Truly amazing instrument Truly amazing instrument! No experience necessary to create fantastic beats and melodies. The Orba works with my DAW and synths on my MacBook as well as with my music apps on my iPad and iPhone. But none of these is necessary because the Orba has it’s own built in synth that has endless possibilities. I’m sure more exciting additions are in the works. Finally, Artiphon’s customer service is second to none.

If I had three wishes Positive: Great device, lots of fun, impressed by the sensitivity of the buttons, the gestures and all the features and functions in this small device, feels good in the hands, very inspirative. It's a real Instrument. Negative: sudden resets out of nothing. Sometimes, sound gets interrupted when changing the instrument while recording a loop. Wishlist: 1. more presets 2. possibility to chose between pentatonic and diatonic scale for each preset (e.g. by pressing A-4 for 5 seconds or so). 3. Possibility to chose between major and minor key without the app (e.g. by pressing A-3 for 5 seconds or so)

Artiphon's Lack of Ethics Update: Really? That's Artiphon's response? This is just deflection; "Let's post something and hope it goes away." Since my original review (see below), I've received my reward and it's impressive. It's a well-designed and nicely engineered device and I'm pleased I backed the Kickstarter campaign albeit that the company's communications and behavior was disappointing so I guess I should not be surprised that rather than address or even acknowledge my complaint, the company decided to trot out a non-reply. Will I ever back an Artiphin project again should they do one? Nope. Will I forever see the company and their CEO as unethical? Yep. Will they care? Obviously not. Original Review: Artiphon ran a Kickstarter campaign to launch their new product, the Chorda. As is often the case with Kickstarter projects, the campaign ran behind schedule but the company at least kept backers reasonably well informed on their progress. They supposedly started shipping at the end on 2023 but since then only a small number of backers have received product and, it transpires, Artiphon is now selling the product via retailers. I checked with Sweetwater, one of their resellers, who, as of a few days ago, had eight Chordas in stock. I spoke to one of their extremely helpful sales engineers who told me they put Chordas on pre-order back in November and start shipping around December 28th last year. They've sold something like 80 units since then. This puts paid to Artiphon's claims of shipping problems and underlines that the company has probably been trying to bootstrap sales and thereby cash flow for the product. The problem with this is the lack of transparency and the company's assumption that backers can just suck it. It's a monumental failure of ethics no matter how you view it. Finally, Artiphon has no published phone numbers at all; you can only contact them via email. That says a lot about the company. A one star rating is more than they deserve.

Extremely Helpful I recently purchased the Orba From Artiphon at this time especially since they were offering case free when added to your cart. Even though the case was left off the order (likely user error), upon reaching out to customer service, they are sending a case as well! It’s very nice to see a company willing to do that and I will always support a company like that. It’s a rare thing sometimes.

Artiphon Orba, fun device but a lot of struggles in delivery. Kickstarter product the orba is a fun device, got delayed a lot for backers so there's a lot of frustration among them but I do believe all these delays are mainly due to the pandemic. The orba itself is a fun little instrument, both a standalone and as midi controller. Bare in mind that both software and firmware are still in development so improvements will still come.