Orion 8.6 released

[VitaminD]

IMO this product needed a lot of elements to be more palatable to the current market.. improved song automation, MIDI tools, GUI rework, VSTi compatibility, audio track improvements.. to name a few. It felt modern, to me, around 2003 and very out of date by 2013 (when I finally jumped ship). It was seriously developed for a large portion of that timeframe, but it just never seemed to keep up pace with the other options out there. The last few years of dev (or lack thereof) gave the obvious impression to me that it was a back-burner project.

When v8 was released, Richard (dev) said they were switching to a more agile system of development where we'd see fewer changes in a release, but releases much quicker. That didn't happen. I think it was around that time he must have realized just how convoluted it had become and/or it was less effort and more reward for the individual VSTi/RE development. It would be interesting if an audio mag interviewed him and picked his brain on Orion, the company, and his thoughts on the scene as a whole.

In reality, this project expanded tremendously in complexity from its earliest days.. so I find it hard to believe it was still manageable by one full time developer. I think, had the company expanded, Orion could have been developed much further and deeper. And thus it might have still been on the market, healthy and well today. It might also have still sunk and left the dev in huge debt too! That's the gamble.

IMO the other issue is the vitriolic nature of the 'friends' he kept, noticeable over on the SA forums. Like a pack of Harry Potter 'dementors' sucking the life out of the project; I suspect there was a lot of steering into the toilet of the Orion project by people not really in tune with the larger market trends but only their selfish niche needs.

All this said, I was surprised they didn't really tie their top tier VA synth into Orion at any point. Had Synapse Audio included Dune (and later Dune2) as a built in plugin, it might have made more splash on the synth side for appeal of Orion. As easy to use as it was (and the large appeal for me), usability was still aging at the end... so that wouldn't have been enough to keep the S.S. Orion afloat. It still needed a lot of modernizing.

I am still hoping for a serious revival at some point however.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[flakes2]

Is 8.6 the final version?
Which one is the most stable one?

Thanks

[AnX]

Is 8.6 the final version?
Which one is the most stable one?

Thanks

Which version do you have?

[flakes2]

I think it is 7.x

[AnX]

Right. I think it was a paid upgrade to 8/8.x

Its always been pretty stable here (nothing is 100%)

Not sure what the diff is between 7 and 8, was a long time ago.

Edit: seems quite a lot of changes/fixes
http://forum.synapse-audio.com/viewtopi ... =2&t=11625

[Alejandro_ar]

If you enjoy 7.x I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy 8.6

That said, have you considered what other hosts (that are still developed) you can buy for your 100 dollars? Maybe you can find something else that fits your needs more?

FL Studio Fruity edition costs 99 U$S and Fruity Loops updates have always been for free (no matter which number they would give to the update).

Power Tracks Pro Audio (different philosophy of program) costs 49 U$S and upgrades from any version cost 29 U$S.

I also have Harmony Assistant, which is for writing music scores, and updates have always been for free.

I have Orion 7 (which I bought long ago), but Synapse-audio´s selling and/or updating policy for Orion is kind of strange and difficult to understand and unravel.

[flakes2]

I prefer Orion to Fruity. It works better from the technical side. There are many compatibility problems with various plugins in fruity which dont' happen in orion. Imageline seems to ignore the problems and blames it on the plugim developers instead of reworking their engine

[Alejandro_ar]

I also like Orion (and I am talking about version 7, so I should imagine version 8 onwards is even better).

I used to like both. There are thing that one did better than the other and vice versa. But nowadays, I find Fruity most of the time more suited for what I normally use a DAW for.