Siel Orchestra

The Siel Orchestra is a fully polyphonic, analouge subtractive synthesizer, which was produced by Italian manufactuer Siel, from 1979 to 1982. The original Orchestra was very limited but still a very characteristic instrument for its time. It produces its sounds from 4 oscillators (called Brass, Strings, Reed and Piano 'sections'), all which have preset parameters, and use fixed waveforms. The only parameters that can be edited are Vibrato (LFO), Brilliance, Attack and Decay. This ultimately means that the Orchestra cannot produce many different sounds, however because of its Italian origin, and its distinctive routing, the Orchestra sounds very unique and is not matched by any other synthesizer of its kind.

The Orchestra was later bought by ARP to be slightly modified, relabled and then sold as the 'ARP Quartet'. This version replaced the Reed section with an Organ one, however aside from that, the Synthesizer was almost identical.

The Orchestra does not support MIDI, or any other means of communicating with other electronic instruments, however it does include a volume pedal socket, which could be mistaken for a MIDI port.

Orchestra 2

Later, a more programable version of the Orchestra was released. It still used 4 preset sections, however it offered many improvments over the original version. A better filter for the brass section was included, and more sounds were added to other sections. It also introduced a very simple LFO, a graphic equalizer, octave transpotion, and an 'animator section' which was effectively a flange effect.