E-mu Orbit 9090 (1997–1998)
The E-mu Orbit 9090 came out in 1997 as a dance-oriented rompler, riding the wave of E-mu's success with the Vintage Keys. That unit courted the dance and traditional electronic crowds alike. The Orbit was aimed squarely at dance production: techno, house, and trance. Sound on Sound (June 1996, p.124) noted the company had taken its time before producing a synth aimed directly at the dance market, and the Orbit was that answer.
It's a 16-voice, 16-part multitimbral rompler with 16 MB of waveform ROM and 512 presets. The front panel is the real story. Eight real-time control sliders let you grab filter, envelope, and effects parameters while a patch is running, which made it a very performance-friendly box. It shipped with two stereo effects processors and MIDI In/Out/Thru, plus main, aux, and two individual outputs. It was a rack-mount module that also worked fine as a tabletop unit, and a 2×16 LCD kept you oriented.
The "9090" name does not reference the Roland TR-909. That's a common assumption, but the sources are clear it's a coincidence. The sound set leaned heavily on the dance aesthetic of the era: 909-style kicks, techno bass, synth stabs, and some genuinely harsh high-end material. A 2009 blogger retrospective noted the sounds are very much of their time and haven't aged gracefully, but that the unit is still fun to play and easy to lose an hour in tweaking the sliders. The same writer found the kick drums punchy and the bass solid, with the caveat that the highs can get brittle.
It sold for $399 new. The used market has since settled in the $100 to $250 range depending on condition. The usual failure points are dead LCD backlights and deteriorating slider rubber. The battery-backed RAM that holds patches will eventually need replacing too. E-mu no longer supports the unit, so spare parts are unofficial.
A "V2" variant exists. Sources mention it added a "Random" patch generator button and expanded the ROM. How the base 9090 and the V2 relate (firmware update, hardware revision, or separate SKU) is not clearly documented. If you own one and know the difference, the archive would like to hear from you.
- 16-voice polyphony, 16-part multitimbral
- 16 MB waveform ROM, 512 presets
- 8 real-time control sliders
- 2 stereo effects processors
- Outputs: Main L/R, Aux L/R, 2 individual; MIDI In/Out/Thru
- 2×16 LCD; rack-mount or tabletop
- Intro price: $399 (1997)
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