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This machine is so 90s it's included TWICE in the name!

Hey Pilz, I love your show. I love your delivery! If I’m taking this correctly, you liked the graphics. I’ll take that as a compliment, as I designed the front panel. I was one of the sample engineers as well. I will take credit for naming the box too, as after designing the little orbiting fireball, I put Orbit The Dance Planet only as place holder for the real name that marketing hadn’t come up with yet. Oops, I accidentally named the product. Oh, and the 9090 was not supposed to be there, but the marketing guys liked it, so it stayed. Anyway thanks for a really fun blast from my past!

Your videos have the best production values within the KZfaq synth community. The time and effort you put into this show is appreciated! Thanks and keep up the great work

This unit really shines when it's used with the intended signal path - slammed into the red on a 90s Mackie mixer. I absolutely adore mine - if you're out there wanting this, but don't have the COURAGE to buy a rack for your smelly ROMplers, you should know that a company called Digital Sound Factory bought the rights to all the E-MU sounds, and you can buy them as soundfonts for cheap. You don't get the presets or the shitty DAC, so it's not QUITE the same, but it is useful.

I love the E-mu z-plane filter diagram. I had no bloody clue what it meant in the 90s, and watching this made me realise I'm still totally baffled by it 25 years later.

I have the Morpheus (released at the head of this module series) and the later Proteus 2500 based PX-7 Command Station (with its default Protean Drums ROM and the XL ROM that was a followup to this Orbit module), and the architecture is insanely powerful... but a pain to program through the little letter-box LCD display. The problem was trying to explain how Z-Plane filters worked to people who only understood regular low-pass faux analog filters from their virtual analog synths. The filters were limited by the hardware of the day, and could only follow one parameter in real-time, two others being fixed at note on. Today, it could be implemented with all three Z-plane filter axis being able to modulate in real-time (as in E-mu founder Dave Rossum's Rossum Electro-Music Morpheus eurorack module) Creative Labs did a huge disservice when they run E-mu Systems into the ground.

The EMU Proteus 2500 doesn't belong on a channel about the "most hated gear" but it had four slots for optional 32 MB ROM sound cards, one of which was the Beat Garden from the Orbit 3. I don't care to know the prices of the 2500 these days, but in the mid/late 2000s I saw one cheap enough, I didn't give a second thought to getting one off of Ebay. I used to drool over the ads for those in Electronic Musician magazine in the early 90s. The 2500 made deep diving way better with a bank of 16 knobs that control 32 parameters and a sequencer. It even has a USB port for uploading sysex information. Anyway, if you're gonna go the cost for an Emu Orbit, you might want to consider the 2500. I'm not sure I get the Jordan Rudess high pass / low pass filter reference at 5:14.

By far my favourite KZfaq channel. Such a great concept, and so beautifully executed. Thank you so much.

Would love to see the other E-MU rack synths on the channel as well. Amazing as always!

I have the 9090 V2 and the launch pad controller it is my go to for my drum and bass sounds. NEVER giving this up! Great episode sir!!!

This thing can't be that bad! It's responsible for ~70% of the sounds in the Metroid Prime OST

Man I just fond your channel... I'm a mixing and mastering engineer, not that much into synths, but your presentation, editing and well placed memes caught me straight away!

This was an amazing one!! The E-MU racks had their "issues" but damn did you make this one slap!! Great job as always making "bad gear" sound fantastic!

Your videos were great from the beginning. Time have passed, you haven't changed the concept and it is still great. Good job ! Looking forward to seeing your video next Saturday morning !

This one was long awaited. As I love and own too many E-MU romplers to list (basically an EMUseum). I was even lucky enough to acquire the controller as well. Yes, it was quite the task collecting them. But a labor of love. As the variety of sounds make short work of random creations. You definitely don’t get these, if your not into 90s sounds. Glad for a change you presented a classic piece, that I don’t have to find and buy. Keep em coming. 👍🏾✌🏾✊🏾

I have fallen in love with these late 90’s emu and bought a emu audity, the orbit and the planet platt 😄😄😄

I ran across all of the flavours of Emu romplerstiltskins, and they sounded ok if you had a desk with 6 aux sends to season the crap out of the basic sounds. The Carnaval module was my favourite, because it came from a weird US corporate idea of what latin and carribean music sounded like, and ended up sounding like it fell off a passing asteroid. There was a a fairly notorious London tekno dub crew from that era who rinsed it to death on all their records. They had it running through all manner of bbds and Lovetone filter pedals. The Morpheus was the gem in the Proteus rack range, because it could morph between multiple z-plane filters, and you could save banks in RAM. It also had a properjob spaced out default factory bank.

The best music channel really! Learn a bit of electronic music history, get inspiration for different workflows, have a good laugh and enjoy the music! Never stop please!

I thought you were going to tear my baby apart, but you made me appreciate her even more! I thought I was already subscribed as much as I watch you AudioPilz, I'm now subscribed and an addict needing more AudioPilz daily! 🤣

I swear this "playstation 2 start-up" sample is in every late 90's/early 00's rompler .

Absolutely love your videos. I just started watching them last week, and I was definitely missing out. Your sense of humor is spot on, and I agree with much of your commentary! Also, I had an Emu Extreme Lead rack module. I was only able to use it on one track, because I felt if I used it on any more they'd all sound the same. :D However, for that one track, I actually enjoyed it. :P This module actually seems like it would be a bit more useful. And, if you see your mom this weekend, be sure to tell her SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!

Stumbled here after digging out my E-mu Xtreme Lead-1, which has been in the box for 20+ years. Back in 2000, it was just a rompler, as you said, and I mostly used it to re-sample pads, hits, and percussion to be used later in tracking (yes, that 32-channel multitracker, ala Renoise these days). Lockdown revitalized my interest in synthesis, and I plunged deep into modular, but now am enjoying combining the two - using external modulation converted to MIDI to drive my older digital synths. I was absolutely impressed by what E-mu has packed into their units so many years ago. Perhaps it cannot generate its own waveforms and is not even close to morphing between wavetables of the modern synths, but with numerous layers of sampled and perfectly looped forms (the XL-1 has 4 layers), 50+ filters, multi-stage looping envelopes, variable velocity curves, unique LFO shapes (what is Hemi-quaver?) and even arithmetic modulation processors, and tons of effects, this thing is absolutely blowing my mind! Yes, a ton of menu diving, but with enough patience, I've squeezed out more than just retro-sounding stabs - the ambient pads this thing can create are delicious! Thanks for the video! Not the first one I've watched by you!

Finally. A piece of Bad Gear that I don’t own. But, that I now *want* to own.

Being a 90s techno head, I really love the sounds of this unit ! And as always, your show is amazing ! I really wonder how you can pack so much hillaristic yet totally appropriated memes in your videos ! It's just incredible !

Awesome bad gear video...maybe in future if you can find one : the very rare EMU Carnaval 🥳...ayayay...merengue...mentioned at 5:36

I always hit like as soon as I start watching these videos... This is probably my favorite KZfaq channel

Thank You! As always watching with my finger on a pause button to catch all the memes. You should definitely load them somewhere else so we can watch them afterwards :D Great synth/rompler btw, didn't hear about it

I love your jams, you make “bad gear” sound so good. Do you have full songs online I can listen to or buy? Thank you for these videos

Wow the Orbit finally made it to Bad Gears. I have 2 of these in my collection along with the Proteus 2000, Mo' Phatt and Carnaval. These romplers were essential to studios in NY back in the late 90s to early 2000s. I would never get rid of them.

Your videos just kill me. With a single module that, back in the day, I couldn't get rid of fast enough and a Beatstep Pro, you just pop out little dancy riffs full of energy. Amazing that you do that in every video.

I love that one! You took it out for a ride brother, I guess nobody made it sound like this in the past 20 years

It was necessary to mention the main achievement of EMU at that time: Z-Plane Filter (despite the fact that there is a reduced number of filters in Orbit) ... It would also be nice if the "brother competitor" ) was mentioned in the review - Roland MDC1 (if I remember correctly, even some samples intersect there)

This channel was really under EMUed! I've been using an audity 2000 since 2004. it s not the best unit, but it has a lot of tools, and 16 part multitimbrality is a thing of beauty.

