Great job @jofemodo and the Zynthian team 
I have read it almost entirely, and it looks very thorough: both gradual in explanation and more attentively focused on specific crucial steps.
Well done!
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Hi all! I’m MOD user and I was looking for HW alternatives and found Zynthian. I play guitar and I’ve asked few questions to @jofemodo which kindly answered to:
Q. I’d like to know if I can use Zynthian as I use MOD platform. I only use guitar plugins, are they available also for Zynthian? Is there a store with free and paid from which download them?
A. We have not a store with paid plugins. All free plugins are included in our software image (about 800 audio plugins) and we continuously add more when available.
Q. Is the plugins chain customizable like it is on MOD platform?
A. You can create simple “series-parallel” chains using the zynthian-ui. For more complex chains, you can use the MOD-UI interface.
Q. What’s the max impedance of the input jack?
A. The 2 audio inputs are balanced ones with adjustable gain, from -12 to 40 dB. Impedance is 20KOhm per input pin, so total impedance would doubles when using balanced input, same than signal level does.
Q. Is there a ground lift switch?
A. There is not ground lift switch
Q. What will be the price without rpi board?
A. The price for V5 is not yet fixed, but it would be around 400€ without RPi4
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Newbie here. Looking forward to buying v5. This is going to go REALLLLY nicely with my newly purchased Pianoteq, and also looking forward to exploring Surge etc. Can anyone tell me what kind of bitrate/samplerate V4 or V5 can run Pianoteq or other synths at? I’m not looking for multilayering
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The underlying Raspberry 4 is the same one, so basically you should expect the same performance. @jofemodo has made sure that you can overclock it without causing temperature problems and betting a little more CPU power, so you might get a little more juice from it 
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Hi @MakePerceive! A very warm welcome to the community. I’m sure you will enjoy it here.
Zynthian (mostly) uses 32-bit floating point calculations internally running at 44100 or 48000 frames per second. (Default is 44100 but this can be changed.) The soundcard supports up to 192000 but there is no significant benefit but significant impact in increasing samplerate beyond 48000. The soundcard has 24-bit converters.
Internally each synth and processor may have different samplerate / bit depth but most run at the native samplerate, using 32-bit floating point calculation. The notable exception is Pianoteq that we run at half the native sample rate, i.e. 22100 or 24000. This is because it will trigger xruns (clicks in the audio) when run at full rate. We are hoping to improve this - Pianoteq can run at the native samplerate on a clean Debian install on Raspberry Pi 4 so we would like to identify why it struggles under ZynthianOS but have yet to find the time to perform that investigation.
By default the software latency is approx 11ms although some synths / processors may introduce more latency but this should not be the case. Some USB MIDI interfaces also introduce extra latency which again should not happen but it has been observed. We would ideally like to reduce this latency and you can do so but with the risk of increased xrun instances. This depends on how heavily the Zynthian is loaded, i.e. how many and what types of synth / processor are running / used.
Many of the synths and processors sit idle when not in use, utilising very few resources but some use their full amount all the time, e.g. setBfree (drawbar organ) will continuously use its full quota of resources (CPU, memory, etc.) when it is loaded whereas Pianoteq will ramp up its CPU usage when played, and when more notes are played polyphonically (including decay periods).
I love Pianoteq and am really happy to have bought the licence and use it on three devices including Zynthians. Although the audio bandwidth is restricted due to the reduced internal samplerate, I do not find this an issue when playing live. I would generally use the plugin within a DAW on a desktop computer during recording to gain the full bandwidth.
I hope this is useful and please ask again for anything that is not clear.
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Great, thank you for the detailed info
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This new design does look the part, it’s a very sleek design, and the screen finally is something to work with.
You’ve got a winner on your hands here - good luck on dealing with those preorders and media responses
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Hi @mr_floydst 
It is just me, or your Zynthian discourse nickname seems to barely conceal the identity of a well-known someone, who shares interesting DIY music technology content on a famous worldwide video platform?.. 
Should this be the case, well, spread the good word of the new V5!
Best
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Hello, thank you very much!
Did you notice those reports on Synthtopia.com and Synthanatomy.com today / yesterday? There’s a tiny chance some smaller “content creator” could have been involved in those.
Edit: musicradar picked the story up as well. Zynthian 5 is a standalone, open-source music-making device that contains 50 synth engines and 100s of effects | MusicRadar
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Duly noted, thanks! References to the V5 release really seem to be popping fast around the web. 
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I realize you’ve got plenty to occupy your time, but I wanted to remind you about this - you’ve got at least one person anxiously waiting for this to do a variation with the VisionFive2 board replacing the Raspberry Pi 4. Thanks!
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Ummmm, pretty please, tell me a story?
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jajaja! I will tell the full history, but not yet! Not today!
Cheers!
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I think my question is similar to DonnaH. Are you able to say yet what types of other kits and accessories will become available for V5?
Will there be controllers and button pads be sold? So someone can choose a screen and create an enclosure and the rest is able to be purchased.