E-mu Orbit 3

Price Paid: 400. but that was a store error (can)

Ease of Use: 7
The over all sound of the unit it great. I listened to it back to back with a MC-909 and well, the 909 sounded thin. I found the presets to be what you would expect from almost any synth. The odd one makes you stop and play it for quite a wile and most of em you pass by fairly quickly. I will say that the presets do show you the power of the synth. The brain in this thing can take what ever you throw at it. There is no lag and no "granularity" when tweaking filters. The screen is small but I dont care much, it is pretty quick to get around the many depths of the preset. You do have to get used to it though.

As for the manual i did not get one with mine but that is due to the way I got my hands on it not the fault of EMU. So I don't know how it is.

Features: 10
As for the features I think all was already said.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
When it comes down to the actual waves on the roms in this box I have to say that is where this rompler comes to shine. It would take a very long time and alot of synths to get the varity of waves in there. When it comes to building your own sounds the options are just HUGE. Four layers per preset two ENVs per layer. Two LFOs per layer. And if that is not enough then you can link up to four presets to have a total of sixteen layers. With a total of 32 LFOs. And 32 EVS. Oh ya you can assign the ENVs and the LFOs to controll any of the peramiters, some being things like sample start AMP decay, filter ENV attack and releace, well just about anything you could want for that matter, Ok I think that gives ya some idea of what i am talking about.

Reliability: 6
I would not worry about using it live for a second. But judging from other EMU gear I expect to have problems with the little buttons, as well as the encoders that EMU have used on the other modules I have owned, they tend to get messy. But we will see.

Customer Support: 10
EMU tech support is the best I have ever delt with hands down.

Overall Rating: N/A
If I where to loose this one I would get it again. I have been making electronic music since 95 and playing drums since 85. My main kit right now is an emu XL-7, ORBIT3, E5000 with about 5 gigs of samples. Alesis studio12 mixer. Behringer tube composer+ultracurve+quad gate. Oh ya a digitech studio quad.

Submitted by DJ Atomic at 04/04/2003 20:40

Price Paid: US $949

Ease of Use: 10
Not sure which os I used, but it was new right out of the box. 4 knobs and easy to use menus make this unit very easy to operate. The menu on all emu products are very easy, and the manual does a great job in all areas. Editing patches is possible, and again is easy.

Features: 10
The Orbit 3 has a whopping 128 voices. This makes it easy to use multiple arps on every channel at the same time. It has 6 analog outs and a digital out. Midi is standard. The digital out is very quiet and adds better sound quality. The Orbit 3 has tons of arp patterns to select from. You can sequence 16 channels at once, and you can have 16 arps going at once, if you want. The unit is yellow, which I think looks cool in a rack. There are some effects like delay and chorus. I think there is reverb as well. Remember, this is a rack unit, so there is no keyboard.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 2
Here's what you all want to know. The sounds aren't great. I was very dissapointed in fact. The new "Beat Garden" rom is terrible. This is supposed to be a dance module. The dance sounds are useless. I've owned a Orbit, Xtreme Lead, and Audity 2000. The sounds here are pretty much the same. I don't like the drums, but some of the percussion is good. The basses aren't good. Some of the pads are okay, but everything else is not that great. It's packed with 64 mb of sounds, including Beat Garden, and Techno Construction. So really, all it has is 1 new sound rom, Beat Graden. Like I said, this new rom isn't worth it. EMU needs to analize yamaha and korg for their terrific pad and synth sounds. You can go up and down the entire keyboard of a korg or yamaha, and the sounds don't change tones. On an EMU, you can't go more than 2 octaves before the sound starts to sound like crap. It's probably the converters. This is why I don't like EMU. They need to spend some time fixing this.

Reliability: 10
Very reliable, but I only owned it for a week.

Customer Support: 10
Customer support for EMU is great. Never had a problem.

Overall Rating: 3
My best advice would to buy a sampler, and use your own sounds, or sample cds. Like all the emu units, it's just a rompler. I could probably make the same if not better sounds then this unit. I returned it after a week because I felt it was useless. If you want good sample synth sounds, try Korg and Yamaha. The only emu unit I like currently is the Planet Earth. It has really good percussion sounds. I bought the Xtreme lead about 2 years ago, and didn't like it. For some reason, I thought this unit would be different. I was wrong. I probably not buy another EMU unit for awhile, except for their samplers.

Submitted by Anonymous at 03/24/2002 00:55

Price Paid: US N/A

Ease of Use: 10
Orbit 3 ships with OS Ver.1.24 out of the box, the(RP)presets are top notch with many basses, pads, cool guitar arps..................
If you are familiar with E-MU's OS(which can be updated by midi when new versions become available), editing is a breeze. A hard copy manual as well as a CD manual in PDF format are included.

Features: 10
Same specs and motherboard of the P2K but with 64 mb of ROM and the inclusion of the Arps and BEATs feature. The P2K can be updated to this feature via an OS upgrade of 2.xx. There are 2 available expansion slots left(4 total)with 2 midi in's, 2 thru's and 1 out.
Very flexible and super easy to use.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
Two words: Rob Papen

Reliability: 9
No problems with any E-MU gear that wasn't fixed promptly with an OS update.

Customer Support: 9
Always responsive

Overall Rating: 10
I already own the Proteus 2000 and the Techno ROM by Rob Papen so after adding this ROM, I now have the Orbit 3 in my P2K shell. I would definately replace it if anything were to happen. Rob Papen's attention to detail is amazing and very inspirational. He encourages knob movement and most all of his presets use the Midi G and H(see front panel on module)controllers for syncing purposes. See Proteus 2000 review for other info.

Submitted by Mark McQuay at 02/05/2002 07:40

Price Paid: US $949

Ease of Use: 8
Quite easy to use considering small screen. Presets are very good, but probably there are too many percussion there. Manual is ok.

Features: 7
64 Mb of samples, 128 poly, 32 midi channels, digi out, 4 knobs, 2 fxs, accept 2 extra ROMs for 128 Mb overall. Stupid UGLY yellow colour, I'm thinking to paint it to black because all my gear in the rack is black and this thing is really annoying! Look at Emu website at modules section and you'll guess why they chose that colour - because it fits perfectly in the rack of other clown colours of emu gear! But my studio is not a emu circus!

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
Sound are cool. Beat Garden is cool, as is TSCY. Look for a Rob Papen homepage - it contains many mp3 samples of Orbit sounds. Very impressive.

Reliability: N/A

Customer Support: N/A

Overall Rating: 10
Very nice rompler and a good addiction to my setup. Definitely has soul of its own. I have also Triton-rack, Motif, Supernova2rack, Q-rack and AKAI S6000.

Submitted by Anonymous at 01/17/2002 06:39