🎤 Make Music Anywhere - Your Pocket-Sized Studio Awaits!
The Orba by Artiphon is a revolutionary portable synth, looper, and MIDI controller designed for musicians on the move. With Bluetooth and USB connectivity, it allows you to create and customize music effortlessly on iOS, Mac, and Windows devices. Its touch-sensitive pads respond to gestures like tilt and shake, making music creation intuitive and fun. Weighing just 2 grams and measuring 3 inches in diameter, the Orba is the ultimate compact solution for aspiring and professional musicians alike.
Connectivity Technology | Bluetooth, USB |
Total USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
Control Method | Touch |
Human Interface Input | Touchscreen |
Supported Software | GarageBand, Ableton Live, Logic Pro X, Pro Tools, Cubase, FL Studio, as well as any MIDI-compatible mobile app. |
Instrument | Artiphon Orba |
Keyboard Description | gaming |
Platform | Windows 7, Windows, Mac |
Total USB Ports | 1 |
Compatible Devices | Smartphone |
Hardware Connectivity | Bluetooth, USB |
Number of Keys | 8 |
Connector Type | ['USB-C'] |
Noise Control | None |
Control Type | Touch-based Control |
Additional Features | Portable |
Style | Modern |
Item Weight | 2 Grams |
Item Dimensions D x W x H | 3"D x 3"W x 2"H |
J**O
Great fun, quality product
Great sound, good battery life, easy to learn.
A**R
Gift
It's fun
B**D
Stress relief, fidget toy
I find it fun as an unwinding toy more than a music playing machine, maybe it because I don’t have musical skills ? But this vibrates , it fun to switch sounds , turn to change tones , it very limited to how many sounds you can put in it , the app has a few you can change on your device , it is easy to do ! But highly advised if you fidget
P**T
Took a bit to figure out
Took us a bit to figure this out, but it's a fun gadget for my musical son
S**J
Bricked instantly, also had problems with the instrument 1. I tried, I really did.
(quick preface: I'm an extremely literate software engineer and music producer... all the problems I experienced, I properly troubleshooted, followed their guides, submitted tickets, etc. It was all a huge waste of time.)I'll start by saying I really loved the concepts these guys were doing. I bought the INSTRUMENT 1 by them very early on and it was a disaster. The software was terrible, it didn't connect the way I expected to the PC, and it basically just didn't work in a functionally usable way for a midi device (maybe standalone it was bearable? But who wants to listen to some crappy onboard synth?). I REALLY want to like this company. I tried for weeks to troubleshoot and make the INSTRUMENT 1 work right, it never did. I returned it. No problem, just a bit of a bummer. Fast forward like 5 years... and I was skeptical of the ORBA because of what happened with the INSTRUMENT 1. But I figured they must have worked out the kinks and it was way cheaper. Seemed like a fun way to share music production with some friends. When it finally came, I opened it up and right away it was super fun to play with! I plugged it into the PC to connect it to my DAW, downloaded all the software for it and then ran it through a firmware update.Whoops. Firmware update error. No biggie, I'll just hard reset it. Hmm... hard reset didn't work, better read the manual. There's a special procedure for unbricking a device from a botched firmware update. I followed that. Still bricked. Well... that was fun.Artiphon, I tried with you guys, I really did. The software you are writing is ... unconscionable, honestly. How could you keep releasing such breaky stuff? This happening two times to me in a row with two of your products can't be a coincidence. I'm done with you, I hope you get your act together but I won't be trying again with anything you make. It's been a disappointing waste of time.
J**.
Seriously mixed feelings
I'll outright say it, I'm currently learning to do sound design. I'm no master. But I'm also no fool and am often called a tech wunderkind. I had issues getting this working out of the box. I was not able to make any of the function buttons work (meaning holding the menu button and pressing a sound pad, you know...the thing it MUST do to work at all?). After a firmware update, several restarts, and many, many attempts, it suddenly started working perfectly. I'm not sure why, cause I'm not doing anything differently, but I'll take it.There's some ups and downs here. I will list them next, but first off I want to say that this is the Orba 1, not the 2. There's big, important differences. The software for the orba 1 is clunky and looks and operates like it was made cheaply in 2002. The Orba 2 software looks like it was made in 2020. The orba 1 can only have a couple of parallel tracks and they max at 30 seconds. The orba 2 can have many, many tracks of up to 5 minutes. There's other smaller differences like age of hardware, sound quality, bluetooth compatibility, and battery that are all better on the 2, but now on to the pros and cons:Pros:-Inexpensive-Easy to use-Simple design-Excellent entryway to learning to do sound design, DJ, or other EDM (electronic music) experience-tolerable battery-decent audio quality-fair bit of pre-made sounds you can use from the app-customizable-connects to PC/Mac/iOS software like Ableton, meaning you can actually use it to record or perform professionally if you wantedCons:-poor ability to properly execute functions-easy to accidentally spin the device and lose which pad is which-less than professional quality sound samples-pretty bad when compared to the Orba 2-existing "instructions" are laughable and tell you basically nothing. You're on your own-pretty pathetic, sad looking and running software compared to the Orba 2 softwareMy biggest complaint is about making loops. To make a loop you hold the menu button (it's the "A" in the middle) and hit "REC". Not only do the combo buttons not often work, it's extremely hard to time it. You also will have a hard time knowing when your 30 seconds of recording is about to end. the LEDs give you a general idea of timing, but it's very imprecise and makes it very discouraging to use. Things get out of time and messy. Furthermore, it plays an adjustable metronome any time you record. It's nice, but DJs need a flawless sense of timing and the metronome is very hard to set right. When your 30 seconds of recording are up, it goes straight into recording the next 30 seconds. It doesn't stop or alert you, so you can easily go over time by accident and end up with this bizarre, awkwardly timed set of beats or notes that come and go out of nowhere. Getting the right sense of timing on when to stop a loop is by far the most important thing to learn and it's complicated by poor design and being a two-button process that throws off your timing. If you aren't flawless, you'll miss your mark AND change to a different set of sounds in the process without ever realizing it, totally screwing up your recording.Lastly, when it comes to recording, once you record a 30 second loop, it's over. There's no deleting individual loops. You delete all recordings or none. So if you're recording your 5th set of sounds on top of 4 existing loops and you screw up, you gotta start completely over. Good for practice, but highly impractical. A lot of this could have been solved by making the record button a separate, single button you just tap the second you're done.I'm still learning, but if I decide I like it, I'm returning it and ordering an Orba 2. I'll admit it taught me a fair bit about synths and loops, hence why I gave it an extra start instead of the 2 stars I wanna give it. It taught me that this will be harder than I expected. I certainly didn't expect it to be easy, but I was a professional musician for years and thought that'd help me out more.
D**K
Son loves it
I have a 10 yo son who loves to keep beats with music. Found this and got it for a Christmas present. He loves it. He uses it all the time. The sound versatility is awesome. The only thing that was a bummer was this didn’t come with instructions so we had to watch some YT videos but honestly it was better to watch them to read for something like this. Highly Recommend if your person is into music/making music/needs to fidget with something.
G**P
What a fun adult toy!
A unique gift!! I bought this by request for my son turning 30- he’s very techy & musically inclined. He we playing with it right out of the box! And everyone there wanted to take a turn! It made so many different sounds and even altered the sound with shaking it! A nice distraction if you want to play and make some fun sounds and felt like a cool mini drum/noise maker. He was easily figuring out how to use all the features.Glad I got it for him!
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