Took me a solid 10yrs to discover rompler, now i got a emu vintage pro and a jd 990, im having the best time of m'y life :D

Another great vid! Love the potpourri painting! I want one :D

Can’t wait for the other possible E-Mu rompler reviews like the Proteus 2000, Xtreme Lead, MoPhatt, Morpheus, Planet Phatt

Every time I watch a new episode of this show I am overwhelmed by how amazing it is. Truly a joy to behold. These are also some of the hottest jams I've heard on Bad Gear, you can tell you were really vibing with the Orbit.

Wow... instant turnaround on the very next vid after the Emu suggestion... service with a "whoosh"! :) But yeah... surprising how cool these still can be. I hover around getting one from time to time. I had a Morpheus back in the day and it was great fun. That one was used heavily on the Thomas Dolby album Gate to the Minds Eye (which was a soundtrack for some now super cheesy animated stories). I had a lot of fun breaking down what he did.

Great video, I remember this was my first piece of dance/techno music gear I had besides a mc-303. I didnt have any midi knob controller for it and thought it was kinda flat. After watching your video I realized I was the one who was flat, there's a lot more to it than I ever used. I cant wait til next week when you feature another piece of gear I owned and thought was "bad gear" only for you to change my mind. Haha

I love e-mu products . I wish they would have made it to the current desktop synth era we live in now.

I have several "Future Music" magazines from 1990s and they are somewhat over-peppered with ads of this E-MU romplers: Mo Phatt, Orbit, Carnival and etc. The prices for these romplers were cosmic in 1990s. This Orbit 9090 sounds very good - reminds of "Underworld" from "Born Slippy" era and 90s underground jungle/drumfunk.

This was amazing! Would love to see a Casio CZ 101 review one of these days! Thank you very much for what you do!

I loved the surreal note struck by "that's a more than acceptable wintage 'DONK'" combined with "I JUST COULDN'T STAND THE SMELL ANYMORE". Keep up the great work!

I get it now!! After a year or so of watching these videos, it’s not even about gear per se… it’s about our host’s extreme talent and ability to make ANY electronic instrument jam to its full extent via his groovy imagination! Bravo!!

its amazing that often an instrument or sequencer designed in the late 80's to mid 90's is more capable than anything out now....

The finale here along with the DJX and RM1x finales are some of my personal faves among your jams. I say keep the 90s jams coming! Also an idea for future video: a Bad Gear tier list and/or a Bad Gear Finale tier list, and both shall be determined by your community. Cheers!

I'm more of a E-Mu sucker that I would like to admit ☺️ Started out with a couple Proteus 2 which I bought for cheap as being defective, got them working again and had weeks of fun just scrolling thru the presets! I don't know which one it was, but one em had this THQ kind of sample where after a while all the notes harmonized pitching up or down depending which octave you pressed. After a while the P2K came into play, added the Mo-Phat, xTreme Lead, got the Orbit at one point being a little of a Rob Papen fanboy (dutch pride thingy), found them additional banks Protozoa and a couple others. Gas induced frenzy added the PK-6 and ofcourse the E-mu XL-7 Groovebox which I hoped to use as a controller for the P2K units. At a time the Proteus 2 I kept bursted into flames and found conviniently enough the Audigy v1, which had a lot of the presets of the older Orbit and others. So over the course of close to a decade I managed to make the synthrack pretty colourful and fit nicely with the other pretty Novation racksynths ☺️ But besides being cute too look at, these synth are amazing! Once you get hold of the z-plane filters and how to work the matrix, where again it helps alot to use a editor when you are, as myself, allergic to menudiving 😁 Once again a pretty darn nice episode mr Pilz!!

Never had the Orbit, but I own several of E-mu's romplers and love them. Great selection of filter types and modulation options that lets you get a wiide variety of sounds out of them. You might wanna look at their Command Station sequencers/grooveboxes built on the same tech too!

Used by literally the best of the best 1990ies Electronic Music producers....this machine was literally in every 90ies Drum & Bass Studio....I wantzzz itzzz. The Z Plane Filter tech wasn't bad at all at the time...

Erstklassig wie immer. Top notch stuff like usual. Next: E-Mu Audity 2000 please.

I had this! I also had the MC-303 and the Fizmo which you've covered! Great show, always fun to watch.

90's sounds still rock even to this day love this synth I may have get one myself

I sort of have this rompler. I have the Orbit soundbank for my ESI32 that EMU-Systems made. I love romplers, something about samples being mixed with other waveforms and filters make the sounds so nice in my ears :) And those sounds with a little reverb is just love in my ears. thanks for the review edit: not sure esi32 has the same filters, but esi32 sounds fantastic for being digital.

This is such a well done funny review of some retro gear. I loved it!

Another brilliant episode ..👍 My 9090 V1 has had a lot of use and I have had to replace the rotary dial but it continues to be a great supply of stock sounds and of course long live decent rack units 👍☢️

Is it cheesy? Yes Can Audiopilz make it sound amazing? Heck YEa Are jams ticking our boxes? YEA Is AudioPilz multitalented synth player even with "basic" skills? YES My monke brain sees AP's new video, neurons activate and i press vid so fast that it makes Flash look like he goes in slowmo

Yo 1996 is my birth year. Bad gear is in my destiny.

The best part of a Friday evening, is viewing these videos 😊🍺

i remember the 90's music making mags like future music used to be constantly on about these E-MU romplers, i had totally forgotten about them till now...thank you

Just in time to watch the last legs of the 80's revival lead into bringing back the 90's styles and sounds

ROMplers and SAMplers have made a so huge comeback I am beggining to feel tired of listening them in all recent productions, especially in underground techno/acid/electro in Europe and some other places (like my country). I am feeling a big urge to hear bleeps and blops of pure waverforms again! When is 2000s minimal techno revival due????

Well done! You never fail to deliver insightful and entertaining reviews here. Can You do a Review of the plasticy and childrens-toy-like Yamaha Tenori-on? 😁

i will say, finding out there was a kontakt library of the Orbit was one of the best things that happened to me

Damn, that's the most 90's sounding thing I've ever heard

I'm STILL a huge fan of Emu Romplers and have had 9 different ones over the years (the Classic Keys is in my rack and gets a lot of usage). Two years ago most of them were going from $125.00 to $250.00 per unit and I'd snatch every one. I have a gut feeling they will be $400.00+ tomorrow though.

This is definitely my favorite episode to this day 😍 Cheers! 🍻

That "Jam 2" at 7: 20 is EPIC ! Sound DAMN fine , if you axe me , Eugene !

This was cool and smooth like the 90s techno thing. Yes The 90s was filled with using tech from the 80s. Juno106 anyone? and this with a r8m by roland plus a few romplers from Korg would have done the trick. But I love my Korg Volca sample and I have some planet phatt drums sounds for the odd drum sets. I might be able to pick one of these up

Wow... what a great reminder of things that need to stay in the past. That you're able to get a jam out of this thing speaks volumes of your talent

Thanks for every video you do,i love all of them and the way you explain about every gear you show on your channel,but what i love the most is the intro of every video,wish i could get one of those gear and feel what is like to play with them,i love the 80's and 90's synth sounds but it's still difficult to get it for me.Greetings from Cuba

Another Awesome Episode.... !!! Congrats. How about reviewing some CASIO CZ-101 and rack mount FZ10m. I see you already did the SK1 totally bad gear sampler! :)

The Z-plane filter thing looks like immense fun

That last jam is 👌 Needs an official release

This channel is so good that for the first time in my life I am considering joining the patreon.

MAN! Thanks for the info as always! Btw, the FINALE song is a blaster! Need to be released bro! Cheers.

6:32 sounded like the intro to the ps2

Just cover it with baking powder for a month or two to absorb the smell. Don't worry, it won't cause doughy beats.

