Spectrasonics Atmosphere

Atmosphere will never be Intel compatible.

The only reason I can recommend a MacIntel user buying Atmosphere is you'll get a decent discount to Omnisphere when it's released in September, which will be several orders of magnitude better than Atmosphere currently is - and will be fully MacIntel compatible...

Welcome to the club!

Spectrasonics - where do I start. They used to be the darling in the DAW community with Eric Persing their founder and mastermind being that really nice and accesible guy. They had the three killer products (Stylus, Trilogy, Atmosphere), the best plugins you can find and you could find them virtually on every professional composers computer. Then a big thing happend - Apple switches to Intel - and that's where it all went downhill.

Spectrasonics used the audio engine called UVI for Trilogy and Atmosphere, a technology that they licensed from another company. Their third flagship, the new Stylus TMX was based on their own in-house technology and was available for Intel machines pretty quick. But Trilogy and Atmosphere turned out to be a pathetic story of an ongoing drama to this day.
Most of the professional composers where stuck in their upgrade path to Intel because they used Trilogy and Atmosphere and couldn't afford to loose them on a daily basis. So they waited and waited. (If you think the graphics community had to wait for their Intel Photoshop version a long time, think again.)

Here are the broken promises and lies from Spectrasonics.
They promised an Intel version of Trilogy and Atmosphere but asked their customer for a little more time ( I think it was a year!) because "... they had to rewrite the code with their own engine". Then they came out with that "joke" last year. It was not an intel version, it was a pathetic band aid in form of a wrapper. All your plugin setting didn't work and it eats up the CPU cycles of your new 8cores in no time. Instability and frequent crashes is a whole other story.
On top of that - there will be no Intel version - that's it! It was a lie from the very beginning just to buy time. Instead they showed off their new toy "Omnisphere" in February this year that should include the Atmosphere and Trilogy sounds. Release date? September, almost another year. And guess what, in the meantime you wouldn't use plug-in settings because they will be most likely different in the "Omnisphere" environment anyway.

Look at "PlugsoundPro" or "Motu Ethno Instruments" they both use the new UVI engine under Intel. So Spectrasonics could have used that technology to update the original Trilogy and Atmosphere and create their new toy under their own engine. But they did not - political, financial reasons - who knows. The problem is that they lied to their loyal customer just to by them time. And they knew they could do it because they make one of the best sounding plugins, and their customer would stick with them. I know, I did and I have to deal with that crappy wrapper thing because I don't want to loose the sounds.

That is bad behavior that should lead to a boycot, if their wouldn't be otherwise that good - To bad - as a consumer, you are screwed!

they promised an Intel version of Trilogy and Atmosphere

No they didn't, they promised a "solution" for Intel users, which some people took to assume that Atmosphere and Trilogy would be released as UB versions. The truth is the Intel situation hit them at a really bad time, and a UB version of the UVI engine was not available - the products would have to be recoded from almost scratch for the UB UVI engine which wasn't even available for a year or more anyway - so they would have spent a year of waiting, then another year of development, just get back back to where they started!

So they took the only course of development available - they continued with their plans to redevelop the products with their own technology, and move on in the process, and release the products they wanted to release, which would then be under their control.

This has of course been painful for the users caught at the end of the chain...

Look at "PlugsoundPro" or "Motu Ethno Instruments" they both use the new UVI engine under Intel. So Spectrasonics could have used that technology to update the original Trilogy and Atmosphere and create their new toy under their own engine. But they did not - political, financial reasons

No, this wasn't possible - Eric has written explaining this situation...

Thanks Bee Jay for your clarification, but I still think the whole "mess" with the Atmosphere/Trilogy on Intel machines looks a little bit shady to me.

