Orion 8 is a complete virtual studio, including multitrack audio recording, a mixing desk with sub busses and effect returns, as well as powerful sequencers, generators and effects. All common interfaces, ReWire2, VST and DirectX are fully supported. Orion Platinum ships on CD with a 600 MB library of more than 800 royalty-free presets and high quality multisamples. Demo songs and tutorials are included as well.

Using the four-bus Mixer and Master Section, you can build advanced mixes in no-time, and the MultiFX control lets you create complex effect routing.

High resolution post-production is made possible by the enhanced WAV exporter, which supports up to 32-bit / 96 kHz resolution and can render instruments or channels to multiple WAV files.

As the chart on the right shows, the Platinum edition supports very high audio resolutions.

Orion 8 comes with a large selection of internal effects - including reverb, delay and chorus effects, a full parametric equalizer, and more. Additionally, there is full support for third-party VST and DirectX effects, as well as for third-party VSTi and DXi instruments.

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New in v8.5

• Nick Moritz designed a New default skin
• RNA-160 Compressor/Limiter added, based on a popular outboard compressor
• Concert Hall added, reverb with high-quality sound
• Analog Phaser added, based on an analog six-stage phaser
• Vintage EQ based on the tone stack properties of the legendary '59 Bassman Amp
• Compressor CV-82, an enhanced version of the Compressor 8
• Supports Sidechain for VST
• New Noise Spread knob, which can increase the spaciousness of clap and snare sounds the stereo field
• Freely assign ASIO Outputs to individual subgroups in the Master section
• Improved Skinning system
• Toxic 2 synthesizer revamped, with up to 50% performance improvement.
• Added the "Pan Spread" knob for spreading voices in the stereo field
• Better workspace and windows arrangement with Full Screen Mode (F11)
• Other bug fixes

New in v8

• The revised mixing console doubles the number of busses to 8 and adds an extra insert slot. Most controls of the mixer may now be pattern-automated, a great help in sequencing. Furthermore, additional pan laws are available, including Equal Power 0dB, Equal Power -3dB and Linear -6dB for broadcasting.
• Many workflow improvements make Version 8 extremely fast to work with. The new navigation bar in the arrangement window gives an overview of the entire project, and allows instant zooming or navigating to any bar with a single click. Furthermore, full mousewheel support has been added to all views, including the piano roll, arrangement, mixer, instruments and effects. The new, innovative Template system allows you to fully customize the plugins you work with. For instance, you may create MIDI maps, route instruments to specific busses, apply insert effects, define keyboard splits or even throw in automation. A template is added to a project in the same way as a plugin, with only a single mouse-click.
• Song Merge: Supppose you programmed a great bass line in an older project, Song Merge allows you to incorporate that track into a new project easily, preserving its patterns, arrangement, Mixer/EQ settings, applied effects and so on.
• The new skinning system introduced allows full customization of not just all instruments and effects, but the window frames and buttons as well. Two skins are provided, a new skin as well as an update of the "Azura" skin, which was the default blue skin that came with Version 7.
• Version 7 owners can upgrade for only $99

New in v7.6.1

• 12 presets added for the new WASP 5.
• Dialogs have the new Vista look now.
• Songs and Presets are now stored in the documents folder.
• Launching Orion under Vista32 gave an error message for some users, fixed.