for Omnisphere 2.5 sells for $39 from Luftrum Sound Design

Thoughts

Expanse isn’t a very big expansion, but it’s very much an “all killer and no filler” situation. As cliche as it sounds, I’ve found this to be much more true with this soundset than others.

With only 100 presets covering the ARP/BPM, Pads/Strings, Bass, Poly, Short, and Soundscapes, you’re fairly likely to remember the names of your favorite patches. The majority of the presets occupy the pads/strings category. This is really the only thing I’m not crazy about in Expanse, because Pads are very commonly done, and I’ve found that good pulses/arps are much more valuable and a bit harder to find.

The way this expansion has focused on purely synthetic science fiction-esque sounds has made it one of my absolute favorites. It does one thing very well, and I’m sure I’ll always find myself opening this pack first when working on music of that flavor. I also feel like Expanse does a really good job of being a set of instruments rather than a set of over-complicated sonic messes, as so many Omnisphere sets end up. Everything is simple and clean without being drenched in never-ending reverbs and delays. If you’ve read any of my other Omnisphere set reviews, you’ll know that this is my absolute favorite quality in a preset. As always, here’s my list of my favorite 5 patches from this set, along with the reasons why.

BL In The Circuits – a “Bassline” patch in the bass category that plays a simple pulsing rhythm with no note changes. Timbre has lots of sub but is very audible in the mid range as well. The result is a pulse that’s clearly rooted in synthetic origins, but with a more modern sound design twist.

ARP Promising Technology – A pulsing ARP patch with a nice full sound. Plays great as a chord, or a single note pulse. High end is a bit bright on its own, but it can be tamed and filtered down with the mod wheel.

PD Sub Light – A fairly warm and neutral pad with a good sense of space. Using the mod wheel morphs the timbre in subtle ways, never pushing anything over the top. It’s hard to single out any of the pads because they are all useful, but this one had a nice full texture that stood out to me.

KY Just One Island – This is one of the less “synthy” patches, and I like it because it has a simple marimba-esque timbre, and it would fit well within an electronic take on “ethnic” sounds. The mod wheel gets a little messy, adding a lot of fast delay and reverb tail.

SC Cloud Test – This one is sort of “breathing” pulsing soundscape that is very spacious and airy sounding. It sounds polytonal, as if it’s play a small cluster chord, but in more of a wondrous way – not like a horror cluster. The mod wheel adds a nice layer of fizzy air.

Facts

Luftrum Sound Design’s Expanse contains 100 preset patches for Omnisphere 2.5 or higher. The categories included are: Arp +BPM, Pads/Strings, Synth Bass, Synth Poly, Synth Short, and Textures Soundscapes. This add-on requires 65mb of disk space. It is available for $39 at https://www.luftrum.com/expanse/

Expanse for Omnisphere 2.5 sells for $39 from Luftrum Sound Design

Demos of Expanse for Omnisphere 2.5 by Luftrum Sound Design

Videos of Expanse for Omnisphere 2.5 by Luftrum Sound Design

Contributor Steven McDonald reviews Expanse for Omnisphere 2.5 by Luftrum Sound Design
“Expanse features cosmic and otherworldly sounds, expanding Omnisphere 2.5’s offerings with simple and incredibly useful synth-based presets.”