MATRIXSYNTH: ELKA OMB 5 Review - Italo Disco from hell! Or heaven?


Friday, May 11, 2018

ELKA OMB 5 Review - Italo Disco from hell! Or heaven?


Published on May 11, 2018 Espen Kraft

"Elka OMB 5 - One Man Band. Released somewhere in the mid to late 80s and is somewhat of an enigma to me in terms of usage.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1dMWi...

It has the drums from the excellent Drumstar 80 drum machine, but without individual outs and only a balance fader between kick/snare and the hats, it falls kind of short in the "usable" category. The bass preset bank is ok and has some fine FM basses to chose from. The two synth preset banks is nothing to focus on and they should really be left out of the eqation. There are no analog sounds here, it's all digital.
Another sound that don't come through in the video is the fantastically annoying built-in fan that sounds like a defect car exhaust system. This makes the OMB 5 pretty useless in any studio situation unless you're fine with getting a permanently hearing damage.
However, if you find the right balance between the drums, program your own pattern, and play the bass part over an external sequencer you'll find that the OMB 5 has very nice low end and lots of "oompf" to get a solid Italo Disco going!
As you can sync the drums to external clock it's a breeze to integrate this machine into your setup and it's will hold it's own!

My tracks pay homage to all synth-pop acts of the 80'ies like Howard Jones, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Thompson Twins, Tears for Fears, Ultravox, OMD, Euryhmics, Duran Duran, Giorgio Moroder, Jean Michel Jarre, Jan Hammer, Alphaville, A-ha and many more."

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