Artiphon Orba

On the surface, the Orba is a fun little drum machine/looper to keep on your desk to band out beats while on long conference calls at work — kind of synth equivalent of a doodle pad or a fidget spinner.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s great at that (the haptic feedback of the bass drum and the accelerometer-sensitive shakers make this a particularly pleasing experience!) But under the covers it’s an unexpectedly deep and expressive MIDI controller.

Use it to send MIDI over bluetooth or connected via USB, and all of a sudden you've got pads, velocity, tilt, shakes, and a whole variety of other CC sources literally at your fingertips. It supports MPE out of the box and it’s MIDI class compliant so no drivers to worry about.

Me? I discovered I’m barely coordinated enough to control expression with my fingertips, much less all the degrees of freedom the Orba gives you. I used it long enough to figure this out, then put it back in the box with all the fixins. So you'll be getting a near-new unit, never gigged with, no pets or smokers, etc. etc.