Product: E-MU Orbit
Price Paid: US $700
Submitted
05/27/1998
at
02:35pm
by
Courtney Nielsen
Email: cnielsen at eac-sj<dot>com
Ease of Use
:
8
All of Emu's recent synths have the same basic interface. It's very straightforward, and it's very easy to learn. Editing paches is like any other standard digital synthesizer. The manual is OK.
Features
:
6
It got 16 channels worth of tones, but there is only one multitamboral setting. no place to store them. I guess they figure that your sequencer will do all that work. Emu is pretty good at cutting corners.
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
9
It's made for dance music. You can tell right away when you look at it. The thing is ugly though. unfortunately, it looks like marketing got ahold of the case and tried to make it look well, stupid. Don't be mislead by it's looks though, it's a very nicce synth, even thoguh it looks like an entry-level instrument. It's one of my main instruments.
The tones are all sampled waveforms with various filters to manipulate them. I have gotten some very nice, rich warm tones out of the synth. The drums are very useable too. It's best with pads and basses. There's also lots of rave-y tones, but I haven't really gotten into them.
the V2 software upgrade fixes bugs, splits up the tones into 4 banks, and adds a couple of features like scratch, which tries to emulate a DJ scratch movement. It works pretty good with hi-hats, but other than that, it's not very realistic, although you can use it to create several unworldly effects.
Reliability
:
6
It crashed on me once, and I had to reinitialize it. That could really suck for someone who has no way to back up tones, as all are erased. No other problems than that.
Customer Support
:
9
Emu has a very good support department.
Overall Rating
:
9
I would like to get another one, for the sake of extra individual outputs. It is a very good synth.
