The MIDI Keyboard page, second in the Settings window’s group list, right after Audio, is where you tell Orfeo about the keyboards you play: which ones to listen to, how quickly your playing is heard, how it responds to your touch and pedals, and how long the trip from key to speaker takes on your computer. New in Orfeo 1.5, reworked in 1.5.3.
Open the page
The page has three tabs: Keyboards, Sound & Latency and Touch & pedals. The cards sit three across at equal height, and at the right of the tab row Orfeo shows whether keyboards are connected and your keyboard-to-speaker delay.
Keyboards
Every connected keyboard is listed by its own model name, with a light that flashes when you play it.
Sound & Latency
Playing live
The card for playing along on your keyboard. For the Studio sound engine, Low latency (the default) plays your keys as quickly as your computer allows, Balanced trades a little speed for safety, and Stable is for computers where the sound crackles or drops out. The Native engine (beta) doesn’t use this setting: it has its own Shared and Exclusive buttons in Settings → Audio, and in Exclusive it is heard in under 10 ms. Pointing at Low latency, Balanced or Stable shows a one-line hint of what each is best for.
Since 1.5 the keys you play no longer pass through the song’s compressor and safety limiter, so they’re heard 12 ms sooner. The song itself still goes through both.
A switch in this tab lets a connected keyboard switch Native to Exclusive by itself. It is on by default, and recommended when you play along on a keyboard and nothing else on the computer needs sound. Switch it off and Native stays in the mode you choose.
Audio delay offset
Lines up the key lights, the count-in and tapping with what you hear, when the measured delay isn’t enough: with Bluetooth headphones, for example, or an external instrument. It moves the picture, not the sound.
General MIDI sound
Play General MIDI through Orfeo’s own synth (the default), or through a connected digital piano or sound module. Orfeo always uses its own synth unless you choose an instrument here.
Delay check
Shows how long each part of the trip from your key to the speaker takes on your computer. Save log… writes the numbers to a file you can attach to a bug report. The log also records your sound card connection: the card, its sample rate and format, the buffer, how fast it really plays, and why it isn’t in Exclusive mode, if it isn’t.
Touch & pedals
Touch response
Soft, Normal, Hard or Fixed decides how the strength of your playing turns into loudness. You can also ignore very light touches and cap the loudest note.
Double-note filter
Ignores a key that accidentally sounds twice in a row, a common fault on well-used keyboards.
Pedals & controls
Sustain, sostenuto and soft pedals, pitch bend, the modulation wheel, aftertouch, expression and volume. Each one reads not detected until you use it, then detected, and each can be switched off. The sustain pedal works when you play your own keyboard.
Reset & repair
Unplugging a keyboard mid-note, or minimising Orfeo while you hold keys, no longer leaves notes or the sustain pedal hanging, but the buttons are there if anything ever sticks.
Tested keyboards
Orfeo has been tested with these USB keyboards, with no problems:
Any class-compliant USB or MIDI keyboard should work. If yours misbehaves, run the Delay check, save the log and report a bug.
Tip
To play along with a song, mute the part you want to play and keep it on the roll. See Connect a MIDI Keyboard.
See also: Connect a MIDI Keyboard · Audio · Step Through · Troubleshooting