Zargmusic - Orion

Gregory · Post by **Gregory** » Fri Nov 17, 2000 11:09 am

I'll generally give my impression of all of Zarg's synths here. At the moment Bowen's synths are the Cadillac/Mercedes Benz of the Creamware line. Although they're third party synths they might as well be direct from Creamware. I think they're even better than the Creamware synths. The Zarg synths are uniformly excellent as far as general sound, presets and flexibility. Only if you are a whiz at the Modular 2 are you going to get a more generous selection of synthesis styles. And the graphics are gorgeous. If these colors and textures were on a hardware synth you'd want to caress it very gently for a long while. It's probably a little soon in the lifecycle of software synthesis to be declaring "classic" status, but in future years these synths might be looked back on as fondly as the old hardware classics of the 70's and 80's. I wish he had designed the STS sampler series. Instead of just pretty good and serviceable, the 3000/4000 samplers would have been astounding. Instead of being equivalent to an AKAI 2000, like some people have said, we would probably have gotten something equivalent to the AKAI 5000/6000 series.

Post by **Guest** » Fri Dec 01, 2000 10:25 am

I like the Orion V2.0 very much. The Orion synth sounds very much better than the the standard synths fron Creamware. The Orion has 100 presets on bord and they are very well programmed and sound modern. If the analog synth would be invented in the year 2000 his name would be : Orion V2.0

John Bowen · Post by **John Bowen** » Fri Jun 01, 2001 9:40 am

<a name="planetz-file"></a><a href="http://www.zargmusic.com/bp004data/item ... 0010"><img src="/forums/images/file_icon.gif" border="0" alt=" File"> File</a> <a name="planetz-tag"></a>Price ($USD): 169 <a name="planetz-tag"></a>Type: Synth _____________________________________ Now the Orion comes in 2 'flavors' - v2.0, and the CUSTOM. This is a 2 oscillator "analog style" synth, with cross-mod (amplitude modulation), hard sync, Filter FM, overdrive, and stereo flanger and delay. Great for those cutting lead sounds or punchy comps! The v2.0 adds the following: 1) greater range for tuning of both oscs 2) osc 1's PWM has 3 sources now - LFO, Osc 2, or Filter Env 3) Osc 2 has low frequency mode and keyboard track on/off switches 4) Filter has the "Super Mod Oscillator" from the CombPlus Pro (but I just call it Filter LFO), with some changes...the rate or amount of the LFO can be controlled by the Filter Env. 5) 3 math calculations for the cross-mod (AM) now - Shift, Clip, and Abs (absolute value). 6) 3-band parametric EQ from CombPlus 7) displays for all parameters on the front panel

new 'baby blue' color. The Custom version is "inspired" by a customization request from Peter Anslinger. He wanted the extra filters and U Know oscillator from the Dark Star, so the Custom has all of the same features as v2.0 with the following added: 1) Parallel Lowpass (24 dB), Highpass (24 dB), Bandpass (12 dB), and Comb filters. Each has separate mod amounts for 4 sources - Envelope, LFO1, Aftertouch, and Osc 2, and individual levels. 2) A U KNOW (I spell it U No on the panel for space reasons) with a popup control surface for it. The Pulse Width Modulation is the same as for Osc 1.

Switchable carrier/modulator for AM

Filter FM by oscillator 2

built-in stereo flanger and delay

Effects bypass reduces DSP load

9-note polyphony max for Pulsar board

Aftertouch for Pitch, LFO depth, Filter <a name="planetz-fileimage"></a><IMG SRC="http://www.johnbowen.com/pages/common/v ... 2plus.jpg/" BORDER="0">

pinaxa · Post by **pinaxa** » Wed Jun 06, 2001 1:08 pm

The closest thing to a real Prophet! I had a real Prophet 5 in the studio and I was comparing with a NI Pro 5 with great disappointment.Then just out of curiosity I compared the Orion and the quality of the oscillators and filter response was real close to the real one.I say real close because sometimes it was sounding even better!!