Orion Platinum 6: Music Production Suite
Orion Platinum 6 is the latest incarnation of Synapse Audio's flagship
music production software for PC. Featuring numerous additions
and improvements over earlier versions, it is strongly geared
towards electronic music, and is simple but powerful to use.
Billed as a 'Production Environment', it comes supplied with
many of the tools you'd expect from a good digital audio
workstation, including built-in synths and samplers, drum
machines and effects, support for third-party plug-ins, plus
real-time audio recording/mixing and sequencing.
Orion Platinum's basic building blocks are called Generators
which you create by selecting from an Insert menu, then choosing
from a list of drum, sampler or synth modules. VST and DXi
instruments are fully supported so you can utilise your whole
collection of plug-ins. Orion scans your system and makes all
compatible plug-ins available from a menu, and you can also
specify particular VST plug-in paths if you use multiple folders
to store them. Of the instruments supplied with Orion, Wasp,
Wavefusion, Ultran, Monobass and Plucked string modules are
synthesizers; Tomcat, Drum and XR-909 modules enable you to use
preset or user drum samples to build drum patterns, while the
sampler gives you access to .WAV files which you can import and
manipulate, or use presets from the extensive library of
supplied sounds. Needless to say, all the generators offer
comprehensive control over every aspect of their sound,
including full automation and saving/loading of patches.
There's also a selection of 35 built-in effects which can be
used as inserts or sends. Orion Platinum includes the MultiFX
Control - a handy utility for chaining together multiple effects
either in serial or parallel. Mixing is performed via the Mixer
window, which features the usual channel strip interface with
pan, level, EQ, insert effects and send effects accessible for
each channel. More unusually, the mixer expands or contracts
depending on how many generators you have open, rather than you
gradually filling up slots on a larger mixing desk. This is
economical with screen space, although if you insert a generator
with a lot of outputs, they will all be assigned a separate
mixer channel even if you don't use them. In Orion Platinum, the
Mixer is complemented by the Master section, which provides
master EQ, master effects, four effect busses, and four submix
busses. The submix busses can optionally send to multiple ASIO
outputs, where supported by hardware.
A nice feature in Orion Platinum is support for real-time audio
recording and audio tracks. With multitrack audio recording now
enabled under ASIO, Orion becomes more than just a sequencer.
Audio tracks can be created and samples loaded directly into the
playlist window. A monitorfunction enables you to preview
thesound in real time. Recording depth is up to 32 bits, so
Orion can support higher resolutions. Audio files can now be
freely sliced, trimmed and moved. The Groove Slicer incorporated
into the sampler acts like ReCycle and can identify beats within
a loop, and re-tempo that loop without altering the pitch -
essentially like a REX file. By default, copies of audio data
are treated as instances, but can be made unique with a single
click and treated as independent clones. Most audio operations
are non-destructive and can be fully undone.
Orion Platinum is a very competent sequencer - and a great
overall package. Although geared principally towards electronic
and dance music, it's more flexible than this description would
suggest. At the very least, it offers tremendous fun painting
improbable pattern sequences into drum machines and hearing the
complex, leftfield beats that result. Even simple patterns
entered into a synth sequencer, assigned to a particularly
hard-edged acid synth sound then arpeggiated, sound really good.
The supplied instruments ands ound banks are recommendable, as
are the wealth of features such as real-time audio recording and
groove slicing, MIDI In and Out, and the ability to support
ReWire.