Artiphon

This thread is intended to gather the feedback of Orba tinkerers.

I suspect there is something systemic going on as I've seen recent posts about delays on Reddit. I'm exchanging mine for another (which I don't expect to receive anytime soon). I have been trying some of your DFU techniques to see if I can get it to take the latest firmware. I do have some new URLs:

https://storage.googleapis.com/orba2_firmware_updates/appcast_fw2.xml

https://storage.googleapis.com/orba2_firmware_updates/

I am really enjoying the new sounds but the limitations are too much to start any hacking yet.

@BJG145 I'm trying to figure out if I can access the samples in the Orba2. Do you have any experience with how to setup a fileshare on an ESP32? I see references to the samples in the property files something like orba://Artiphon/SamplePool/Drum/snare.wav

I made an absolutely disgusting hack (thread here, Windows only) to automatically tune the Orba based on what song you're listening to. It involves gluing a streaming service to a Firefox Extension, to a small server running on your computer, to AutoIt for clicking on the necessary buttons to change the key of the Orba.

Granted, if Antiphon provides an API to do this it would be a whole lot easier :)

@Subskybox:  You da man!!
This looks very cool.  Can't wait to mess with it/them!

@QuadPlex @BJG145

I've been messing with my Chord Fiddler and making some fun chord sets. I've found it frustrating that I haven't been able to make any chord I want and that the behaviors I've found can be a real challenge to work with. For example, the basic types of rules are:

1. Move a voice in semitones
2. Move a voice in Major thirds
3. Move a voice in Major thirds + an Octave

@QuadPlex said:

• "On behalf of deciphering the structure of the chords, have you tried to interpret the string values using a Hex Editor? It might be that the String representation is misleading and the inherent info lies in the way that string is stored. Just food for thought."

I'm thinking the Chord Fiddler will need to be revamped. A better idea might be to add a feature to the Orba Virtual Piano that allows you to modify the chords graphically. Welcome to ideas..

You're welcome. I wish I had more time to experiment with this.

@BJG145 Brilliant! I love the idea of dual Orbas. I'm not sure but if you plug them both into USB, you might be able to control them both from the Orba Virtual Piano.

On another note, when I finish the Editor, I can get you more information on how to work with the Base64 strings. I bet in the future we could quantize the song data.. Progress has been pretty good the last two days.. The Chord Editor is pretty much done and just starting on the Scale editor coding today. I'm trying to establish the data format for the orba-scales.json file. I think it will look like this:

{
	"majorMode": {
	    "standard": [
	      {"Ionian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Dorian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Phrygian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Lydian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Mixolydian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Aeolian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Locrian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]}
	    ],
	    "custom": [
	      {"Hang Drum": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Minor Tezeta": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Abassel": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]}
	    ]
	  }
	},
	"minorMode": {
	    "standard": [
	      {"Ionian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Dorian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Phrygian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Lydian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Mixolydian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Aeolian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Locrian": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]}
	    ],
	    "custom": [
	      {"Hang Drum": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Minor Tezeta": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]},
	      {"Abassel": [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]}
	    ]
	}
}

I am so happy that this thread found the interest of many Orba users there.

I wish I had more time myself to fiddle with it. 

Great job. Keep going!

Never tried. There is no documentation about this, as far as I know.

I don't have root permits either ATM, so I haven't tried.

...so, moving on to the "Note Fiddler"...;-)

...I was wondering what might be fun for people. I could imagine a drop-down with a whole bunch of different scales which would set the appropriate offsets, with a patch in the Lead folder rather than the Chords folder. 

At first I was wondering if loading a "Lead" preset with four voices on the same note was introducing a slight "phasing" effect, but I'm not sure. It's not a probleml just curious. I was also interested in your observation about the Bass section only playing one note from the chord, so that could also be a workaround if so. I wonder if there's any mileage in exploring those "uuid" strings that change between preset types to see what they can do.

Kudos for solving the chord problem and the scale problem in one go.

@Subskybox just a quick thought, but if/when you look at adding a set of alternative scale tunings, maybe the data for these could be stored in a separate file in a way that allows people to add their own.

 I'm interested in looking at Hang drum tunings myself...:-)

I recently took a leap into the unknown and made random code changes all over one of the song files, which resulted in the Orba become completely unresponsive; couldn't even turn it on.

Fortunately the firmware update instructions brought it back to life. So when I saw a faulty Orba on eBay that wouldn't turn on the other day, I thought...aha, I'll give you £25 for that.

Just turned up, and quickly revived it. Gonna stick them together to create a dual-manual version with an extended key range...watch this space...;-)

What was unfinished?