Before I throw my Zynthian out of the window

Show me your code

my PD patch you mean? It’s barely worth showing but I dropped a screenshot in another thread earlier this week I believe. It’s not even the filtering I’m not getting, I’ve already got a select node that is selecting for the two note velocities - in fact, the note velocities, 100 and 0, work well enough to just to straight to CC64 and work. I think if anything it needs to be even simpler than I’ve got it setup. I just had to pivot a few days back and I haven’t swivelled the chair all the way back around to PD yet.

But don’t worry, we’ll deal with your rebel friends soon enough…

You have the MIDI protocol knowledge, you know the user cases to solve, you even have the skill to create PD patches to hack a solution… don’t you dare to hack the MIDI routing and help everybody to solve the issue?

Thanks for all your replies. I thought I knew what I got into. I returned my v4 because it wasn’t what I expected. My hopes for v5 were high. But I ended up disappointed. Spending a lot of time trying to find out, why something I want doesn’t work.

I bought a Nord piano 4. The moment I bought it I found out I couldn’t use the latest sounds, and there is no way to upgrade. So I really like the open source philosophy. But I have a lot of fun with it. It has a really good amp simulator, a really good effect section, reverb, etc. And it always works. It never hangs. Within it’s limitations I can use my creativity. And because I know there is no more, it works fine.

That’s probably the main problem with devices like this. When it can do anything, users might get lost.
For 500 bucks it’s a pretty good hammond emulator.
it’s also a very good synthesizer
or a loop station
or a step sequencer

So I think I have to decide what I want to use it for, and stay there.
I really appreciate people spending their free time to make this device possible. And it’s great that someone can make a living of it.
Maybe it’s worth to make a Zynthian version with limited possibilities. Reduce the number of available effect plugins and make sure it works, whatever you do with it.
And write a decent manual, even a 10 year old can understand. And finish it. Please finish it.

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I think you made a very good point here, @robert .

Zynthian can do many things, and it can do some things really well. And certainly, I can do several things at once, etc. But if you try to do everything at once, or push it on rare use-cases, you will find the limits.

We don’t like to put the limits explicitly because we love freedom and because we don’t really know when the limit is. Limits are subjective, so user find the limits and this means, as you tell, that you must choose how you want to use it.

Of course, we are always trying to bend the curve and make it useful for more musicians, but freedom always will be in our ADN and this means that user put the limits.

Zynthian is not a comfortable sedan you buy in a luxury car shop. It’s more like a tank …

Regards

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NEVER!!! If it is finished then it doesn’t get better - and never believe anyone who says their product is bug free. They are either naive or a liar. :smile:

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Oh, right, please, do NOT ever finish anything! And do not bother people with stupid “tickboxes”. I don’t know if it can help to get rid of the ubiquitous american-centric perspective, but I would just try to strictly avoid terms such as “business”, “product”, “solution”, “price”, “service”, “terms of use/EULA”, “disclaimer” aso.

I agree it may be a bit misleading sometimes, especially with Zynthian V5 and its sleek interface design looking like a professional ready made product. I am afraid I won’t be really able to build an imitation of this during a weekend using a bunch of $1 components from Ali, a plastic box, drill and a file, like I did with the previous version.

I can’t really call myself a “musician”, unfortunately, but I believe there is plenty of professional “products” and ready made, rock stable “solutions” for “professional musicians”, especially those on the “music industry” track rather than the “music as art and experiment”. During my 30 years of contact with open source and other communities of this kind, I probably haven’t met anything as charming as the Zynthian community. And I definitely love to read bits from this Discourse instead of reading fairy tales before going to sleep!

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That’s the plan, it’s actually a personal goal to have at least one contribution to the project on the software side. I was even informed that you can compile PD to LV2 with ease so that’s probably what will get sent in. :>

Perhaps we could look at introducing a “beginner” config option for the UI,

which doesn’t actually remove anything, so much as,
offer a reduced set of more heavily-tested engines (solve each problem once, maybe twice, rather than ten times),
with a more opinionated set of UI options (expose only the LPF cutoff, ADSR, Resonance, LFO rate, and a few other relevant parameters, rather than ten screens of obscurely-named things which most of us don’t understand what they even do),
and maybe even a few well-chosen “canonical” USB controllers which we offer “plug and play” functionality for?

And of course, have the “take off the training wheels” choice ubiquitously available for the brave and/or foolhardy.

edit: Since about a year after I got my first sysadmin job (I was absolutely faking it with all my might, until about then) I have considered myself a “Linux guy” who is ready and able to solve tech problems which involve that OS. As such, I have a rosy-glassed view of this project, and I try to be self-aware about things like that. I definitely see this whole thread as a bit of a call to do better for the less-linuxy than we nerds.

I really like the philosophical direction this thread is going to. :slight_smile:
With ‘finishing’, I was referring to the manual. I think there aren’t many open source programs with the last page of the manual ever being written. Zynthian got pretty far, I have to admit.

As a musician, I want turn a button and wonder what’s happening. And then use the sound. I prefer that to figuring out why something doesn’t work.
Well, I’m looking forward to the simple Zynthian version. I can’t help with the programming, but I might be a good test case. So if want to work on that. I’m willing to help.

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So here we are. This is what I’m trying to point out with my stupid tickboxes.

I see your point. I just don’t believe tickboxes are the solution. Nobody reads them, they are as ignored as the annoying cookie pop-ups. Anyway, there will always be misunderstandings, high expectations and disappointments. People tend to see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear and ignore what they don’t like to see.

My experience was rather the opposite. I expected “just another Linux computer” loaded with free audio software. For years, I had tried to just run jackd without xruns, in vain. Fiddling with realtime settings, low-latency kernels… When I assembled zynthian and turned it on, it “just worked”. Even running a Pianoteq with very easy upload and registration possibility. I admit: I had very low expecations :slight_smile:

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Won’t lie, the first time I heard of this project was from a gearhead friend who knew it was up my alley, woulda been within the first few years, and I sorta wrote it off as exactly what you said, just a thin wrapper around a Linux machine running Linux software.

And I mean, I guess that’s what it was and is, but remove the “just” from that sentence and we’re closer to reality; even that “modest” description contains worlds. :>

I did keep watching, and with each iteration I got more and more interested, until finally during v4 era, I ordered a Hifiberry and tried it out, and basically I was blown away.

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And I really appreciate your words, @robert, and don’t doubt that zynthian is used for living performance by many. It’s just a question of knowing the device and its limits.

I have this idea in my mind from a long time ago. And not only me. You will see in the next months that we are working in this direction. Zynthian style, of course!! :wink:

This will be difficult because zynthian is not conceived for 10-years old persons. Sorry. It’s not that kind of instrument.

Regarding the current state of the documentation, i agree it’s not the best. Current functionality and current documentation is normally not perfectly coupled. Indeed, it’s a kind of cyclic thing. When we are developing and advancing a lot, documentation is quickly outdated. It’s very frustrating to spend hours and hours writing documentation for functionality that is already obsolete. This reflect very well the current state. After these periods of fast development, we have more stable periods, and it’s in these periods, that documentation is improved and updated.

As you probably know, we are quite close to land the next “big stable release”, oram. This will bring us a lot of goodness and also enough stability to document all the “shadow parts” and update all existing documentation.

Finishing?? Jajaja!! No thanks!! I prefer to improve all the time :wink:

All the best!

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