#411

Hello everyone! New user here. Just managed to update to the latest Fates firmware (from 200218 to 201202) and installed ORAC/Sidekick. But I am having some minor issues, maybe someone can help me:

  1. In Norns I don’t get audio out from the Devices (although I do get audio from recorded wave files) unless I go into ORAC first and return to Norns.

  2. When I startup ORAC I get a drum loop playing in the background… how do I stop it?

  3. Can I use effects (like reverb) in ORAC?

Sorry if these questions are silly, very new user and not very familiar with programming.

Thanks!

#412

Can you be more specific about what you’re doing and what is or isn’t happening here? List all the steps you’re trying, what scripts youre using, etc.

1 Like
#413

Hey, thanks for helping! If I power on into Norns directly I get no audio out from devices, for example Awake or Dronecaster, whichever. But if I go to the file playback(?) section/page and load a recorded wav file, I can hear audio perfectly (from that file). After that if I try to play, say, Awake again, I get nothing. However, I’ve found that if I go into Orac (or if I power on in Orac) and then go to Sidekick and from there back to Norns, devices play audio again, all of them. Feels like going through Orac first ‘uncloggs’ Norns.

It’s not a major issue. I just startup in Orac. More upset with Organelle patch compatibility. Very few patches work 100% (can access/change all parameters/values). But I get this is a good opportunity to slowly learn how to create my own.

Cheers and congrats on the project!

#414

When you first switch on Norns in Norns mode does it make a short 1 note drone sound?

Are you connected to the 2 main outs or the headphone out?

When you load Awake. If you press button 1 and turn the first encoder fully anti-clockwise what do the volume bars show?

Now turn encoder 1 fully clockwise - > parameters -> levels button 3 What are all the levels showing? for output + engine?

2 Likes
#415

(2) this is just the default preset playing (demo1)
if you select the empty preset, then hit save , you’ll start with the empty preset.
(of coure, you can choose any preset as the default)

(3) yup, there are quite a few different fx modules, just add them into a slot

you can watch any of the orac videos from the Organelle to get an overview … Ive done some, but loopops are obviously more slick :wink:

you mean in Orac specifically? or other patches?

Orac is compatible across all deveices ,however modules developers on the Organelle have chosen to use specific Organelle features. this could have been done in a compatible way, but understandably , their focus was only on the Organelle so it was not a priority for them.

as for Organelle Patches, I though that Norns Mother was a pretty good compatibility layer ? no?
id chat on that thread, if you have specific issues.

as the end of the day, I also see these things as community/open source projects, Im happy to receive change requests… also norns users could develop Norns specific Orac patches if they wish.

perhaps I should also take one step back…

why was Orac created? what was its goal?
really it did not start out (for me) as being a ‘product’, as something people would use as-is.

its started out with a problem on the Organelle.
on the Organelle you could create and launch PD patches which was cool, but I saw 2 issues all the time.

  • patch complexity
    when I created patches, I spent 90% of the effort building a UI not the DSP code - this was very tedious and extremely error prone, and made UIs very inconsistent.
  • users combining patches
    the C&G forum was full of user with no PD experience, asking how to combine patches … they loved a sampling patch, but wanted to add a reverb … Q: how hard could it be? (A: not easy if your not a coder!)

so these were the primary goals of Orac.
a) make if very simple to create new modules, where you could focus on the DSP
(I did a tutorial video of create a new module < 5 mins!)
b) allow users to ‘combine’ modules

these are still the goals - a way of making Pure Data to be more ‘accesible’ to both end-users and developers alike.

PD is great for non-developers to get stuck into creating audio patches that can be really creative and bespoke (easier than most others) and Orac can make that a bit simpler.
so if thats what you want, Id say jump in…

p.s. anything you learn about PD whilst making Orac modules of course is applicable in the wider field of PD programming - theres very little ‘orac specifcs’ in there :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#416

Hello! Thank you so much for the help and for your awesome project! I hope I didn’t come off like a jerk or anything. I managed to stop the initial demo loop, thank you. I am definitely going to try the rest of what you wrote and watch tutorials (I actually watched loopop’s long ago out of curiosity but have had the Norns for a few days only). ORAC are truly amazing (and now I am drooling for an Organelle).