Amazing. That black and white snippet must have influenced michel gondry's video for around the world :D looking forward to the others 👌

Ahhh, this brings back warm, fuzzy memories of Emu's Vintage Pro, which smelt of old leather and fine single malt.

Can you compare the smell to something? lol

Mega😊 vielen Dank für die wieder einmal Hammer Show… 👏👏 werde meinen Emu gleich heute Abend noch starten😉🙌

Another quality bad gear video to enhance my faith in the lobster shoegaze scene

Really nice job, AP!

Amazing video about this interesting instrument :) Do you happen to know which ROM card the pad you play at 1:17 is?

I had one of these (the V2). These sounds bring back memories of staying up until like 6am tweaking stuff.

The orbit was the first bit of gear I bought brand new. I since collected a LOT more e-mu gear... Super excited to see more e-mu on the show. Also, the Launch pad does help with the beats mode and changing values on the fly. It goes between a midi keyboard and the Orbit and well, makes for a fun time.

When working on sample libraries I’m always PARANOID about hiding my sample loop points as well as possible… meanwhile these big companies be like “bwaaahAhAhAhAhAhA”

Another piece of AMAZING gear being tested and reviewed? THAT MEANS IT'S THE WEEKEND BABY

Yeahhhhh! Great vid! Such fun! Thank you sir!

I loved the E-MUs back in the day. This, Mo' Phat and Carnaval were great and I had borrowed each one from a mate to use. The Carnaval had some great Salsa presets that I still have as audio files to this day. I would love to get one of each again, the sounds are fantastic

I never knew I needed so many rack units before I found this channel

You finally did it!! Thank you very much sir!

I bought my Korg R3 ("MacroKORG") off of Craigslist. I ignored red flags, got it home, and found it was caked inside with dried cat piss. The keybed felt crunchy, and I found dust, crumbs, cat hair, and other ejecta of unknown origin when I took it apart. The keys themselves were a shade of brown that would suggest you would get high, lung cancer, or both if you touched them. Somehow the synth remained fully functional with the exception of a lone pot. I had never repaired a piece of electronics before, but down $300, I knew there was only one possible way to avoid a complete write off. So I opened it up and carefully cleaned it. Cat urine dries into something with the hardness of granite and appears to respond to no known solvent. Lots of elbow grease, scouring pads, and a couple of toothbrushes were required. My soldering skills are at most amateur level, but I managed somehow to remove the broken pot without destroying the PCB and soldered in a new one. All told, it was more than 20 hours of work. I could only source replacement keys for 2/3 of the 37 keys immediately, so I decided to make that a project for later rather than keep all the PCBs out on a table for what ended up being months. Once back together, I connected the AC adapter, flicked the switch to On, and prayed. My god, it worked! What I thought was a good deal ended up being a rather poor one, but now I have a synth I can truly call my own. I did eventually get that last key assembly, but I've decided not to replace it. The yellowish brown of the last 13 keys is a reminder of how much effort I put into it and why never to accept an item from a Craigslist seller that doesn't feel right and hasn't been seen in full light. It is my pride. It is my shame. It is my MacroKORG.

Rave on Be-Atch! Love it. Your vids are superb.

Nice summary of the Orbit. One minor caveat though - at 4:57, this video shows my modular rig, but to be literal, I don't record using an M-Audio Interface - at the time of the photo, I recorded 4 channels on a Zoom Recorder (now I use an M32 mixer). But heck - I do own an Orbit too - and enjoy it. E-Mu always made products with lots of depth. Dave Rossum just keeps that going in the Eurorack world now.

Dammit, I just bought an Orbit v2. I absolutely love it and best of all my studio isn't any smellier than it was before purchase. Thanks a bunch!!!!

Thank you for this excellent review. I own Orbit & Planet Phatt and I think the E-mu rompler engine is very underrated !

I swear to God.....That vocal sample at the beginning is Paul Stanley of KISS' intro to "Heaven's on fire"!!!

Sounds great. Does it have a chord memory function or are they chord samples you were playing one finger chords with?