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.