Peeling a juicy tangerine - Sand, software and sound

A few quick comments and lessons learned with the 1010Music tangerine.

Gotta say, the audio quality is spot on. I haven’t heard any glitches, hiccups, or buzzes. Everything sounds clean. Beauty.

Factory content

Everybody loves factory content! Here’s a quick run-down:

There are two acoustic pianos: 10Grand (435MBytes) and 1010Grand (2.24GBytes). 10Grand has three velocity layers (40, 80, 120) taken every three notes. 1010Grand is every note with six layers. 1010Music does not identify the source, but I’m guessing K-Sound? It does sound good.
Symplesound consultants provided 20 multi-sampled instruments ranging from AP/EP pianos to synths. You’ll find some lighter weight piano options which will fit into the tangerine’s 64MByte internal memory (no streaming from MicroSD). The Rhodes and Wurlie ain’t bad, but are single strike.
Soundtrack Loops provided 800+ loops and kits. The loop names identify BPM and key and are arranged into “construction kit” subdirectories. There are ten kits. In addition to cinematics, you’ll find construction kits for contemporary genres like ambient, tribal, and so forth. Pretty much a sampler for Soundtrack Loops content.
Soundopolis is a small collection of FX sounds (e.g., alien spaceship). There is a smattering of percussion (e.g., doumbeck). Have fun. Original source unknown.

These same sounds shipped with the 1010Music Blackbox. tangerine presets are provided for everything, so it’s easy to browse content. It would be nice to know if there are any licensing issues if the sounds are used in a production. 1010Music?

Updating and cloning

My tangerine arrived with firmware version 1.0.1. The current rev is 1.1.6. You’ll need to create an account at 1010Music in order to download the latest release and factory content.

Follow the installation directions. You need to update the internal firmware only once. Thereafter, all of your MicroSD cards will need the latest NANOTANG.BIN file and 1010rsrc.bin file. The tangerine does version checking and tells you if something is missing. It would be great if 1010Music explicitly identified what’s needed to update a cloned MicroSD card. I like to use cloned, working copies and keep the original safe.

It was a good idea…

Plans go astray. My first inclination was to build a multi-sampled instrument from a sampling library. I pulled out an old CD of Q Up Arts Symphonic Fields Forever (SFF). This is a great little collection of symphonic instruments and ensembles a la Mellotron. No loops, but that’s OK.

tangerine likes 48kHz 24-bit. SFF is 44.1kHz 16-bit. Tangerine will do 44.1 with a performance penalty. Enter conversion Hell. On top of sample rate conversion, I want to cover five octaves; SFF is sampled over four octaves. Yada-yada and I decided it was all too much work. I could feel the pull of the black hole that sucks away creative energy…

First sampling session

I chose and auditioned Genos instruments, mainly woodwinds and horns. A few candidates stood out:

    Clarinet&Flutes 104   1  72  Regular  1-74, 75-127
    Clarinet&Oboe   104   1  69  Regular  1-74, 75-127, 1-64, 65-127
    DoubleReeds     104   2  69  Regular  1-64, 65-127, 1-85, 86-127
    Flutes&Oboes    104   2  74  Regular  1-64, 65-127
    FluteSection    104   1  74  Regular  1-127
    OrchWoodwind    104   1  71  Regular  1-85, 86-127, 1-74, 75-127

    OrchHornsPad    104  11  62  Live     30-127, 1-127
    SoftHorns         0 117  61  Live     1-127
    MellowHorns       0 119  62  Regular  1-127

Fortunately, I have the UVF meta-data files for these voices. The meta-data specifies the original velocity splits — helpful information when choosing new sampling levels.

I decided to go simple and sample at a single velocity level. I connected the tangerine to Genos and set the Genos Master Volume level to the 4 o’clock position. [This is a position that I previously ascertained to be +0dBFS.] Parameters on the tangerine side were:

    Rec Input:     Left (tip)
    Gain:          +10.0dB
    Filename:      
    Start note:    C2 (36)
    End note:      C7 (96)
    Sample every:  3
    Vel Layer:     1
    Max Vel:       80
    Note Length:   8
    Release Len:   1
    MIDI Chan:     1
    Rec Thresh:    On
    Threshold:     -60.0dB

The “Regular” Genos voices are MONO, so there isn’t any point in stereo sampling. I recommend setting the Gain first, then the record Threshold. -60.0dB was about 4dB above the quiescent noise floor.

Oh, yeah, remember to kill the reverb, effects and EQ on Genos if you want to sample the dry sound.

Press the record button and let tangerine rip. I cancelled two passes because the level meter crossed into the red zone (probable clipping). The parameters reported here seem satisfactory WRT audio quality.

Hook the tangerine to MODX and use MODX as a MIDI controller. On playback, the audio sounds good! However, the samples are one octave too low. MIDI note 36 should have given me two octaves below Middle C (262Hz). The incoming MIDI may be hitting the Genos voice an octave too low. There are a few ways to fix this and they all require trial and error. Ain’t standards wonderful?

Know thy structure

Nothing like real world experience to test your understanding of UI objects and their relationships. 🙂 I now understand tangerine presets much better. A preset (and its directory) is a container for parameters (preset.xml) and multi-samples. The multi-samples are stored in a subdirectory within the preset directory — presumbly what 1010Music calls “packing”.

The tangerine UI drove me mad when I tried to rename objects. At one point, I gave up and renamed everything on a Windows PC. More learning required…

Well, I could try to remap the samples and fiddle around to make everything right. Or, throw the first burned waffle away and try again from scratch. If I take the latter approach — toss the first attempt away — I have a better chance of outlining a basic procedure and moving forward in the future efficiently.