I don't care about the difference between an "Intel version" and an "Intel solution" as long at it works. Most of the user of the wrapper solution would agree that this is not a "workable" solution, more a "workaround" than a "solution". It doesn't live up to the standard that we are used from Spectrasonics. It feels more like something an intern put together on a weekend assignment. I still would call it a band aid, and a real bad one.
Spectrasonics should have known what their pro clients are expecting from them and they also should have known what kind of inferior product they were about to release to them after a year long development. BTW isn't it still a beta version. A beta version of a fix!
Maybe Eric Persing posted that information somewhere to warn their customers about the detail of the solution, I don't know. I only remember the big disappointment on the forums when they release it. "What the ^%$ is that, we waited a year for THAT?"

I know, transitions must be a pain in the butt for software developers (OS9 - OSX - Intel). But I judge a company not only how good of a product they release at a given time, but also how much they care to help their customers with their product through a transition. As an end user we also have to go through some growing pains to go through the transitions, not only financially , but also with the logistic: Two issues.

1) Saved Settings
I like to invest time to use and organize the Plug-in settings in most of the software plug-ins. With so many patches to choose from, I build my own library of Plug-in presets that I can fall back. When an old plug-in gets "folded" into a new version, like Atmosphere (or FM7-FM8, Absynth3-Absynth4), all those Plug-in setitngs that I have neatly organized in subfolders are not accessible form the updated Plug-in even if they use the same sound patches. I have to start all over again, or rebuild my folder structure.

2) Backward compatibility
I often have to open up older projects for remixes. Now on a MacPro with Leopard I still can open a Logic project from a year or two years ago but not all the plug-ins come up. I have to keep a legacy machine around to open them up and maybe bounce those tracks and import the file into the new machine. I read a post from Eric Persing where he suggested exactly that. Quite frankly, I consider that a slap in the face. It is like, "instead of us (Spectrasonics) spending the time (= money) to create a workable solution, we prefer you (the user) to spend the time (=money) to work around the issue.

About the UVI option. Bee Jay, you said that Eric explained that it wasn't possible. I don't know if that is true. One thing I know is that I had the old PlugSound plug-ins with the old UVI engine and now I have the new PlugSound Pro plug-in with the new UVI engine. I have the old Atmosphere/Trilogy plug-ins with the old UVI engine and now I have a lousy wrapper workaround NOT using the new UVI engine. I think the PlugSOund Pro was even released before the Spectrasonics wrapper. So why is it possible for other companies and not Spectraonics?

I sill think the best solution would have been to invest the time/money to work on true Atmosphere/Trilogy Intel version. That would have saved Spectrasonics from the PR damage. Omnisphere would have still be the new killer app like Stylus RMX was when it came out.

All I'm saying is, Spectrasonics lost my respect as a software company, that I thought cared about their user.

the Atmosphere and Tilogy Intel issue is for me, the mayor reason about my decision to stay with power mac g5...

Intel processors are more faster and powerfull (but cheaper) ... but I hope that Apple continue to support the PPC side of the Apple system.

I never got a good feeling with Intel processors (I have also a black macbook) ... (too hybrid generation Wintel or MacIntel as very same now)
I prefer the old IBM G5 PPC: they are (my opinion) the last pure and true Apple Macintosh proprietary Hi Tech Processors.

Anyway in the 2009 or 2010 I will buy a new desktop.... (perhaps 🙂 ) but i'm not so sure if it will be a Apple computer!

G

but I still think the whole "mess" with the Atmosphere/Trilogy on Intel machines looks a little bit shady to me.

I agree it's a bit of a mess, but not that it's "shady"...

Most of the user of the wrapper solution would agree that this is not a "workable" solution, more a "workaround" than a "solution".

Personally, I agree...

About the UVI option. Bee Jay, you said that Eric explained that it wasn't possible. I don't know if that is true. One thing I know is that I had the old PlugSound plug-ins with the old UVI engine and now I have the new PlugSound Pro plug-in with the new UVI engine. I have the old Atmosphere/Trilogy plug-ins with the old UVI engine and now I have a lousy wrapper workaround NOT using the new UVI engine. I think the PlugSOund Pro was even released before the Spectrasonics wrapper. So why is it possible for other companies and not Spectraonics?

