Artiphon

Hi Artiphon,

Any updates on whether/when there will be added functionality to the Orba 2 app allowing for user-customizable drum presets? I realize there are only 2gb of space available, but would love even just 2-4 customizable preset slots on the desktop app where I could assign all 9 keys. I primarily use my Orba 2 for on-the-go songwriting, and having a drum kit that matches the sound(s) I'm going for would be huge.

I realize that in order for the functionality to fully transfer on iOS, the user would probably need to send the drum sample files with unmodified file names to the associated preset folder on their phone. I've already done this with custom bass presets from OrbaSynth and I don't think it would be a problem for anyone with mid-level technical prowess. I think this feature would exponentially boost the value of the Orba 2 for anyone interested in quick, on-the-go production.

I'm about to write another request/problem I'm having with OrbaSynth, which is otherwise incredibly useful from a production standpoint. Planning on making a youtube review video as well. Thanks for keeping the updates coming, super excited for what's to come!

@Ignis32

I had a look at the Drum attributes and you are correct they seem exclusive to Drum Presets. For melodic sounds there were a few attributes that contained the word "Hold" and "Release" but I haven't messed with these yet.

I chose 3 levels of velocity for each pad but I have more samples and I could add more. I'm still undecided on this.

I'm curious if you installed manually or if the app allowed you to add?

@Subskybox

I've checked out your preset and I love the velocity-defined samples  and possibility to do vibrato. (Not sure if it works for real-life Pan, but I know it is possible to do something similar with Rav Vast).

Finger muting seems to be a Drums exclusive feature at this point, but it would be nice if I am wrong, still trying to find any param responsible for that for Lead.

Can't wait to try your preset! Yes editing is crap. You can copy the content of an old post, then delete it and re-paste the content into a new post.. But lame.

>> an authorized tinkering 
unauthorized, of course. Omg these uneditable posts. Sorry for offtopic complains, but it is a pain, as soon as I have habit of making multiple edits to any post I write.

Sharing current state of my custom  HangDrum  D minor as well, based on Freepats hang drum samples.

• It is a Drum preset, not Lead.
• Has a working shaker with some default sound. (It does not record however)
• Bump action is assigned to the d5 note, that could not fit into regular notes. Still thinking if I should reassign to some kind of a percussion instead, need to play for some time to understand what's better.
• Preset  is not tunable, it is just D minor and that's it.
• Supports finger muting, except for the "bump" note.Seems to be in tune

Lessons learned:

• "Bump" action seems to be hardcoded  always to generate note 39 no mater what.

that's how I ended with tuning="36,37,38,44,40,41,42,43"/>  to be able to map a separate sample to bump.

• Shaker seems to use some default sample, I did not specify it and it still works.

• I still do not actually understand how indexes, noteThresholds , tuning , note and note_midi play together, mapping is cryptic to me, I still am quite confused.DrumPatch seems not to be vital for playing samples, SampleDrumPatch is enough. Probably it adds some functionality on top.

Known issues:

• Still no velocity mapping, unfortunately.
•  Shaker sounds do not record.  However, seems like it does not work even stock presets, there is a separate forum topic on that, at least for Orba1
•  Sended midi notes are lazy garbage, just some notes from 36 to  44, it does not map to drum midi or played notes meaningfuly. If you need to use orba2 as a midi controller, use some another preset.

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Use on your own risk, bla bla bla, this is an authorized tinkering with your precious hardware, and  this preset made by the guy who owns orba for less than a week.  I do not take any responsibility for any damage you can do to your orba, ears or mental state.

Goddamn, it is the first forum in my life that does not allow editing your own posts..

..Forgot to mention it works with Key changes so you can choose any key + Major/Minor modes. I have it set to Pentatonic at the moment but my next step is to see if I can get custom scales like we could do with Orba 1.

I converted my samples to 48kHz and problem solved. Note to Self: Much easier to work with 48kHz and avoid pitch math since pitch/note tables are published all over the internet. Sharing my beta Preset.

