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Can I play hang drum and other handpans with orba 2?

The device seems to be perfectly made as a mobile handpan. But unfortunately I did not see any information if the orba 2 is finally able to play it out of the box (properly assigned buttons) with the official software. Does someone know? Or is it planned? I didnt buy yet, its kind of the requirement for my buy decision (listen Artiphon!), as I love handpan sounds and I want to make music including it :) 


Hey Tobilos!  We love handpans too, but as of now, we don't have an out-of-the box preset for that.  You can, however, upload or sample your own sound onto Orba 2.  The sample will be assigned to a pentatonic scale going clockwise around the face of Orba 2.

I double you on that, handpan emulation is the first that comes to mind when you look on the Orba2 form factor.

There are no factory handpan presets (I'd tried all the presets excep).  It might  be added later, at least
Artiphone add new factory presets from time to time, hope they will listen to this idea.

Officially supported autogenerated  presets  are generated from only one sample, I find it kinda limiting for the handpans, that depend on the overtones.

By coincidence, in the following topic we had just tried to make attempts of making some homebrew custom presets, by a hardcore mix of bravery and reverse engineering, and had started with handpans, 

https://artiphon.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/44001020881

Subskybox had made a  working lead custom preset for Lead handpan:
His version adopts to scale changes, has velocity response, and supports vibrato gestures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6d6WBOXikU

I had made a working custom preset for Drum handpan,  instead of the features above it supports finger muting, while there is no transpose/scales/vibrato features.

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

Unfortunately, I cannot  advise using these homebrew presets as a reason for making buying decision, as it is completely unsupported user-driven imitative,  that might put your device at risk.
But you can have an idea of how it could look like, if Artiphon would add an official handpan preset.




Thanks for the update Ignis! Sounds like to be some effort to create such custom presets, well done.

Haha yes the form factor; I implied without a doubt that it would support hand pans when I saw Orba 1 the first time.


Dear Artiphone, as soon as you add handpans / hangs properly I will buy :) Till then I'll watch & wait.

Has this not changed yet? It seems like we can have different sounds on the drum section at least. Is it still not possible to load separate samples on each button without it pitching yet? 

Subskybox,s Pandrum preset in available in the repository thread and it's pretty good and fun to play. I'm not particularly into these instruments myself but from what I've seen and read they present some particular difficulties for electronic emulation, and the process of making presets can take a lot of time and effort. I think there's also reason to manage expectations here. Tech can do some amazing things but good hands and good (real) instruments can do much more.  (But that shouldn't stop us trying!)

I don't see why this is so difficult when presets that are put out have different sounds for every button now. It should be easy to assign individual notes to the drum section, but it's not. When will we get the ability to assign distinct notes that havent been altered into at least the drum section ourselves?

Hangdrums produce an amazing complexity of different sounds. Honestly, I think the best possible preset for the Orba would disappoint Hangdrum players - but I respect and wish well to anyone who tries. Making the different sounds work is one thing, being able to control them is yet another and both will be difficult.  

I have been trying to make presets for much simpler instruments (eg: harpsichord and mbira) and they present difficulties that are only dealt with with compromises to the outcome.  I wouldn't even try and make a guitar preset of any sort - I think even that is a lost cause - I've never heard one that is convincing.


By the way  - the drum sounds are activated by using note pitch signals assigned to different drum sounds (not pitch) - control of pitch is put aside for them.

Honestly, from the newest sounds that have been put out lately, I dont think that's the case. Even if it were, the sounds would be just fine being sent through another speaker. 


There have been some sounds put out by artist that are just amazing so far. I find it extremely suspect that this simple and frequently requested feature cant be done. Not only that but why don't we have a simple way to do these things when it seems like artist get to do exactly what we WANT to do with the device. 


We were told sounds like this were simply limited on the Orba one because of space. Now the space has been upgraded and we're still not getting a feature that has been asked for multiple times. Nor do we yet have a way to upload samples in a way that's meaningful and doesn't mess up the original sound unless we actually hack the thing and this is the wrong answer. 


We should not have to hack a device to get what we want out of it. It's that simple. How are artist able to get their music samples on this thing without the pitch being altered while also having the ability to put different complete sounds mapped to each button and why do we not have the same ability? 


Honestly, it makes no sense. It feels like they're keeping it this way so they can tout that they have unique presets to sell the device when if they would just let us do the exact same thing, the device itself would look way better. 


I just find it frustrating that I can download a preset from an artist which has distinctly unique sounds for every button when we can't even get one to work properly without it being auto pitched into oblivion. THEN they just let us hack into it to our hearts content even though we can not simply do the same things that's already being done. 


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Could anyone try the new hand pan preset? According to an newsletter email from today, they added something:


We're excited to share two new sounds with you! Hand Pan, a new Lead preset inspired by Orba’s percussive musical cousin, and Surrender, a new Stem Song that will make you lose yourself in electric leads and pulsating bass lines.

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