I’m running the patches through user Oxbown’s https://github.com/oxbown/NornsMother (which you mentioned) but it is a bit hit and miss – most patches don’t open, and some are like 70% there (either screen is blinking, or can’t access some parameters, or turn pages, or audio suddenly drops, …). I understand they were intended for the Norns and being able to use even small number of them is fantastic. A few do work 100%. Again – I want to stress that I am being picky within my utter awe and thankfulness for the people and communities who are capable of doing stuff like this and providing it to others. Thank you!

#417

Hey @okyeron
Thanks for replying! I should have not used the word ‘Devices’ the way I did, sorry. Devices are in the System folder and related to Midi i/o and stuff like that… I meant the Scripts(?).

@mlogger I do not get any audio levels for what I do not hear (ex: Awake) only for what I do hear (.wav file).

Cheers!

#419

Sidekick is pretty much just toggling/launching/stopping the systemctl services, and Orac is using Alsa and PD, so no SC interaction per se.

Not really sure what might be happening here.

1 Like
#420

Thanks! Still learning, will take a look into it sclang soon.

#421

I can live with it, eheh. But if you, as a developer, are interested in more details/info I’ll be happy to provide. Cheers!

#423

ha, no worries @Chico…
actually, I just realised Id not posted here for a while… and Ive ideas swirling around about ‘what next’ for Orac, or perhaps something different…
its been out for a while now on quite a few platforms, so , Im trying to ‘review’ what Orac is? why is it popular/useful? (theres no shortage of synths for rPI, why bother with Orac :slight_smile: )
also, Im reviewing the ‘issues’ with this cross-platform idea… and getting a feel of ‘does it matter?’

NornsMother… interesting, afaik the approach should be fairly ‘all encompassing’ , so compatiblity broad.
though its possiblity suffering a bit from new organelles developers pushing the Organelle a bit more these days.
I’d suspect if you reviewed a few of the problematic patches, you could probably catch these edge cases, and improve the compatibility dramatically.

(unfortunately, I dont really have time for this … and I also have a few Organelles here :wink: )

odd, about Norns not working on power up… it certainly was ok, last time I tried on my Fates.
that said… Ive not updated it recently, so its quite possible something has changed on the Norns services, which requires a tweak.

Is this happening for others?
really I need to update my fates, see if I can reproduce…

as @okyeron says sidekick, is just starting/stopping services …
(and indeed Orac really doesn’t that would ‘unclog’ sc, as its not using sc at all)

echo starting norns
sudo systemctl start norns-jack.service
sudo systemctl start norns-crone.service
sudo systemctl start norns-sclang.service
sudo systemctl start norns-matron.service
sudo systemctl start norns-maiden.service

what I suspect is something has changed :
in the norns services and what they do , or dependancies between them,
some kind of new timing constraint
other oddity with initialisation

Im not entirely surprised…
sidekick is doing something that norns is (understandably) not ‘tested’ for, so its beholden on sidekick to keep up to date with changes in norns.

Im sure its a relatively easy fix (assuming, I can reproduce it, and its the same on all fates)

1 Like
#425

Hey! Sorry for the late reply after all the help and feedback. I’m re-testing everything. So:

I was unfair to NornsMother – yes it doesn’t run every patch I throw at it, but it does work very well with plenty of them. Some of them are ‘almost there’, some weird button-encoder combos, but you can get them to do a lot. Enough for me.

Some ‘edge case’ patches (NornsMother) include:

  • “Etch-a-Synth” (no text appears/menu + top bar blinking)
  • “Roganelle 2” (only encoder 1 seems to work on any of the pages)
  • “Pink Mode” (patch screen graphics freeze/superimpose on ORAC patch menu when exiting patch - check attached image)
  • “Aquarius 5” (menu text is huge/cropped - check attached images)

I confirm that booting in Norns gives no audio. Either I boot in ORAC and go into Norns or go from Norns to ORAC and back to Norns. No biggie for me, but might be interesting for devs.

I’m not sure what the sclang test(?) was but I ran the following commands individually and in batch after connecting via ssh to the Norns (TheTechnobear mentioned them):

echo starting norns
sudo systemctl start norns-jack.service
sudo systemctl start norns-crone.service
sudo systemctl start norns-sclang.service
sudo systemctl start norns-matron.service
sudo systemctl start norns-maiden.service

(wasn’t sure I was supposed to, but I’ve backedup my SD card so…)

Nothing really happened. Sound didn’t come back suddenly or anything (I was running Norns ‘Awake’ script while running the commands).

There is some other weird behavior like for ex. when selecting ‘empty’ utility screen goes black (I have to switch module and come back to it to see it)

But really the only thing keeping me awake at night (:pensive:) is not knowing how to add more modules to ORAC. I have downloaded ORAC patches from Patchstorage, but I don’t know how to install them, or where to copy them to… I have tried a few things but none of it worked.
How can I add more modules so that I can find them in the /fx /synth /sampler etc. directories with all the other modules in ORAC?

Finally, some patches have .DS_Store files in them. I can’t copy them to /norns.local/… (for example the Mellotron patch is unusable because I can’t copy these files…). Is there some workaround?

I know this a mouthful, sorry.

Many thanks, and Merry Christmas!

IMG_20201224_235806
IMG_20201224_2358064000×2250 2.14 MB
IMG_20201224_235738
IMG_20201224_2357384000×2250 2.09 MB
IMG_20201224_231603
IMG_20201224_2316034000×2250 2.39 MB

1 Like
#426

Hi there!
I have a question regarding the clock module on orac for norns. On my organelle I’ve changed that one so the internal midi clock is turned off and it only reacts to external midi clock. By that I stopped the sequencers modules to start playing by themselves. I wanted to do that with the clock module on orac for norns but can’t find it or a way change the clock module manually (in the module menu) and replace it with my own one as was possible on the organelle orac. Is there a way to achieve this?
Thank you very much!
Julian

1 Like
#427

The clock module is the same on norns as it’s is on the organelle ( in S2?).
Perhaps you used/downloaded a different clock module on the organelle?

1 Like
#428

Oh my!
I’m really sorry - I was taken aback cause I expected the S2 slot between A2 and A3 and just stopped scrolling at some point :man_facepalming:
I replaced the clock module with my modified one and now it’s working like a charm! Thank you very much @TheTechnobear for your incredible contributions and for being so patient and kind with us :trophy:
Thank you!

1 Like
#429

Glad you got it working.

Yeah I moved it, as doesn’t make much sense in the. Organelle position when not using a keyboard :slight_smile:

1 Like
#430

Hello all, sorry to bother again with this issue, but I still haven’t quite understood if it can be done or not.

I want to add ORAC modules downloaded from Patchstorage (and others if possible). I have tried several directories but I can’t ever find them in the /fx /synth /samplers etc. directories where I see all the others. Can I/how do I add them? Or am I limited to the ones that are already there?

I can add patches for NornsMother, no problem.

Thanks again, and happy holidays!

#431

yes, you can add user modules to Orac

you need to place in a sub directory of
~/media/orac/usermodules

e.g.
lets say we have a user module called ‘myreverb’, it will comes as directory called myreverb.

so you end up with something like:
~/media/orac/usermodules/fx/myreverb

you need to restart orac to be able to see this (assuming its already running)

this post describes some that work…

as discussed above, the reason for incompatibility is simple - Orac on norns does not support the ‘custom graphics’ mode used by some modules made for the organelle.
the reason for this, is they basically ‘bypass’ Orac to draw to the screen.

1 Like
#432

This makes a great end to my year! Thank you!

Once again, very grateful for this project and your generous support.

And to all happy new year!

#433

Some patches have .DS_Store files in them. I can’t copy them to /norns.local/… (for example the Mellotron patch is unusable because I can’t copy these files…). Is there some workaround? I’m using Windows 10

Thanks!