Before I throw my Zynthian out of the window

Using Zynthian
27

I didn’t mean to say that Zynthian v5 is bad and not even that it won’t become ready eventually: just that it isn’t ready for live performance with external MIDI gear as-is, out of the box, right now, as of this writing in February 2024. The hardware seems more than capable but the software needs some work still.

Admittedly, my specific use case is more complex than is typical. But what I needed as the most absolute bare minimum is just a USB MIDI host / router.

Here’s how to get a cheap open source device that will just act as a USB MIDI host and route MIDI traffic by simply echoing all MIDI signals that come in from any connected MIDI device on all channels to all other connected MIDI devices except the sender:

  1. Get a Raspberry Pi Zero, power adapter and 8 GB or larger micro SD card. (I haven’t tested with smaller) Any model should work. A powered USB hub might be another good purchase if you have a lot of devices to connect. Also, you’ll need some way to connect a monitor and keyboard to the Raspberry Pi Zero for initial setup purposes, even though I don’t connect any when actually using it.

  2. Add this hat and case: https://www.waveshare.com/usb-hub-box.htm

  3. Install Raspberry Pi OS Lite; the headerless version (no desktop environment) for your model of Pi Zero: https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/

  4. Install this script for the MIDI signal routing: GitHub - dmessent/pi-midi-host-no-bt: Setup a Raspberry Pi as a headless MIDI USB host, without bluetooth midi support (suitable for Raspberry Pi Zero)

  5. Install this script for safe shutdown: Ways / rpi-readonly · GitLab

And that’s it. That’s what I’ve got replacing the MIDI Thru chains on the Zynthian v5 for my band practices right now. It won’t do synthesis on its own (it has no sound at all) but it will route the MIDI traffic for now until Zynthian’s actually ready for that.

However, I do see that the MIDI device support on Zynthian OS is being worked on and eventually, I hope the Zynthian will be doing this job instead of the Raspberry PI Zero I’ve got. I do not mean to be badmouthing the Zynthian and the great work that’s being done to improve it. I’m just saying that right now, it seems to be in an alpha or early beta stage of development, at least for the use case of live performance with external MIDI gear, not yet production ready. Hopefully should be sometime soon though! :slight_smile:

The cheap Raspberry Pi Zero based USB MIDI host / router I’m currently using is something I will probably want to keep around basically forever just for experimental purposes even after the Zynthian eventually replaces it for live performance because it’s just handy to have around.

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