Installing the No Budget Orchestra

The No Budget Orchestra (NBO) is an entire orchestra comprised of numerous plugins such as a Violin section, a Flute section, a Clarinet section, etc.

You can get the latest 64-bit version of NBO at SourceForge. The plugins are contained in the zip file plugins.zip. You must download and unzip this to somewhere you have permission to access such as your Home folder.

You'll also need the sampled waveforms used by the plugins. If you set your soundcard to 44KHz sample rate, then download the zip files strings44k.zip and brass44k.zip. If you set your soundcard to 48KHz sample rate, then download the files strings48k.zip and brass48k.zip instead. If you use both sets of sample rates, then you can download all 4 files. These must be unzipped to the same folder where you unzipped plugins.zip. Your Home folder is a good location. If unzipped correctly, all the files should end up in a single folder named NoBudget.

Inside of NoBudget, you will see a file named install_orchestra.sh. Click the right mouse button on this file to pop up its menu, and select Properties.

In the properties dialog, go to the Permissions page, and check the box Allow executing file as program. Click ok to close the dialog.

If you have some gnome utilities installed (gksu and zenity), you can simply double-click the left mouse button on this "install_orchestra.sh", and it will present a series of dialogs guiding you through the installation of the orchestra.

If nothing appears, then you must instead open a terminal (command line) window, change to the folder where install_orchestra.sh is located, and type:

./install_orchestra.sh

The installer will ask if you wish to install the control window for the plugins. This allows you to make adjustments to the sound from a graphical window. But since all settings can be adjusted by midi messages, if you have an external midi device capable of being programmed, you can exclusively use that device to adjust the plugin. In that case, you may prefer to not install the control window, especially if you're operating without a monitor, or on a device with limited RAM.

The installer will also ask if you wish to install the plugins so that they are available to all user accounts, or just the account installing the orchestra. If the former, files will be installed to your root's /usr/share/NoBudget folder. If the latter, files are instead installed to your Home's NoBudget folder.

You will be prompted to enter your password. Do so, then press RETURN. The installer may take awhile to copy files, before you finally see a message that the plugins are successfully installed.