Orba (1) by Artiphon

I’ve only just got my Orba and I usually use a small midi keyboard plugged into my iPad with the CCK. I’m not a trained musician, far from it in fact, but I’ve managed to knock up a few songs which I’ve posted to SoundCloud. The best feature I’ve found so far is the ability to play single finger chords on the Orba, and the choice of chord types in the app. The hardware and the app are designed to give people like me the opportunity to make music, without the endless hours of study and practice usually required. I’m old and I never had the opportunity to learn an instrument as a child, and I don’t have years and years in front of me to start now. This probably could be improved and I’m sure it will be, but it does what it needs to and I’ve found it very useful.

Bluetooth disconnects randomly. Functionality of the app is pretty meh. Very average sounding samples. The device itself might be ok if it would work but also appears to be pretty buggy. End up having to factory reset each time I record something because the “clear everything” function doesn’t work. Best I can say about it is it’s nice to have a £100 shaker that makes just one sound.

This app updated yesterday on the 26th December 2020, before this I raised a ticket with support and posted a YouTube video showing how poor this app was (dropping connection and crashing) so I thought this latest update would be a fix! No chance, it still won’t connect to the Orba and being honest this thing seems to have been rushed out with out a proper road test! Sack the bloody dev team and get someone in who knows how to resolve issues with this piss awful app, seriously thinking of returning to artiphon under the pretence that I have been sold a piece of tech that isn’t fit for purpose. Rubbish.

Without an effective way of saving sequences and changing sounds, this app is of little use. Bluetooth functionality is poor.. Being able to use a wired connection would be a small improvement. Having difficulty changing octave too on the Orba itself so being able to change octave through the app would be another step forward. The Orba’s promise and potential is far from being achieved currently.

I agree with many that have this devise At the moment the Bluetooth is useless it keeps crashing after a few minutes so I say it is only 50% functional

It is a good app that allows you to change or a presets, but sometimes looses connection and the app needs restarting, I’m sure it will be improved later on!!

Hi Guys I updated to IOS 14.3 and your latest version of the app; but it’s still not loading patches to the Artiphon via Bluetooth on my IPad Pro. The App shows the on screen upload animation; however when it finishes the patches are unchanged on the Artiphon. Are you aware this is still a problem?

It rarely works and is frustrating how limited it is in comparison to other music apps out there.

The Orba is a brilliant bit of kit, but sadly this app is dreadful and lets it down. The app connects but then immediately disconnects. It’s just not possible to do anything with it. Please fix it so that I can get the most out of my Orba.

I got the Orba specifically to use with my IPad as an expressive controller for synth apps via Bluetooth over MIDI. I updated the firmware via my Mac (luckily I had one), and tried out the Orba via USB into Ableton - so far so good. BUT: as of 12th Nov, attempting to Bluetooth to the Orba via the app results in an instacrash to desktop on my 2018 IPad Air running 14.2. Tried clean reinstalls, resets etc - nothing. To make matters worse, their tech support page is also currently down. Not a great start, let’s hope there is a fix soon. I will re score the review if/when this occurs.