Artiphon Avis 265

The Orba is easy to learn and get into. Fun by itself and wonderful as a midi controller in GarageBand and Logic Pro on Mac and iOS.

The Orba itself is neat, feels sturdy and is kind of like an adult fidget spinner (remember those?). I'm taking off a couple of stars for the less than useless app that should be the beating heart of the software that runs the whole operations but ultimately does...nothing. It opens, you can see that there are sounds that you should be able to switch to, but nothing happens when you 'load' them. I understand that it runs on another sort of Bluetooth, but despite it saying that it is connected to my Orba it manages to do absolutely zip. Nothing. Nada. The team at Artiphon don't respond to emails, they are like the personification of their rubbish app.

great tool to create basic loops. not able to load own presets. not able to save the recordings. unstable firmware.

Very well built device and super fun to play with. The interface is not super intuitive and recording loops is a bit fiddly but overall a very cool musical input tool

It pains me to do this because I reckon Artiphon are struggling, but I can't seem to get any response.

I backed the Orba on Kickstarter and received it much earlier (over 5 months ago) than the many outstanding backers who still haven't received theirs. Unfortunately it had a very loud vibration motor - quite hard to make music when all you can hear is buzz buzz buzz every time you touch any buttons.

I emailed them September 13th with a video demonstrating the problem. They replied October 8th "This is a known issue happening with some Orbas. I'm going to turn your ticket over to [colleague] who can help you process a return/replacement."

Hearing nothing further, I chased on November 11th. I received a reply on November 25th "We [...] are expecting warranty replacement shipments to start rolling out at the end of next week. We'll send out tracking numbers as soon as we have them"

Hearing nothing further again, I chased on January 22nd and February 15th. Then yesterday I received a prompt to rate Artiphon on TrustPilot, so here we are. 5 months since I complained, 4 months since they promised me a replacement, 3 months since any contact from them at all.

I like to think I'm a relaxed and forgiving individual, and I understand that there's a global pandemic happening. My experience with the Orba itself is that it is basically what I backed the Kickstarter for. It's a lot of fun and does what I expected, and if it didn't have the flaw I'd be very happy with it. But I'm probably not going to purchase from Artiphon again, despite them making really interesting musical instruments, simply because of this customer service.

More difficult than it looks. BUT I bought this for my son, and he figured out how to make beautiful music in less than 5 minutes without any instructions or even looking at the YouTube videos. Go figure...

Orba is an intuitive delight. Arrived in compact minimalist but protected packaging. The shape and design are elegant. The touch sensitivity is responsive as are gestures. Instant groove machine and inspiration to just play, experiment, goof-doodle with sound, nice stress reliever. I’m gifting one to my infant grandson, when his parents allow electric devices, I hope this will be an early experience for him..and look forward to the vid shorts of those baby jams.

Orba is a neat, simple way to make music

Idea/concept is really great, but quality of build isn't. Stopped working properly after a few days. Wasnt possible to switch through programs or clear recorded tracks. For this reason novelty wore off fast.

a lot of fun but rather limited in its sounds. could use more samples to pick from.

Positive: Great device, lots of fun, impressed by the sensitivity of the buttons, the gestures and all the features and functions in this small device, feels good in the hands, very inspirative. It's a real Instrument.

Negative: sudden resets out of nothing. Sometimes, sound gets interrupted when changing the instrument while recording a loop.

Wishlist:
1. more presets
2. possibility to chose between pentatonic and diatonic scale for each preset (e.g. by pressing A-4 for 5 seconds or so).
3. Possibility to chose between major and minor key without the app (e.g. by pressing A-3 for 5 seconds or so)

I've waited a long time for a product which still isn't finished. Still after month's, can't save songs and sounds a bit off.
And about the whole Kickstarter blamage, that is just terrible.
The lies and misinformation, and still no full delivery (like the shirt). And when most of the KS Backers where waiting for their (unfinished) Orba, Artiphon thought it was a "great" idea to update with an sleeve for your (still not recieved) orba.
By the way, with an sleeve it doesn't fit in the travel case.
The whole point of the orba was that you could make some music and save it for use. Which is 50% of what it can do now.
I will never back Artiphon on KS or anywhere else, but just wait until it is in the shops (way faster in EU, and cheaper) and then I have also some warrenty.
For people considering the Orba, wait just a few years, maybe it is then finished.

I really like the Orba, but the app lets it down so badly and the customer support from Artiphon is abysmal. It seems that the app is constantly in beta phase and we’ve been waiting months for the save feature to be reintroduced. Without being able to save songs, the Orba is nothing better than an over-priced toy. We’ve had promises that this feature is ‘a priority’, but it’s been months now. Is the developer that bad? Heads really should be rolling, but it seems that the customer experience is not important to Artiphon. I’m afraid I am not impressed and regret buying the Orba because of the software. ☹️

Product is awesome! It's super fun and I can't wait for updates. My reason for 3 stars is due to the lag in shipping times. I feel that Artiphon was dishonest about what they could achieve and how long. I understand COVID issues but they need to be more transparent about how long things will take

Nice experience to play with, but:
More samples :)! Or maybe possible to import Our own samples.

