# Omnisphere: The Orb......What's Going On In There?



## 98bpm (Jul 6, 2019)

I recently started fooling around with The Orb in Omnisphere. Taking a glance at the manual, I can see how you can control the Orb's behavior with the settings on the interface with the Inertia, Depth, Attractor, etc. controls. What I don't understand is what's actually going on behind the scenes when the Orb is activated for a Patch.

For Example, if I load a Patch from the library and turn on The Orb, I can hear the sound changing the Filters and Effects (depending on the chosen Patch). But when I look at the Modulation Matrix, I typically see sources assigned to the Wheel. So that tells me the Orb is perhaps "mirroring" some of the setting in the Modulation Matrix. Question is, how are the parameters chosen?

There's nothing in The Orb interface that allows you to choose what parameters it affects, nor is there any control over 4 sections of The Orb (each one has different intensity levels). At least as far as I can tell so far. I understand I can set up the Mod Matrix to use the Orb as a source for parameters of my choice, but I think that would require me to use the Orb for that Patch whether I wanted to or not (which isn't a horrible thing - it's still pretty cool).


----------



## tomwolfe (Jul 12, 2019)

So, connections for the the Orb are assigned at random via the Dice button - pressing will assign parameters and, in some cases, randomly apply new effects units which the Orb will control. If you turn the Orb on while you have a blank sound, you'll notice it still applies effects units to Layers which aren't turned on and don't have any sounds selected, as it's done completely at random! I guess the idea is that you hit the Dice button until you find something you like!

It's very strange that it doesn't actually make connections in the Mod Matrix - I'm sure it used to do that (although I could be wrong!). Quite annoying that it doesn't as it would be handy to be able to decide to keep some controlled parameters, but remove any you don't want.

The way I've always used the Orb is to assign parameters manually. This allows for more control over the end sound. You've already mentioned that you can do this through the Mod Matrix, and then if you wanted to keep these mods you've created you could save the patch as a new sound. You can also turn the Orb off from the Orb page if you want to use the patch without the Orb.


----------

