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Introducing Orbasynth: A Powerful Preset Creator for Orba's Internal MPE Synth

Thanks so much for your patience and feedback provided on Orba. Today, we have some exciting news regarding something a lot of you have been asking for. If it seems like we’ve been quiet here recently, it’s because we’ve been working behind the scenes on a couple of bigger things. One of these things is Orbasynth, our new gesture-mappable synth that allows for extensive customization of Orba sounds. 


Here are a couple of key features

  • Morphing oscillators that mix saw, triangle, and novel harmonic-rich waveforms, with variable-width pulse waveforms that change dynamically with dedicated envelopes.

  • Three ADSR dynamic envelopes allow the synth tones to be sculpted by the player’s continuous playing on Orba’s capacitive-sensitive playing surface and respond to note-on and note-off velocities. Two different envelopes can control the two oscillators, noise, and the ring modulator while the third one controls a resonant filter.

  • A waveguide allows for physical modeling, creating unique instruments that have an acoustic-like familiarity. Orbasynth has two modes that emulate string and pipe harmonic structures.

  • Reverb and Delay effects provide sounds that range from subtle ambient air to dense sonic textures.

  • Map Orba’s different playing gestures to synth destinations like filter cutoff and resonance, oscillator level, vibrato, harmonic, saw/triangle mix, harmonic mix. noise level, and LFO rate.


Here's the link where you can download it (available on both Mac and Windows): https://artiphon.com/pages/downloads 


Here's the first tutorial video for Orbasynth (more to come!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lvXA3oz1to


Here's the user manual for Orbasynth: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0229/7157/files/Orbasynth-manual-v1.1.pdf?v=1649731694


Give it a try and let us know what you think!

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75 CommentsSorted by Popular

Good work! Keep on and remember the next in line: quantization and scales.

5 people like this

I think quantization will be the most important feature to add. Loops need to feel clean

4 people like this

+1, after the sound editor, a scale editor would be amazing. 

4 people like this

Took me a while to figure out how to get some sound so I could hear the changes I was making. Watched the tutorial, looked through the manual. Not much help but eventually figured it out. Here is what I am doing-


1. Connect your Orba and start your Orba app and your new OrbaSynth app

2. In your Orba app click on the Artiphon A in the right corner.

3. The second item is Orba Sounds. Turn that off so you aren't hearing the orba sounds when you press the buttons (Don't forget to turn it back on when you want to hear the loaded presets again)

4. In the OrbaSynth click the gear symbol in the upper left

5. Set your output to the orba and your input from the orba.


Now when you press the orba buttons it will play whatever the synth is set to. The default settings sound alot like acoustic guitar in Bass and Lead mode

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No, OrbaSynth is a classic subtractive synth rather than a "hybrid" synth/sampler; there's no sample engine, and sounds are generated entirely from sculpting the output from oscillators through envelopes, filters, and modulators, with a brilliant Gesture Mapping pane to route the Orba's control actions to destination parameters. For an MPE controller with the Orba's range and expressivity of control dimensions, this is exactly what you want; MPE sound design is extremely challenging even without sample layers, and hybrid synthesis for MPE is an order of magnitude more so. (Only ROLI implement it well.)


The revolutionary thing about the Orba 2 is the attempt to bring MPE sample manipulation into the dabbler and semi-pro market. The Artiphon team and their sound-design collaborators are geniuses and if anyone can do it they can, but for now the OrbaSynth is its own little masterclass in classic synthesis for MPE.

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Hello, I have a slight problem with the orbasynth app: I can't see the download link. I tried several times but the link doesn't appear. I have a laptop with Windows 10 and a smartphone with IOS. I tried on both systems and nothing, no download link. Could you help me, please give me the procedure to follow?

I thank you and wish you a good day.

Laurent CLAUDE

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@Laurent CLAUDE probably caused by an addblocker of some kind. I've had to disable pi-hole on my network to see the download link.
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Appreciate that Sam. At this time, Orbasynth is only available for Mac and Windows. That's a great idea though! 

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I figured that was probably true, but it never hurts to ask. Loving the OrbaSynth, the oriental stringed instrument I made is now my favorite instrument :)


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Well, once again, samples take up vastly more space than synth presets. You can verify this yourself by saving an Orbasynth preset to desktop (it's just a small XML text file) and comparing the file size to that of whatever sound samples you have around that you'd want to work with on the Orba. And even if the Orba had massively more onboard memory, samples don't play themselves; Artiphon would have to go back and build a sample player into the Orba, and create a user front end to it. If any of this were easy, rest assured they'd have already done it.


As you say, the way to use the Orba with samples is through desktop software, though I may be misunderstanding what you're proposing. What's the difference between storing samples on PC and using the Orba to control a sampler on PC?


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The orba is a synth and midi controller. It's not a sample based device and unless Artiphon has a serious trick up it's sleeve (don't hold your breath) it is simply impossible to make it a sample based device. Same with the orba app: it's there to change the settings of the orba synth, it doesn't have any play capabilities. To control samples you can use any midi based piece of software or hardware that is capable of playing samples. In my case I use the orba in conjunction with native instruments Maschine+. This is a really simple way to use orba as a midi controller to control the samples played by the Maschine+.
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Great job guys. This is a huge step in the right direction and exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to see when I clicked on today. 
Keep up the great work! :) and thank you!!!

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Unfortunately not. As has been covered elsewhere in this forum, samples require much more memory than synth patch and MIDI data, so there's no prospect of being able to host samples with the current Orba hardware. The internal synth is a little miracle, though, so I don't myself miss the ability to work with onboard samples; that's precisely the kind of area where the Orba comes into its own as a controller for third-party soundware.


[Apologies to anyone in this thread who gets this e-mailed to them twice; maybe one day Freshdesk will implement an edit button, or I'll learn to type properly… Hold no breaths.]

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@thisguy I'm trying to understand what you are trying to do here. As far as I can tell by what you are writing you are using the orba as a speaker in your example case, that's why it "plays" samples (or anything you throw at it). But that doesn't mean it is playing through the actual synth. Windows just "thinks" the orba's main amp is an attached speaker (like a headphone) or more complete: windows sees the orba as a sound card. But that's all it can do, just play the sounds you address to the "orba soundcard" through it's speaker. That's why you hear samples coming out of the orba with 3th party software. And since the orba sends midi out to your midi capable devices it manipulates the samples on your PC while moving the orba.
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Astute observation to be sure. My expertise is fielded in training animals to do specific things in specific areas of work so as you can imagine, my knowledge on devices such as these is most assuredly limited to what I have on hand and mostly from my constant tinkering.  It is looking as though I will be veering away from the Orba as my other midi devices are a bit more open source. Although I will be using this as it does feel a niche of my offline creativity, my endeavors look like they will need to be constrained to the devices I already put to use. Thank you for your help. Hopefully the circumstances will be more fortuitous at a later date when software has been developed further.    For now, it will remain a fantasy and a side piece of creative energy. 

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