Mikron Orbiter was modeled after the effects of the Eminent 310 Unique electronic organ: chorus, tremolo and ensemble. Of which the ensemble effect is by far the most famous, in large part because it is not only the Eminent Unique that uses it. The strings of the Eminent organ were such a hit with musicians at the time that the ensemble section was reused to form the core of the Solina String Ensemble (rebranded in the United States as the ARP String Ensemble). A smart move. This affordable and easily to transport synthesizer became so popular that it was used by almost every band in the seventies, from Pink Floyd to Herbie Hancock. And not just the seventies, in later decades it can be also heard on many albums. The Cure, Kim Wilde, Abba, Brian Eno, Air and Gorillaz are just a few of its notable users.
While we tried to recreate the sound of the original effects as accurate as possible, we added a few knobs to make them more versatile. You can control the width of the stereo field and mix between a dry and a wet signal. Furthermore, you can change the depth and rate that in the original organ were fixed.
When you leave the knobs Depth and Rate in their default settings, you get a close approximation of the original Eminent/Solina sound. However, changing these values can be great to create a little variation for different instruments you run through the effect. After all, you are not limited to the few basic sounds that came with the organ.
A last difference: you can make a smooth transition between the different modes, like the transition of the effects of a Leslie speaker. A feature that is so convenient that it makes us wonder why the makers of the Eminent didn't add it.
Features
- vintage 70s sound
- smooth transition between effects
- intuitive, easy to use interface
- low cpu
- NKS support
Use Mikron Orbiter together with Mikron Phaser to get the typical Jean Michel Jarre synthesizer sound from his first albums Oxygène and Équinoxe.
Sound examples
One possible use of Mikron Orbiter would be to create sounds that resemble those of the Eminent and Solina: the kind of string and organ sound that we know so well from recordings of the past.
Strings
first half clean - second half with ensemble effect
As our starting point we used a sound created on the open source synthesizer Dexed. Check our tutorial 'Creating a 70'ies string sound with Mikron Orbiter' if you want to know how. For a hundred percent accurate emulation you would also need to simulate the phase locked oscillators of the original hardware, but that's not that easy to accomplish, you would need a program such as Reaktor or Max. It's close enough without that last finishing touch though, in our opinion. After all, all Eminent organs sound a slightly different too.
Emulating the entire organ was never the idea behind Mikron Orbiter, however. We simply liked the effects that came with it, and thought it would be pretty nice if you could use them on whatever sound you wanted. In the same way a Leslie box has been applied to all kinds of sounds it wasn't originally intended for.
You could for example use Mikron Orbiter on guitar like Sound Garden used the Leslie effect to get the typical guitar sound of Black Hole Sun...
Guitar
clean (reverb & compression) - chorus - ensemble - tremolo
... or on vocals as Black Sabbath did in their song Planet Caravan.
vocals
Vocals are first processed with compression and Autotune. Mikron Orbiter adds some extra wobble to the wobble of the Autotune which leads to a trippy, psychedelic effect.
Another nice feature of having the Orbiter as an separate effect is that you can also apply it after another effect, in this example after the reverb.
after effect
clean - reverb - reverb & orbiter
Promo video
User interface
![[Mikron Orbiter GUI]](/plugins/mikron/orbiter/images/screenshot.png)
System requirements
Windows: 10, and up
Mac OS X (Intel or Apple Silicon ): 10.11 (El Capitan), and up
Native Apple M1 support
Mikron Orbiter is available in VST3 (64-bit), AU (64-bit), and AAX (64-bit) format
Mikron Orbiter supports Native Instruments’ NKS format.