My husband contributed $90 to Artiphon's Kickstarter in January 2020 (or maybe earlier). It is now February 20, 2021and he still has not received his Orba, or any apology or other communication. Very dishonest!
Update: Orba has made things right for us! Though the original Kickstarter process did not work well for us, when Orba found out the problem they immediately sent us an Orba and silicone protector.
The Orba is a really cool device!

I have been lied to for more than 2 weeks by this company! From the moment I ordered there has been no info about whats going on with the orba I ordered! At the week mark I emailed their pr department just hoping for an update I got an email 2 days later saying my order had been put through fror the weekend and thanking me for my patients.

I am now 4 days after the weekend I was told it was "pushed through" and 3 days after the 2 week I was told it would take the first time!! we have sense emailed them again to no response at all!!! Just cause the company sucks at dealing with customers in no way discredits their ability to make what looks like an amazing instrument. I love what they have made and the work they put into it is astounding and truly to be recognized! Having said that DO NOT ORDER ANYTHING FROM THE COMPANY!!!!!!! send your money to GUITAR CENTER ZZSOUNDS or anothey other music store you trust

This little device is a blast. My students can easily get up and running on it within seconds of turning it on.

The looper controls are a little harder to get, but I'm sure they'll get easier with repeated use and updates.

At least 4 of my students received these as gifts over the holidays.

The Orba really fires up young minds.

Orba is rock steady! I am going to try really hard to not sound like I work for the company. I just became an instant super fan. This was an xmas gift from my brother who knows me a bit too well. Background: I am a multi instrumentalist professional musician and a drummer first. When I moved to an apartment, I became a Dr. Rhythm Section drummer, as well as a virtual (due to the pandemic) drum instructor with a non-profit music education program. I was not pleased with these changes until recently when (Santa:) Artiphon found me. Okay, I will scale it back. Heard. lol.

Basically, Orba is a super awesome tool and I cannot be more excited to play with it on the regular. I use it with my students now and find myself creating sounds on the road. I can't wait to fully travel again because the last time I was on a plane with an MPC, it was not very comfortable to say the least. The design of Orba is fresh. The options feel unlimited and the overall vibe I get from the company is sincerely down to earth/passionate about this line of work. Oh yeah, it communicates with SoundTrap too (which is a program like GarageBand that so many middle school students across the country are using currently) which was a huge unexpected bonus.

Reminder: It's not about being a pro but allowing music to heal the soul. Game on. Let's go!!

I bought Orba via Kickstarter. They had 8 months delay in shipping and a really bad communication with the backers. In the end they delivered a device which looks nice but seriously underdelivers.

The goods first.
The device itself looks good and is nice to hold in hand. The keys on the top are great to touch and (with serious limits) react to touch with haptic feedback vibrations). This is by far the best element in Orba, the highlight of the whole project. And fun to use, I must admit.
The device has 4 modes which work quite well and a simple, but well thought track recording.
Also, the 11 preset sounds shipped (in the catastrophic app) sound generally good.
The device promises a number of gestures that alter the sound, including vibrato, radiance and more. These are very fun and cool... but work only sometimes. By that I mean that there are some very strange conditions for a given gesture to activate (e.g. "shake" works only in DRUM mode and only if you keep the "8" key pressed, the "radiance" can only be heard with BASS etc.). The only reliable gesture is a tilt and - to some degree - vibrato.
I hope one day they will fix that with firmware update.

The whole experience is ruined however by a very bad - catastrophic, I would say - app and a very poorly designed sample management.

The app currently works reasonably only with USB, which is stupid for a device relying on gestures and movement. Bluetooth works sometimes, very slowly and for short periods (constant disconnects) which makes even changing the sample a nightmare. Basically the mobile phone cannot now be used as an extension of the device shortcomings.

The app itself looks like someone had an idea to use the app to easily change modes... and then hired high school students to implement all the rest without instruction nor checking what and how they do that. In the effect the sample management is plain stupid (where are the strings? Oh, in "Boomy Booms", of course!) and non-intuitive, the controls are in random places (changing the current key? sure, open the song and look for a drop-down box) or missing the most obvious features (want to delete the last track? sorry, no).

All in all - I give the device 3 start for innovation and physical construction and with hope that the most severe shortcomings will be soon fixed by the software. I think that the software could fix the device and make it something more than just a 15 minute toy to play a bit and toss on a shelf.
Perhaps they should open source the software? This would definitely help, as the device has potential and many of the 12k+ backers alone are software engineers :)