Announced at the NAMM show but still forthcoming, the Numark Orbit is a technologically neat little product. But being a box of coloured buttons connected via Midi wirelessly to DJ or music software, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people who like the look of it at the same time have less of an idea of how they might use it than Numark would ideally like. Maybe that’s why Numark has added software to the unit now. This helps the company to show the Numark Orbit off, but also ought to give people ideas about how to map it. So in this video, Numark’s Chris Roman dials some tunes up and shows off what the unit can do.
Video
Thoughts? The software is a little strange, frankly; it can load two tunes and let you mix between them, but it can’t sync them, and it really isn’t intended as a “full” DJ software. However, for the purposes of the demo, and for showing what fun the unit is (especially when linked to controlling effects parameters with its built-in gyroscopes), it does the job grandly. How the Numark Orbit will end up being used in the real world is still an open question, but this video shows that it may well steal several hours of your time right out of the box with this new software provided.
• The Numark Orbit is due in the summer at US$99
Does this look like fun to you? Could you see yourself, for instance, adding one to control effects in addition to your usual DJ controller? Any other uses spring to mind? Please share your thoughts below.
Phil Morse
