Aeolus Tuning

#1

I’m sure there are those true pipe organ masters who would disagree with me, but I think having Aeolus release with the standard Mean Tuning is probably not what most people want. Many will select Aeolus and think something is wrong with it. :grinning:

Some portion of users will not necessarily know that running X11 forwarding through ssh will enable the display of the native Aeolus UI. The native Aeolus display allows retuning the whole instrument for the Equally Tempered scale.

IMO, I think distributing Aeolus tuned for the expected Equally Tempered scale would be easier on most users and a lead to a more enjoyable out of the box experience.

#2

Agree 100%. The default should be the Equally Tempered scale. It was sure strange for me, too, when I opened Aeolus organ at first :slight_smile:

#3

Interesting discussion! I haven’t used this engine much but my initial opinion was how realistic it sounded. That may have been due to the life-like tunings. There are many other organ sounds available which have the “expected” tuning. Ideally we should expose tuning in the UI if possible. I wonder if changing the out-of-box experience may undermine Aeolus impact? As stated, I am not a frequent user so don’t have a strong opinion but thought it worth mentioning :slightly_smiling_face:.

#4

Oh boy. This can of worms :grinning:

It’s the original developers descision to go with Werckmeister III temprement, and it’s mostly a descision informed by a choice to put authenticity over convention. Most professional organists play organs that were built hundreds of years ago, the majority are not tuned to A440, neither do they use equal temperament. (Peterborough Cathedral Organ was recently re-tuned buy adding sections onto the pipes) In that regard most organists are not expecting to play organs tuned to equal temperament. Aeoleus wants to go for an authentic experience so the defaults are set that way. Hauptwerk go exactly the same way. Having said that I expect Modartt have gone with equal temperament. What we need to ask regarding the default is. Do we let the developer have his wish for a more authentic sound, or do we say Zynthian is here to make life easier and more predictable for its users.

#5

We should probably go with the developer’s wishes.

I would also agree that it certainly sounds authentic out of the box, but that authenticity means most equally tempered players simply don’t know how to play it. It then likely becomes a quicky discarded novelty for all but the experienced or those willing to dig into X11 forwarding.

The question is would it be possible to expose the tuning setting and somewhat lengthy retuning procedure in the limited Zynthian UI? The Zynthian logo would be animated for quite a bit longer than the normal load times while Aeolus retunes each rank of the organ. It’s an interesting process to watch in the Aeolus UI. I assume it’s generating/updating a bunch of wave tables?

#6

From a users perspective forewarned with this information, would probably completely change their reaction to it.

Perhaps a comment option for each engine displayed in the engine/effects gui display ?.
It would seem a good idea to restrict it to a known number of characters. The three banked nature of setBFree would probably be worthy of a mention for instance. It is very easy to reject engines simply after an initial uncomfortable interaction with them.
The centre screen area i available for this sort of information and would seem a good point to provide further information.

It would also allow documentation in the wiki to be made more standardised . . .

I’ve stuck this in a feature request, please add anything that seems relevant . . .

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#7

Totally agree.