Artiphon

@Subskybox - ah, I think you've been away from things Orba for a while!

Artiphon have release an update of the Orbasynth called the Preset Creator. It's basically the same thing but adds the capability to use a single sample file to create a preset - rather as it does with recordings made on the Orba. It also adds the ability to export presets for Orba 1 and 2 and also for the Chorda when it comes out.

The are a few things in the Orba 2 presets it makes that hint at what Chorda presets may be like and possibly adds one or two small other extra features to Orba 2 presets, though I've not tried them out. (There are panning parameters added in the synthpatch - though I suppose that might be just for the Chorda.) 

It's listed on the downloads page, but I think some have had trouble getting the download.

"new Preset Creator"?

I am intending to spend some time now on creating a new version library of the presets I made for the Orba 2. They will all be taken from my own Orba, and working.

This time I will add in MP3 samples of the sounds to make it more useful! And there will be some of the old ones,  some slightly modified to make them a bit better to use (IMHO), and some newer versions. Also some new ones, including a couple of sample based presets made with the new Preset Creator.

Any feed back on the old one would be welcome, and I will try and take suggestions, if there are any, and I can do something about it.

@David Benton

Good info.  

Thank you.

@gerald rolon

I woud suggest looking through the "Orba 2 Hacking Knowledge Base" thread here. I have only been using the information I gleaned from there and applying it for my own aims. Much of the groundwork for what we know about how presets work was done with the Orba 1 (before I was here) and can be found in the equivalent thread for the Orba 1. The changes with the Orba 2 just made it more accessible to us.

Personally I would prefer using synth based presets myself, but have resorted to samples because of it's limitations. My concern is always how much storage space gets used up with samples. Synth based presets are much more economical.

The basics are that the first part of the SynthPatch section of a preset relates to the settings you'll find in the Orbasynth app. The bottom part correrelates to the gestures section. Effectively it's about changing certain paramters on the fly while playing sounds using the gestures. (In Windows, because of the limitations of it's implementation of midi, you can only guess what you are doing there - but you can modify those settings later.) Always change the readOnly and factory parameters to "0" so that you can delete or modify your preset.

The seeker entries control how the gestures and key touch data is dealt with. You may not need to touch them. Artiphon presets use one set mostly, but sometimes one or two other versions. However, these can be modified for your own evil purposes to disable, or change what they do. (In a few instances you can add or remove some entries.) Their use with sample based presets is limited.

Here are 3 more presets. Don't forget to change the octave!

@David Benton

I think you will like the BearSax. Play it deep and low.

@David Benton

I did sample on the Orba-2.

I did not use the mic though.

Just straight out from the synth and into the Orba via the PC.

I have a way to go over Bluetooth (CME WIDI Bud and WIDI Master) but I went over USB.

Actually, the Samson G Track Pro was between the synth and the PC.

I've tried doing the presets by hand and have not had much luck.

Or do you mean sampling by using a mic?

Actually, I think you mean sampling a "real" instrument with a mic.

I don't have any "real" instruments because I have zero musical training/talent.  ;)

I need to be able to do it in MIDI so I can go back and fix it :P

I added a "song" and a chord preset.

The song is "Lean on me"

NOTE: I have zero musical training/ability.

Remember, these files belong in:

C:\Users\<User Name>\Documents

I should have said, those old school sounds of the Casio have got a charm of their own, I think. Well worth having in the collection.  I like the whistle sound in particular - I've been trying to make a natural sounding flute preset, but all the samples I can get ,or make, sound too harsh to my ears (as do samples for single violin or cello). Still trying to solve that one.

@Gerald Rolon

Thanks for that. 

I prefer to try and sample "real" instruments if I can - partly because that's what I want, and partly because most (perhaps all) of the Artiphon made ones use ready made sources from other synths so it feels like it's already been done! Where I have used synth samples it's because I've not been able to get recordings of an instrument or voice to get samples from.

It looks like you've used the presets created by sampling on the Orba as a model. That might not be the best approach, certainly not if you want the natural inconsistencies of a "real" instrument. I want them to be more natural in sound if I can. (Of course, I can't always achieve that.) I would use more samples in the pitch ranges that are actually used, though I now take trouble to try and keep the total size of the sample pool down, if I can, it also makes it less work.

I had one of the earliest Casio keyboards (MT100?) a long, long while ago and deeply regret having parted with it! There were sounds on it I wish I still had.

@Devid Benton

I sampled the 16 sounds on my OLD Casio CZ-101 

16 Lead presets

1 Bass preset

(not very exciting, but...)

I used Windows 10 "Send To | Compressed (Zipped) Folder"

See if it works for you.

For those of you who are reading this and don't know where these files go...., they go here:

C:\Users\<Your User Name>\Documents

@gerald rolon

Oh, another thought came to mind - how are you unzipping the files? I habitually use 7zip for any archives -  perhaps other software for it does strange things to them? (Or perhaps 7zip does!)

@gerald rolon

I read your post again and had missed your comments about the samples - that seems very strange to me unless you did something odd with the files - Windows could possibly have done unwanted things if they were opened and saved again. (Although that seems unlikely.)

It wouldn't surprise me if Android or Apple OS's do their own things with peoples files.

Rather than re-sample sounds I would suggest double checking the properties of them - Windows apparently assumes that no-one would want to use 16bit audio anymore. I use a portable version of Audacity set up to use specifically for Orba stuff.

I have also had a suspicion that updates to the app may have introduced extra checks to the format of presets which led me to try slightly adjusting a couple of artipresets - but having loaded a bunch of my older presets successfully to a new Orba 2 recently I'm less convinced about that thought.

The SynthPatch in a preset are the same in both Orba 1 and 2, however the rest is different mostly because much of it is encoded in base64(? - I'm not that technically savvy) on the Orba 1. (You probably know that!)

I use Orbasynth to work on the SynthPatch only. The rest is all taken and adjusted from existing Orba 2 presets.

@gerald rolon

Sorry you had problems with the presets - I hope you didn't try to load them all at once! I wouldn't recommend that.

I have only ever had an Orba 2 and all the presets in that collection were taken from my Orba 2 and were working. (I made a point of doing that to avoid accidently including any of my working attempts or other files that might have errors.)

I think you may have done something wrong. I can only give any suggestions based on using the app on Windows - I don't have experience of using Macs, ipads or android. It might help if we knew what system you are using.

First thing is -  it won't work if you just copied the whole lot into the Artiphon folder in one go.

In your Artiphon folder (in your User>Documents folder) the .artipreset files should go into the Common>Presets>Lead, Chords or Bass folder as appropriate (most are leads). The images (not actually vital, but the app uses them) should go into the Common>Images folder (although I have found sometimes they need to be copied into the C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\Artiphon\Common\Images folder as well - don't know why that happens!) 

If the preset uses samples, the folder containing the samples needs to go into the Common>SamplePools folder.

The suggested method for loading each preset or group of presets is to merge the common folders in each individual folder of the collection and the Common folder in the Artiphon folder, which will put them in the right place, although I have a stubborn habit of doing it by copying them by hand myself.

Once the files are copied to the right places they should show up in the app and can then be loaded onto the Orba 2 - where there are samples they will take a bit more time to load.

Hope this helps.