Aeolus - www.muse-sequencer.org

Aeolus is a pipe organ emulator written by Fons Adriaensen. It was released as free software (GPL license). This page mainly tries to be a central place to concentrate resources related to Aeolus. It is a wiki, but for spamming reasons you need an account to log in. Ask for an account on the mailing list if you want to contribute.

1 Features
2 Intention
3 Screenshots
4 Operation
5 Installation
6 Support & participation
7 Contributing
8 Resources
9 Artwork

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Features

Running on top of a GNU Linux system (x86 and AMD64)
Sound output either via ALSA directly or via the low latency soundserver JACK (strongly recommended)
Very realistic synthesized sound, not based on samples
Exchangable instrument. The current stop set mainly mirrors a german baroque instrument, but it could be switched to any other instrument
Easy to use user interface

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Intention

A short explanation by Fons Adriaensen, the author of Aeolus, as found on his homepage:

»Aeolus is my first attempt to arrive at a synthesised (i.e. not sampled) pipe organ sound that should be good enough to make an organist enjoy playing it. It is in fact be a soft-synth optimised for this job, with possibly hundreds of controls for each stop, to enable the user to "voice" his instrument. First presented at the 2nd LAD conference in Karlsruhe, end of April 2004.«

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Screenshots

That is how Aeolus looks like. Switching stops using a notebook with touch screen must be a joy :) :

Image:Aeolusmainwindow.png Image:Aeolusmidiwindow.png

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Operation

Using Aeolus is simple if you have basic knowledge about professional linux audio. But even as a beginner you should be able to get your system up and running Aeolus.

The preferred audio driver system to use is ALSA, not the (deprecated) OSS. You can run Aeolus on top of ALSA directly, or (highly recommended) run the realtime soundserver JACK on top of ALSA and tell Aeolus to use JACK.

For the basic system setup read the very good instructions by Musikun.

About Aeolus setup and usage, there is some non-exhaustive information on AeolusUsage. Maybe even AeolusFaq is useful for you.

John Dey has built a cool console:

Image:John deyL.jpg

He writes:

The project for me is only temporary (proof of concept) because I am looking for a 3 manual church organ console to restore. The manuals are inexpensive Yamaha YPT-200 ($85 USD each) and I purchased an Allen Organ pedal board and bench from Ebay ($85 USD + $50 shipping) and lucked out in that the pedal board had the connect switches in serviceable condition. I midified the pedals using a Doepfer CTM64 (a real overkill). Each keyboard has only a hardwired ch 0 so I have to send the signals to a filter running on my linux box that detects the port/clients relationship and assigns ch numbers appropriately to the “note on” messages before the signal is sent on to Aeolus.

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Installation

Currently there are no ready to use binaries yet. It will last some time until the distributors will provide packages. If you are familiar with building from source, get it from the Aeolus homepage. See Musikuns excellent page for help with compiling.

Note that the latest version also compiles on a AMD64 (Gentoo) and using the instructions you might be able to get it running. If you get no audio sound using Jack, try as root. If that works some work has to be done :) considering the soundserver.

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Support & participation

There are two mailing lists, one about user and one about developer related things. To subscribe or unsubscribe, simply send an empty mail to one of the following mail addresses:

aeolus-user-subscribe ADD muse-sequencer.org

aeolus-user-unsubscribe ADD muse-sequencer.org

aeolus-dev-subscribe ADD muse-sequencer.org

aeolus-dev-unsubscribe ADD muse-sequencer.org

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Contributing

Even as a normal user with limited computer knowledge, you can help with the development of Aeolus. What Aeolus needs so far:

Creating or improving existing Aeolus stops. This can be done by any organist with some acoustical knowledge
Recording stops of true instruments. If you have access to a good instrument, you are invited to do such a recording which can be used to create new stops from it. Top wish: A french romantic instrument.
Doing audio measurements of rooms with Aliki. If you have access to a church or concert hall with interesting audio characteristics, an acoustical fingerprint would be cool.

Please contact the mailing list or Fons Adriaensen directly if you can help the Aeolus project.

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