I don't know much about the Orba 2. I got one as soon as they launched, started hacking around with it, got it stuck in an unrecoverable boot loop, and returned it to the supplier. Several months later I finally got a refund. (Not Artiphon's fault at all, though it would be nice to have a way to completely reinitialise it like the Orba 1. This used a robust DFU system and was always recoverable. Orba 2 uses a different approach and the utilities didn't provide a comprehensive reset for it.)
I'd like to pick up another one at some point, having learned to treat it with caution. Meanwhile I'm interested in the ways in which it's similar to the Orba 1. At first glance the XML looked more human-readable and approachable, but in other ways it seemed to be more difficult to customise, eg by changing the scales. It seems to have these two aspects though, synth and sample? The sampling side sounds quite difficult to work with, but perhaps the synth side is similar to the Orba 1...? I don't know if it has the same synth engine. At the moment I'm focussing on disentangling sequence data for the Orba 1, and I'd be interested to know how this compared to the Orba 2. Does this also use a Base64-encoded eventData string...? I'd be curious to see the song file for a synth-based alternative scale like you describe. It seems you're discussing an early scale-hacking method which was superseded by @Subsky's "Chord Fiddler" utilities. I gather these didn't work with the Orba 2, but maybe they could be got to work with the synth side even if they're not applicable to the sampling side. (?)
David Benton
Scouring through the old posts on this forum I came upon something from @BJG145 that made me curious. He had found a method of making presets play in modal scales on the Orba 1. His method doesn't seem to work on the Orba 2 (I tried), but I could resist trying out the principal.
So I tried creating a modified version of a (synth based) preset by changing the tuning entry:
changing "type" to percussion,
"name" to the name of the mode - in this case Dorian
and the "intervals" and "tuning" accordingly.
And hey presto, I got a preset that played in Dorian.
And now the compromises - first it will only play in one octave. I guess this comes from the type now being "percussion" - drum presets don't respond to octave change.
Second, there may only be a small number of modes possible. An Artiphon document called "Tuning Library" lists only Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian and Locrian,
@BJG145 commented that he thought the modified intervals were not necessary. I guess it may be possible to use whatever name you want and set the tunings as you wish - I've not tried that yet (and to be honest, I've not got much desire to go much further on it myself).
I can't see much hope of getting past the one octave thing though.
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