Steps to Install:

1. Unzip and drag the ‘Common’ folder into /Users/<username>/Documents/Artiphon and it will ask to merge the contents (Hold <Option> on Mac while doing this and it should give the option to Merge). You would do this with no Orba attached and the app closed.
2. Start the app and let it scan (or force a scan from the Settings). Verify that the entries were correctly logged in the app.properties file.
3. Restart the Orba 2 app and turn Orba off/on for good measure.
4. Select the PanDrum Preset Lead and hopefully it allows ’Send to Orba’. Press it and allow 4-5 minutes.
5. Check the Preset location icons and hopefully it shows available in App and Orba..
6. Restart everything, Hopefully it now allows ‘Play’

@ignis32 I really like what you've done there!! If you don't mind I'm goin to add your settings to the PanDrum preset I'm working on too. I still haven't figured out the pitch math for correcting 44kHz vs. 48kHz. I thought it would be as easy as multiplying all my pitches by (48000/44100) but it didn't seem to work. I may just try to convert my .wav files from 44kHz to 48kHz and hope the loss is not too noticeable.

Cool, I like the finger-muting.

Okay, here is my attempt into hang drum preset, sorry for questionable skills in advance:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mfmmSMcB_o8

I guess it lacks velocity-defined samples as a next step,  also probably I should try finding some other samples to try out other scales ( I do not believe that transposing samples to get other scales would be any good due to the wrong harmonics) and tinker with other xml values.

But I really love working  muting-by-holding-a-finger, first notes in video are played that way. Could not find any real musical value in that yet, but it feels  pretty right.

Imitating hang drum on orba was my first dream when I saw it, and here we are.

Thank you guys for the information you provided here, it helped a lot.

@Ignis32. I also use regex find/replace but I use SublimeText to do so. Very helpful when developing Presets with lots of samples as well! Eventually I think I'll create some kind of script to allow a user to create a sample pool and have it generate a base .artipreset file. There is no nice way to do this without a full-blown GUI solution but this would be similar to LogicPro or other DAWs and I don't think Artiphon has enough capacity to design something like that.

Nice findings on the DrumPatch attributes.. I wish they would publish some documentation on those. I have a feeling that they will need to create Orbasynth 2 to even make a basic version.

Some taught about pan/hang drums.

Opposite to other instruments,  they  have longer sustain if your taps and bumps are short, and produce shorter and muted sound if you hold your hand.

I believe emulating this behavior  is vital for the good tactile representation of pan/hang on orba.

 Looks like I was able to achieve something like that with xml below:

  <DrumPatch index="1" drumMode="0" ampVelocity="255" snapLevel="48" snapColor="1"

                 bendDepth="40" bendTime="142" modulationRatio="12" modulationDetune="32"

                 modulationDepth="69" modulationVelocityDepth="255" decayRelease="179"

                 decayHold="66" ensnare="0" grit="255" flamCount="0" flamRate="0"

                 fuzz="2" level="0" pan="0" tailLevel="173" tailDelay="0" tailDecay="195"

                 fx="0" note="31" midiNote="36" priority="0"/> 

I am not still sure about how it works  and what all the params mean, (i've borrowed most of the params from Ohm preset patch  index 1, as one of the notes there  works similar way to the desired one), but most probably decayRelease,  decayHold and tailDecay are involved, and  "release" means releasing the finger, and hold - holding the finger.

Thank you, will look into this marimbalead preset later, once I'll deal with a more simple version.

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I have no idea why Audacity deceived me, but seems that the file that it produced was not PCM wav file, but something else.

Conversion via Switch Audio Converter to pcm 32 bit  produced files without white noise

Basically I have to deal only with xml stuff for the initial playable version.

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Just a small quality of life tip to share - for editing multiple values of XML in once.

Notepad++ allows using regexp replacements, and that allows to do bulk parameter modification:

Replacing  decayRelease=\"\d+\"  will set decayRelease="100" everywhere as below, regardless of the initial value.  (in regular expression mode).  Using this a lot during my experiments, so I hope you might benefit from it as well.

I'll have more on this soon but MarimbaLead has velocity..