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Orb Producer Suite


Matthew Sorrels

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Hexacord has released what looks like a plugin version of their Orb Composer product, Orb Producer Suite

https://www.orb-composer.com/orb-producer-suite-2/

I have Orb Composer and like but also hate, it's very interesting but is hampered by some really bad software design.  These plugin versions look interesting because they may avoid a bunch of those issues. 

They sent out a coupon for the new suite to subscribers to their newsletter today: ORBREWARD takes the price from 99 euro to 79 euro.  Offer good for 15 days it says.

They have a demo version:

https://www.orb-composer.com/try-orb-producer

I'll be picking this up later today.  I was waiting for the coupon or a discount at dealers to show up.  It's not clear if the 99 euro offer includes VAT, since they don't take anything off when you order.  If they aren't adding VAT to it for EU customers that would mean US customers are overpaying (my pet peeve).  I'd recommend trying the demo version though, they don't have the best track record.  I'll post more when I've had a chance to try it.  It looks a bit like Captain Chords.

 

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Just a few quick notes/first impression.  Purchasing it was simple, uses a serial number to auth.  Four VST3 plugins,  Simple installer.  You enter your serial number in one and it auths the whole package.  No VST2 versions (I wonder if they didn't get a VST2 license?).

It's very like Captain Chords.  It has very similar UI.  Just like CC you use the chords plugin to put together your progression.  It is synced with all the plugins.  There is only a tiny getting started PDF that comes with the download for help.

Seems to pipe all the audio out the chords plugin, rather than each plugin having it's own sound when using the generated MIDI (but not when you feed it MIDI).  Kind of weird.  It's solo/mute options also didn't seem to work the way I thought they should.  You can turn off the synth.  I drag and dropped the MIDI out of each, I'm not sure if you can record the MIDI out or route it live, didn't really try.  The whole coordination system seemed a bit off.  I ended up having to solo each of the four instruments to get them all to play.  The syncing with the DAW is kind of strange too.  If you drag the MIDI out and want to play it you have to turn off the DAW sync, otherwise it always plays the MIDI it's generated.  Which would be fine if you could make the MIDI empty, but you can't.  There is always one chord/bar.  So to silence it you have to turn off the DAW sync.

The synth is very EDM/Pop and the presets are kind of generic bland synth presets.  I think I like Captain Chords synths better, but they are pretty comparable.

The AI options for making MIDI does seem fairly nice.  I liked the melody and arp generators the most.   The bass and chords generators are kind of plain (not a surprise though).  It doesn't have tons of options (neither does Orb Composer come to think of it).  Mostly you are setting a few parameters and it randomly makes something.  I did like a few of the bits it came up with though.

UI isn't resizable at all, which really hurts it a ton.  Little tiny fixed windows.

Didn't crash and my CbB project reloaded after saving.  So that's a plus (a test I usually do with new stuff).

Captain Chords does have more parts (drums) and slightly better sound set/synth set, but I think I like the generated stuff in Orb Producer more.  It made some very nice melody/arp/bass bits.  As a chord/songwriting tool this isn't that bad.  A lot easier to use than Orb Composer.  They really need to make the GUI resizeable.

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Thanks Matthew. I'm downloading the demo!

I avoided Captain Chords after they added the unnecessary (IMHO) Captain Beat and then charged more for the bundle. I have been using ChordPotion to good effect and was considering getting Sundog Song Studio to go with it but I will certainly give this a shot. I also have RapidComposer which looks impressive but also a bit daunting so I'm hoping the new version will improve usability (the UI isn't the friendliest I have come across).

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It's not really like Orb Composer at all except in the MIDI generation nature (since it runs in your DAW with your DAW's instruments).  But it does support a large list of time signatures and a fair list of scales.  The MIDI generator seems a bit less tuned like Orb Composer (especially for orchestral type stuff) it generates MIDI more for EDM/Pop than Orb Composer Pro, which has a large selection of instruments each of which generates MIDI differently.

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I installed the demo and I have to say that I like the results I'm getting. Initially I was only getting Arp and Chords playing but I went into Bass and Melody plugins and set them to DAW mode and they then played. I just put in a random MIDI event at bar 16 on a muted MIDI track in CbB so that it would playback the Orb instruments. 

I quite like the UI and how things are laid out in each plugin and the randomisation and Orb options seemed to produce musical results quite easily.

Unfortunately I did get a crash when I tried to delete the last "Theme". I can only assume that there always has to be one "Theme" but the error handling should ideally detect and prevent attempts to remove the last one rather than crash...

322072256_OrbCrash.jpg.d1e1e851f0bed47a30860fcf42cf9560.jpg

Not a showstopper as I know how to avoid it but reading over on the KVR forums it seems users of the previous ORB products were frustrated by the lack of updates and bug fixes so it makes me wonder if they will be better at updating this new suite. Well I guess I have 15 days to demo it and make a purchase decision.

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Boy this is frustrating! Trying to get these 4 plugins to play at the same time is a PITA!

When I click on "DAW" for one plugin it de-selects DAW on one of the others.  

The actual generative part does look promising but flaky usability means that I am giving up on this for now.

 

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FWIW  I just tried it in Studio One Pro 4, Cubase Pro 10 and Reaper 6 and the DAW sync remained reliably selected on all 4 plugins.

Seemed to work fine apart from the crash scenario mentioned above which is easy to avoid. 

Edited by ZincT
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I think the top part of the interface is supposed to be shared.  But it doesn't seem to always work quite right.  And gets messed up.  I wouldn't assume that if it looks like it working in Studio One that it also won't fail there too.  I've seen wackiness in both Cakewalk and Cubase.

I still haven't gotten it to crash though.  Which I think is good.  Orb Composer the app isn't all that stable really and would often crash randomly.

I had a pretty good time pipeing the MIDI into Kontakt and Spitfire's Bernard Herrmann library.  The MIDI parts it generates doesn't seem to have a whole lot of velocity variance though.  And there is no way to do articulation key-switching, which is kind of a pain.  Orb Composer definitely has more controls over the MIDI generation.  Though both versions seem to lack the real important controls.  In Orb Composer it's hidden behind the instrument choice and in this it's just hard coded by the "type".  I'd think they could offer a bit more control there so you could shape what it generates for the type of instrument you want to use it on.

I did notice one odd thing, if I recorded the MIDI track I was using as the bridge to Kontakt all the notes were off about a beat.  Things played/sounded correctly though.  This was in Cubase 10.5.  It wasn't what I expected.  Dragging the MIDI parts out didn't have this problem.  I don't normally record MIDI tracks like that so I'm not sure if it was to be expected or not.  But then when I tried to reproduce it in a new project, everything was perfectly lined up.  I'm still not sure exactly how it could be off, but it was.

Edited by Matthew Sorrels
Fix bad English.
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30 minutes ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

I think the top part of the interface is supposed to be shared.  But it doesn't seem to always work quite right.  And gets messed up.  I wouldn't assume that if it looks like it working in Studio One that it also won't fail there too.  I've seen wackiness in both Cakewalk and Cubase.

I still haven't gotten it to crash though.  Which I think is good.  Orb Composer the app isn't all that stable really and would often crash randomly.

I had a pretty good time pipeing the MIDI into Kontakt and Spitfire's Bernard Herrmann library.  The MIDI parts it generates doesn't seem to have a whole lot of velocity variance though.  And there is no way to do articulation key-switching, which is kind of a pain.  Orb Composer definitely has more controls over the MIDI generation.  Though both versions seem to lack the real important controls.  In Orb Composer it's hidden behind the instrument choice and in this it's just hard coded by the "type".  I'd think they could offer a bit more control there so you could shape what it generates for the type of instrument you want to use it on.

I did notice one odd thing, if I recorded the MIDI track I was using as the bridge to Kontakt all the notes were off about a beat.  Things played/sounded correctly though.  This was in Cubase 10.5.  It wasn't what I expected.  Dragging the MIDI parts out didn't have this problem.  I don't normally record MIDI tracks like that so I'm not sure if it was to be expected or not.  But then when I tried to that up from a new project it was perfectly lined up.

I have now briefly tested it in Studio One Pro, Cubase 10 and Reaper 6 and they all seem to work more reliably than CbB, especially where selecting things in one part is supposed to be sync'd to the other parts.  The shared top part of the interface seems to be easiest to work with in Studio One where each part appears on a tab of the same window although I'm not as familiar with Cubase and Reaper as I am CbB and S1 so I might be doing them a disservice.

I also tried it with Amadeus in Kontakt using Cubase (Chords - piano, Melody - Trumpet, Bass - Double Bass, Arp - Harp) and got some nice results but as you say the lack of velocity variance and articulation switching can make the sections sound a bit robotic. I liked the idea of themes and got some nice variations using them.

I would like a bit more in-depth manual to be able to get the most out of it and understand what all of the various options do. Do you think owning one of their previous products made it easier to use Orb Producer or does it work quite differently?

If I were to buy it I think I would probably use it mostly to generate initial ideas and then drag out the MIDI to refine by hand also adding articulations and other expression variations. 

I didn't notice any timing issues in Cubase but I probably had it set up differently to you due to my lack of in-depth knowledge of Cubase.  

For me I think the jury is still out.

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It's very different from Orb Composer.  The options and controls for the generator is completely different than Orb Composer.  It's simpler but to be honest also seems to produce better results, but for a much smaller range of things.  There are no articulations at all for example, unlike Orb Composer which has too many.

This is definitely aimed at a different crowd.

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3 hours ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

It's very different from Orb Composer.  The options and controls for the generator is completely different than Orb Composer.  It's simpler but to be honest also seems to produce better results, but for a much smaller range of things.  There are no articulations at all for example, unlike Orb Composer which has too many.

This is definitely aimed at a different crowd.

Thanks Matthew for your early tests with it.  I downloaded the demo last night and threw together a new song in about an hour using it in Studio One.  I have Orb Composer as well.  This is easier.  Limited, but easier. And convenient.  I also have other similar tools.  Seems like a helpful add.  It was pretty fast and fun to put something together that sounded good.  The interface is kind of fun.  I didn't need the manual to get rolling with it.  I'm glad they made it!  I pushed the buy button this evening.

Edited by lawajava
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2 hours ago, simon said:

doesn't seem to be a discount for orb composer users ?  

 

That seems to be the case Simon.

It's 99 euro or 79 euro for the first 15 days with the special coupon code in Matthew's post ( ORBREWARD ).

Edited by ZincT
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57 minutes ago, ZincT said:

That seems to be the case Simon.

It's 99 euro or 79 euro for the first 15 days with the special coupon code in Matthew's post ( ORBREWARD ).

it was the same with the 1.5 update IIRC - no upgrade path from v1

 

 

 

 

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13 minutes ago, simon said:

it was the same with the 1.5 update IIRC - no upgrade path from v1

 

Seems an odd strategy doesn't it? Especially in the current climate with seemingly everyone offering sale prices or freebies on their products.

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