As I understand it, the UB UVI engine was not available at the time Spectrasonics would have needed to start a UB version. It came a year later, and was a completely new engine - not compatible with the old one. Any presets you would have made would still be incompatible. Also, they simply couldn't "port" the old Atmosphere - it would have to be fundamentally re-developed to work with the new engine. As a developer, given the choice of spending the next few years re-building your existing products again from scratch to get back where you started (and still be reliant on that other company and therefore not in control, or building a new next-gen product that's going to offer more and move the company forward, and bring them full-control to not get caught in this situation again... well, the Specs chose the latter.

I sill think the best solution would have been to invest the time/money to work on true Atmosphere/Trilogy Intel version.

And they, in full posession of the facts, decided otherwise.

Omnisphere would have still be the new killer app like Stylus RMX was when it came out.

Well, Omnisphere wouldn't be coming out until late 2010 in that case...

I have to say that one of the reasons (as well as poverty) that I'm still with the PPC is that I use Trilogy on a daily basis (also one or two other things like Sonic Maximizer) Although, from reading the forum, running Tiger on the PPC seems to be one of the most problem free ways of running L8 at the moment.

Simon (London UK)

Well, IMHO you should not buy it at all. I purchased EWQLSO and then several months upgraded to an intel based mac only to figure out afterwards that the player was not compatible. Then I upgraded my version of the software when they announced that I would get a free upgrade to their NEW AND IMPROVED PLAYER THAT WAS DUE OUT ANY TIME BUT NO SPECIFIC DATE blah blah... Well a year and a half later I still cannot use my $400 investment and they are saying to upgrade again because the version I have is not even in production at the moment and If I buy the next version up it will be released SOONER then the other BUT NO SPECIFIC DATE and if you want to use the library it is compatible with the Kontakt full sampler that is only $300 or some bologna....

In other words BEWARE OF THE VAPORWARE!

The real bottom line is that everyone else figured out how to get compatible with Intel. Complex sample libraries like Vienna, Digidesign, etc.....Atmosphere and Trilogy seem to be the only orphans of note out there. I think it was handled very poorly, and it isn't as if Mac Intel was some kind of surprise by Apple....I do believe that Spectrasonics just had plans for the future and wasn't very concerned about the past. I know Eric is a good guy, but there is just no way these products couldn't haven't been even ENTIRELY rewritten in this amount of time. How many years is it now? Two? Three? I've lost count, and replaced the products with others.

TH

The real bottom line is that everyone else figured out how to get compatible with Intel.

Yeah, the ones that had control over their code. The Specs did not, because the code was another company's...

But that's not my problem. I'm THE CUSTOMER - I don't even want to know about the code - anymore than I want to know about the transistors in my hairdryer - I just want it to work. If Spectrasonics have to put there new (money making) super synth on the back burner while they rewrite the code from scratch, then so be it. Eric will just have to wait a little longer for that third holiday home. I mean who's gonna buy Omnishere (Like we really need MORE synth plugs) from a company that doesn't honour the contracts it makes with its customers.

I know I wont be buying anymore products from Spectrasonics until they put this one right,and maybe I wont be the only one.

Oh. by the way, I've just found out that my car wont turn left anymore. I talked to Ford and they say it's all down to the discombooberation sprocket. Evidently it can't be replaced because it's made by another company in China. However they can sell me a new state of the art combine-harvester.

I'm not justifying their decisions, just mentioning the facts as I know them. I too, think this is one issue where Spectrasonics have extremely under-delivered to their customers...

They were caught out, and all contingency plans were not great. So they chose the one that made the best sense, and went with it. Some customers would have preferred a different decision.. shrugs

Facing the same problems, I'm using Protools TDM in a G5 to host Atmosphere, Trilogy, and
Virus Indigo. I send them midi, and bring the audio back into Logic. It's stable and reliable.
The only hassle is saving patches for cues and having to go another computer to load them
instead of them coming up in Logic automatically. Presumable you could do the same thing with
Logic on an older mac. I never was able to get the wrappers to work properly on my Mac Intel
machine. Great sounds, though.