Thursday, October 15, 2026

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)

No comments:

Post a Comment