How It Works

Orbiter uses physical modelling to recreate the sound of acoustic instruments. Rather than playing back recordings, it simulates the vibrational behaviour of real materials in real time.

Each instrument is built from a bank of resonant modes — the natural frequencies at which the physical object vibrates. When you play a note, the engine excites these modes and lets them ring and decay naturally, just like striking a real instrument.

Handpan Sound

Each tone field on the handpan is modelled with 6 vibrational modes arranged in beating pairs. The slight frequency offset between paired modes creates the characteristic shimmering sustain of a real handpan. A Helmholtz cavity resonator adds the warm body resonance of the instrument's shell.

Gong Sound

The gong model captures the nonlinear energy transfer between vibrational modes that gives real gongs their complex, evolving wash of sound. As you play harder, energy cascades into higher modes — just like striking a real gong with more force.

Singing Bowl Sound

The singing bowl simulates both strike and rub excitation. The rub mode uses a friction model that recreates the stick-slip interaction between a mallet and the bowl rim, producing the sustained singing tone with natural harmonic overtones.

Voice Management

All three instruments support up to 16 simultaneous voices. When you exceed the voice limit, the quietest voice is smoothly crossfaded out to make room for the new note, so you never hear abrupt cutoffs.

MPE Expression

With an MPE-capable controller, each note responds independently to: