Orovela: new OS for the Ensoniq Mirage

I've been working on a new OS for Ensoniq Mirage samplers, and now it's ready: Orovela
(No video yet -- maybe someone with more free time will make one.)

Orovela has two focus areas: simplicity and live editing.

It does away with the complicated multisample structure of the stock OS and MASOS in favor of a very simplified workflow. Sample a sound and it's mapped across the whole keyboard in a single layer, like a Casio SK-1 with analog filters and a much better synth engine.

It also makes every parameter editable live from the mod wheel (and/or MIDI CC1). You can finally sweep the filter, alter LFO parameters, and change envelope values with a continuous controller.

I added some other cool features:

• Reverse sample playback
• More LFO waveforms (triangle, saw up/down, square, random), simultaneous destinations (amp, cutoff, res, pitch), and a wider speed range
• Bipolar pitch envelope
• Velocity to filter cutoff and resonance
• More flexible detuning, including detune drift
• Utility functions: octave +/- shift, MIDI panic

Its top sample rate is 15.5 kHz -- less than the 33 kHz of the stock OS, but now a disk image holds 10 programs (sample + params).

In addition, Orovela Sample Manager is a Windows programs that can:

• Create new Orovela programs from samples on disk
• Combine up to 10 programs into a new Orovela disk image
• Save Orovela programs to disk from a disk image
• Extract samples from an Orovela disk image

The link at the top has source code, but also a disk image ready for loading into a USB floppy emulator, plus docs and the sample manager executable.

I developed and tested Orovela on a DSK-1 keyboard variant, but I expect it to work on all Mirage models. Yes, I used AI.

(also posted on Gearspace)

Cricket becomes a VST (plus other cool plugins)

Almost 12 years after my last post on turning the Cricket robot into a synth, you can now try Cricket in your DAW!

With the help of Claude, I've ported the microcontroller synth engine into a Windows VST3 and standalone synth that takes the essential sonic DNA of my lo-fi synth and adds more modulation and some filter options. To my ears, the core sound is still there, rudely bleeping and blipping away. And now polyphonic!

Check it out here: https://github.com/krylenko/VSTplugins
(click on Releases on the right sidebar to download the compiled VST and exe)

Several other plugins there as well:

• Benzene: a classic diode ring modulator emulator with lots of features
• Dragonfly: four blocks of filters and waveshapers for fun mayhem
• Moth: Rat-style distortion into a phaser based on the rare Schulte Compact Phasing 'A'
• Silkworm: reverb based on the Midiverb II with further tweaking options, foremost a Clock knob that changes the speed at which the whole algorithm runs (like what these guys do with hardware)