temporal_123
Re:WebPipes– A web-based Virtual Pipe Organ with realistic console UI
on Saturday December 20, 2025 @03:16PM (#46339221)
I built a browser-based virtual pipe organ that loads SF2 soundfonts and renders a realistic organ console interface.
Features:
- Loads SoundFont2 organ samples directly in the browser (using smplr library)
- MIDI keyboard support (multiple devices can control different manuals)
- Realistic draw-stop knobs with pull-out animation
- Expression pedals with 3D tilt effect for volume control
- Convolution reverb for cathedral acoustics
- Computer keyboard fallback (two-manual mapping)
Tech stack: TypeScript, Vite, Web Audio API, WebMIDI
The UI mimics a real organ console with stop jambs on either side and stacked manuals in the center. Stops are distributed in a zigzag pattern like traditional pipe organs.
Currently ships with a smaller soundfont (~22MB) while I figure out efficient ways to stream larger organ samples. The challenge is that quality pipe organ samples can be 1-2GB+.
Live demo: [URL]
Source: [GitHub URL]
Would love feedback on the audio latency and UI. Planning to add: pedalboard, couplers, and possibly IndexedDB caching for larger soundfonts.
Re:Play the Virtual Organ from Arp Schnitger
on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @01:54AM (#43468453)
I'll chime in with a related project: https://openpipes.org
OpenPipes Revolutionizes the DIY Pipe Organs
Re:Free Organ
on Wednesday June 21, 2023 @09:13PM (#36426918)
If you wanna build a cheap, digital one based on Linux and Arduino. go to openpipes.org
Re:The Organ as a Wind Instrument
on Monday January 09, 2023 @06:48PM (#34318226)
You can build your own Pipe Organ emulator, using a raspberry Pi, Linux, Arduino and 3d printed parts. See: https://openpipes.org
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to collaborate?
on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @07:19PM (#30171769)
Do you want to collaborate in the Digital Musical Instrument space, designing open source real life products from the bottom up?
We are building the first end-to-end Pipe Organ Emulator project, from the cabinet furniture and the Arduino specialized controlers, the 3D printed interfaces, to the customized Linux-based embedded sound engine.
The home page of the project is https://openpipes.org Contact info in the mentioned page.
Thanks!
Re:Mt32-pi: A baremetal Roland MT-32 emulator
on Monday October 04, 2021 @10:36AM (#28747274)
For Pipe Organ professionals, sounding similar Is just one aspect of the instrument. There are tonnes of other nuances, that require as much thought as the sound emulation itself. In that vein Is that I call Aeolus "simple". The sound is pretty accurate, but most pro players I know pass from it for sample based-complex operation emulated apps like GO or Hauptwerk.
Re:Mt32-pi: A baremetal Roland MT-32 emulator
on Monday October 04, 2021 @10:25AM (#28747136)
I've had correspondence with Fons, including a little drama about somebody improving upon his code, which he disagreed, and caused the deletion of the improved repo. This incident put me further away from working with its codebase, in fear of further retaliation from His part. If you have further interest in modelling, Modartt also has a modelled Pipe Organ now apart from Pianoteq. In the future I plan to work on GAN-based Pipe modelling, to obtain a whole new experimentation domain regarding Pipe voicing.
Re:Mt32-pi: A baremetal Roland MT-32 emulator
on Sunday October 03, 2021 @11:56PM (#28742895)
I agree that my project runs on the application layer, not as impressive as this bare metal solution.
Re:Mt32-pi: A baremetal Roland MT-32 emulator
on Sunday October 03, 2021 @11:50PM (#28742867)
My first prototypes were done with Aeolus, which is a simple but limited additive synth with up to 64 components.
This distro utilizes GrandOrgue, a very specialized Pipe Organ emulator and sampler, running headless on a framebuffer and loading a number of postprocessing plugins if necessary. It Is capable of not only sounding hyper realistic but also running very complex register combinations via midi, with 24/96 multi-attack multi-release samples. Raspi4 Is the first generation able to run the hundreds of simultaneous streams needed for this task.
Re:Mt32-pi: A baremetal Roland MT-32 emulator
on Sunday October 03, 2021 @01:36PM (#28738913)
I did something similar for emulating Pipe Organs: openpipes.org