From sample to synth-based sounds, you can create any sound you want with Omnisphere 2. For starters, let’s focus on trailer sound design. There are several key elements of a typical trailer track and we’ll start with risers.

STEP 1: SELECTING THE RIGHT SOUNDSOURCE

Currently, Omnisphere 2 boasts 4,879 soundsources, so it can take a while to find the right soundsource. Texture soundsources work great for this type of sound design, so I’ll use one of the textures for the first layer and simple noise waveform for another. Trailer music is (usually) all about epicness, loudness and energy, so already aggressive sounds are more than fitting. I’ve picked simple noise waveform for layer A and the Shredder soundsource for layer B. Noise layer is transposed down 12 semitones to add a bit of richness and depth.

STEP 2: USING LFO TO CONTROL THE PITCH, TONE AND LENGTH OF THE RISER

Omnisphere 2’s LFO is a great tool for creating pulses and controlling other parameters, and here it’s used to control the pitch, filter cutoff and duration of our riser. I’ve set it to 4X (4 bars) with reverse saw LFO shape and SYNC turned on, but it’s easily adjustable to be longer or shorter. Then set the LFO1 to modulate cutoff, amplitude and pitch (coarse).

STEP 3: USING THE EFFECTS

Effects are essential for making the sounds production-ready, and key ingredients are EQ, compression and reverb. Omnisphere 2 has a great suite of effects that would be great as a standalone plugin as well.

For EQ, Studio EQ is a good choice. Typical trailer track will have a lot of stuff going on in the low end (bass pulses, drones, impacts, booms, basses and celli etc.), so it’s good to start with a 100 Hz HPF filter. Also, a slight boost on top is great to make the riser cut through a bit clearly.

Pro-Verb is a fine choice for reverb, and either plate or hall presets shall do well. Here I’ve picked a hall preset with 25 ms of predelay. Dryness/wetness is a personal choice, so adjust to taste – here’s a reverb insert with just 10% wet mix to add a bit of space.

For compression, I find that I usually go to Precision Compressor – it’s transparent and best sounding compressor in Omnisphere 2 in my opinion. To add more punch, Precision Compressor’s input gain can be modulated with LFO1 as well, so it becomes more punchier and louder over time.

Final result is here: