Artiphon

Just tried to start a new thread regarding an issue with the thing.  Instead of being posted to the forum, I got an email thanking me for "your ticket" and saying that someone will be contacting me.  What the hell?

The problem I tried to talk to other users about is that this thing triggers false hits - tapping keys 1,2,3, 6, 7, and 8 at medium pressure also triggers the side-slap sound - happens with the thing on any surface, not just hand-held.   It is clearly unable to tell the difference between downward pressure caused my a tap and the "equal and opposite" upward pressure from the surface resulting from that same tap - regardless of how hard the surface, regardless of what material the surface is made of.

Yes, it's not unstable – just a bit ugly, unfriendly, and inflexible, and lacking in the kinds of community features that used to make the Discourse forum so much more welcoming as an environment for conversation. But I've never lost a post except by being a dolt, which I do as a matter of daily routine. It has annoying limitations like not displaying formatting (even paragraph breaks) in some mobile browsers. But Artiphon actually use it pretty well.

@ Peter - I don't know if this reassures you, but in my experience the forum is not the weakest link of Artiphon or the Orba. I posted quite a few messages and I had a problem once. Probably hit Cancel or something.

Thanks again.   I will give them the benefit of the doubt and try retyping the whole thing - annoying as it was lengthy and very detailed.   Have to say, if they're a start-up (or near enough), they might want to look to ensuring that customers and potential investors are NOT alienated or deterred at any point.  It's okay for a company to say "Sorry, we didn't get your post/email/phone call because of XYZ fault - outside of our control" but a business is supposed to correct such things and remain IN control.   It doesn't inspire confidence - and that's especially the case when the mysteriously missing items are complaints and critical reviews.   If Artiphon know this forum platform is unstable and just shrugs it off, that's not a good sign - especially for what is essentially a tech co.  Given the lousy experience I've already had with their appalling software as well as the product itself, being told that they take a slapdash approach to their own portal does nothing to improve my confidence that any of the Orba's problems will ever be resolved.

Yes, that's normal for all forum posts. I really don't think Artiphon deletes posts; this is almost certainly an issue with Freshdesk, which I don't much like as a platform. The old forum was in Discourse and was much more user-featured, but Discourse isn't suitable for integrated helpdesk functions and I do see why they had to switch. At least they release posts promptly and respond, which is more than the ROLI forums do.

Thanks Nick but I wrote that afterwards.  The missing post was lengthy and detailed all of the problems encountered as a new user in just one day (and I referred to the missing post in the one you found).

I managed to screen-grab what appears when I post.  Be interested to know if others are seeing the same whenever they post.

 

I didn't accept anything. I pointed out that your premise of them censoring negative feedback is observably false. If your post was indeed disapproved, it is not for the reason you assumed.

I think you may just be looking in the wrong thread. There's a post from you that seems to fit that description here.

So you accept that one post "was approved" but say that I'm being unfair in saying that another post wasn't?

And I absolutely understand about spammers - but nothing in my post is spam, so that's entirely irrelevant, isn't it.

 

You're very quick to judge whether or not they are censoring feedback. In this thread alone are many posts critical of the device, including your last one that was approved.

Any forum is subject to spambots showing up to fill the forums with irrelevant advertisements if they just let any post get through.

Ah - so the forum was written by the same ex-spurt who writes their apps ;)

Actually - I posted a reply on another thread and spotted a message at the top of the screen saying something like "Posts have to be approved before they appear here" - so it appears that Artiphon are choosing what appears in this forum. 

I've contacted the retailer who sold me this thing - the gadget is awful but could maybe become useable with future software upgrades - but I have zero tolerance of companies that censor polite, detailed feedback on their forums.

@ Peter & Ben - I must indeed compliment Artiphon on that. It doesn't matter how much and for how long I complain. It does not help, but it does not go away either :-)

Wow - posted here half an hour ago, perfectly polite but not complimentary - and my post has vanished.   That is totally unacceptable from any company.

 

Given the nature of many of the communications here (and their continued presence), I would suspect a technical glitch before editorial control over comments.

Wow - posted here half an hour ago, perfectly polite but not complimentary - and my post has vanished.   That is totally unacceptable from any company.

 

Received mine yesterday - bought it after seeing a couple of the promo videos on YouTube.

So far - impressed by the build-quality and can see that it has potential BUT and it's a really big BUT...

...it basically sucks.

There's so much wrong with the experience of using (trying to use?) this thing that it's actually difficult to know where to begin or to know that I've even mentioned everything that's so BAD.   Firstly - I got it out of the box, installed the software on Windows 10 and connected the Orba, got the "Update or die!" message (no choice for me to say "I'll do it later" - why not?).  Not that it mattered - the message and entire app just closed.  Re-tried - same again.  Tried every combination of compatability settings, elevated status - app crashed every time.   Found a suggestion on the forums involving holding Vol+ and the power buttons.  That worked to the extent that the app didn't crash - but the Orba did - leaving me with a dead, plastic... thing.   More time wasted on the forums to find from customers - NOT the company - on how to get this working again.   Finally got it updated.  At least, I assume it has updated but I'll never know because Artiphon wouldn't let me see it pre-update to check that any difference has actually been made.

So - I go all through the Artiphon website to try to take up their offer to "download a manual" - except that YOU CAN'T.  You can read a manual online but it is so badly laid out that I got neck-ache from scanning my head side to side across the full width of my browser just to discover the most basic and useless information imaginable - a picture of "the A button" takes up an entire screen on my browser whilst telling me precisely NOTHING.   I try to find out how to use bluetooth - NOTHING - NOT A DAMNED THING!.  There's a button labelled "Bluetooth" - WHY?  What does that button do?  How do I use it?  Does my not knowing that explain why THIS GARBAGE WILL NOT CONNECT VIA BLUETOOTH??   My laptop "sees" it - but won't connect.  My Android phone "sees" it - but won't connect.   The manual and a shed load of glossy promo trash shouts "BLUETOOTH" at me but it does nothing and I have absolutely no idea if it's broken or if I've missed some setting or action because IT'S NOT IN THE USELESS "MANUAL"!  The ONLY mention of that button is "Power/Bluetooth Pairing - Press and hold to turn Orba on and off" - nothing about bluetooth - so exactly why is it called a "bluetooth pairing" button???  No-one knows - including Artiphon, apparently.   Anyway, I fiddle a bit more and for three glorious seconds, it connects to my mobile via bluetooth and the Orba app - but just that once and never since.  As for the Android app - that thing only loads on to one of my Android devices - everything else is presumably "too old" for this app.  WHY?   There is NOTHING about that app that requires the very latest version of Android.  You definitely need to warn people that almost everyone who wants to change the awful "drums" to some other awful "drums" will need to buy a new phone or tablet.   One interesting fact here - yours is the very first app I've ever seen on Google's Play Store that has no ratings, no stars, no feedback at all. 

Then, I discover that the Orba sounds NOTHING LIKE THE ADVERTS!  Never mind, thinks I - I can connect it to the laptop via the incredibly cheap and nasty cable they supplied; the one that's so inflexible that moving the Orba tips my laptop over and sends it crashing to the floor (seriously - £99 for this and all we get is a nasty. 10 pence cable?  Show a bit of class.)   Still, I am connected and I can add some different sounds.  I soon discover that the Orba itself has zero storage - you can have one sound at a time for each category and if you want a different "Bass" sound, for example, you have to connect to the app (yeah, good luck with that) and change the one and only sound allowed - no storing a few different bass sounds and quickly changing between them - like you can on just about every sound-producing toy for the last fifty years.   Okay - so maybe I can find a simple work-around - load a bass sound into one of the other slots - (we're only allowed FOUR sounds at a time - drums, bass, chords and lead - so it's basically several options below the cheapest of children's keyboards on the market).  But I can't - Artiphon won't ALLOW me to put a "bass" sound onto any button BUT the one they've decide is for bass sounds.   Many, many sighs later, I've tried "all" of the possible sounds - and by all, I mean about ten of each and with very little difference between them.  If you want a very expensive "thing" that sounds like a low-res sound sample from a Commodore C= 64 from forty years ago, way-hay - you're in.   Can I create my own sounds?  No!  Can I upload sampled sounds?  No!  Can I find third-party sounds?  No, No, NO!.  What I can do - is play with a handful of wooshy, whoomfy, "pads" that might possibly be used by a handful of people, in one genre of trippy music and even then will need to be buried deep into a track so that their low-fi "appeal" might be considered "ironic".  

Still, I persevere.   I do like the velocity-sensitivity and the aftertouch.  Or at least, I WOULD like it but the non-existent bluetooth connection means I'm forced to leave this "thing" tethered to my laptop - and that seriously impedes any ability to move with the "thing" or even to hold it properly.  I'm forced to clench my fingers in a strange shape to avoid straining the cable and plug - and that leads to me triggering the "clap" whether I want to or not.   The "shaker" is unusable - too slow to respond, sounds dreadful in all available "drum sets" and definitely unsafe with a nasty cable attaching this "thing". to an expensive laptop.

As for just trying to use it to play and record all four - count them, FOUR - sections of a "song" - mind-numbingly awful.  Firstly, there's no quantise - you'd be as well off getting your three-year old kid to bang saucepans as you record the ensuing racket into a cassette recorder (younger readers may need to check Wikipedia's history section on that one).  Then there's the lack of a simple option to set a number of bars in advance - so you're left to frantically and optimistically stab and buttons and combinations of buttons to stop the recording at PRECISELY the right time or have loops of random length.   Then there's the total absence of any control over the sounds beyond your ability to perfectly control your "touch" whilst trying to avoid tensing-up as you also try to work out how to achieve your amazing 64ths drum roll and then hit the "stop recording" button or buttons with some insane variation of the Vulcan neck-pinch.   What you end up with is a NOISE - horrible, overly breathy wooshy smudges layered one on top of the other with zero subtlety - no ability to lower the "chords" into the background, and allow your bass line to "breath".  It's the musical equivalent of standing in a room full of seagulls at feeding time - just a deluge of NOISE - not music.

So maybe that's just because the use of onboard sounds is not really this "thing's" best function - though that would be INCREDIBLY annoying in a PORTABLE gadget that I bought with the expectation of having a creative tool I could carry around for when the muse takes me.  Maybe this is an awesome MIDI controller that will add some sort of organic feel to natural and artificial sounds in a DAW.   Again - having to connect to the laptop (running my trusty Cubase) via a short and totally inflexible cable creates problems.  Not only does connecting this give a MIDI connection, it also inserts itself as an audio output device - a sound card - with no sound input device.  That's annoying - there's no way onboard or in the dreadful app to disable that "function" and Cubase/Windows really doesn't like having unaccountable sound devices hanging around.  Much fiddling later and I'm struggling to remember why I even launched Cubase - any sense of spontaneity has passed and I am now a computer geek, not a musician.  Still, I get there in the end and am able to hit "the thing" and have that pass MIDI data to a virtual instrument - and boy does thing like to send MIDI data - I swear that just looking at this creates another six hundred control change messages.   So it's back into geek mode to filter out as much as I can without leaving nothing but eight on/off switches.  I know, says me - I'll see if I can record the loop I made on the Orba to Cubase as MIDI.  I can't.   At least, I can't get them to synch up - at all.

At that point, I pretty-much gave up. 

This can't be classed as a toy - not just because of the price but because any child worth that title will be throwing it at the nearest wall within three seconds and getting more fun out of the packaging.   It sounds AWFUL - there's absolutely no subtlety to ANY of the sounds, there's no natural sounds available and the end result is a stupid throwback to the 1980's - in a bad way.  This needs to be completely rethought - I just don't see who it is being aimed at.  It needs to store alternatives sounds ONBOARD - having to go to a flaky app just to choose a different sound is unbelievably insane - it's 2021 not 1984 - MIDI devices have been storing HUNDREDS of sounds onboard for decades.  At the very, very, very least - add a basic GM sound card - uploading wooshy, bloopy retro synths is fine but you've made it the WHOLE thing and what we as users are left with is a stupid little "thing" that makes four noises - badly.   We can change the four awful noises for a very, very, very small number of other awful noises - whoopee.    Maybe, putting some decent sounds ONBOARD and allowing users to change between sounds ONBOARD will give you time to focus on sorting the appalling apps out - and getting the basics right.   And please - a decent cable costs a couple of pounds - skimping on that does not impress anyone who has just paid a fortnight's worth of beer money to buy this.   Produce a properly formatted DOWNLOADABLE manual.  Get bluetooth working - properly.   And how about this - create your own dedicated sound app or VSTi host, specifically set up to make this sound good - and to properly show any advantages to using this as a MIDI controller because as it stands, I'm not see that at all and am not seeing the value in spending hours trying to shoehorn a half-baked "thing" into what I already use.

And the "hard reset" - what the hell?   The instructions are "Hold the power and Vol- keys for fifteen seconds" - but nothing happens.  I don't just mean that nothing SEEMS to happen - literally NOTHING HAPPENS - except for the ball of doom switching itself off, exactly as it would if you just held the power button.  Uploaded sounds - unchanged.  Recorded loops - unchanged.  NOTHING HAPPENS?   Is that another non-working function, a faulty "thing", an error in the not-really-a-manual or what?   Seriously - the "thing" has more lights on it than a department store Xmas tree and you can't use any of them to give us a status message on a reboot?  

I will hang on to this.  It's not the fault of the retailer who sold it to me and I can see that it might have a future - but I won't be holding my breath and I suspect it will be in the kitchen drawer with all the other worthless junk within a couple of weeks.

One big question that comes from all of this...

Exactly what does Artiphon think this "thing" actually is - what is the PRIMARY function of this "thing" supposed to be?

Is it a MIDI controller with some clever angles such as the shake and smack - or is it a portable compositional tool?  At present, I don't think that Artiphon have any idea on that score.  Their various video promos appear to be punting this as a "creator" - a compositional tool - but then we find that the sounds used in all of their promos are being triggered in external programs - meaning that they are actually showing us this in use as a MIDI controller.  And if it's just a MIDI controller, why make it portable and why have the annoying onboard key combinations rather than a VST to control the functions?  If it's a portable sound source, compositional tool - where are the most basic of functions such as a choice on onboard sounds and a quantise option?  If it's a MIDI input device, why does the app provide no settings at all for any of the MIDI functions - no filters, nothing.

Sorry but I can't see this still being in production a year from now unless Artiphon focus their minds on what this is and who it's for.   I think it has a certain gimmick appeal as a MIDI controller - the best part of £100 for a cramped, wobbly input device with "slap me" as it's USP is doomed to fail.   I think it has potential as a musician's toy - something you throw in your pocket to play with on the train or in a pub garden.  As such, it needs better sounds and better usability as a "song recorder" - onboard sounds, quantise, individual sound tweaking, including max/min volume - easy saving of compositions - and apps that actually work.  And an app that goes beyond setting haptic feedback (why is that NOT set on the device itself??).   Without some identity, I'd not advise anyone to buy this - because it does two thing badly rather than one thing well plus a useful extra.