Further to this, I got that Cirrus Logic card working this morning, and it sounds extremely nice. Nice little hidden treasure, I bought it very early on when the drivers weren’t ready and as a result it’s just been sitting there.
Extremely full-featured device. Line in, Line Out, Mic in, coax digital which is nice, cause most musician-grade USB interfaces have coax rather than optical, and a pair of mics on the circuit board, which I have not yet tested but will. I never noticed cause they didn’t put headers on but it’s even got a tiny amp for speakers, which pretty much decides that this device will live in a certain spot where someone else wired up a couple of speaker wire runs to another room. Very handy.
Even more interesting is gonna be that this uses a 5102 codec according to the driver, and I bought a very cheap 5102 codec from aliexpress a while back on a whim, it was being talked about here and FOMO kicked in so I spent the tenner. Anyways, I’m gonna get that sucker wired up and do some side-by-side.
The sound is extremely nice, it’s running on a Pi3 with the most recent pi os fully updated, I’m listening to Pink Floyd on FLAC, only 44.1 but we’ll get to trying the higher bitrates. My target was to get a song playing before work this morning.
There were a few stutters which I’ll try to investigate, brief pauses in playback but they seemed to be random so I’m sure that some optimizations for audio will fix it.
If I may give an opinion to the Zynthian Gurus (thank you), I wouldn’t abandon the slightly inclined front… This is because not everyone has the Zynthian on their desk and under their eyes. I hold it above the Yamaha piano and if it’s not slightly inclined, I struggle to see the display…
Or you could think about making the tilting display with a simple support on hinges… I had designed one with Fusion360 to be printed in 3D, but then I preferred to have the tilted front like the V4…
I have a flat cased Zynthian (similar format to the V5) which I sit on an incline and still can’t see the bottom edge of the screen. So maybe a flat design is good to allow you to angle it to your preferred position. It may be easier to mount a cuboid than a wedge into a bracket or frame.
For my enclosure, which is similar to the V4, I had to print a support to put the Zynthian on the piano… Maybe on the V5 one could think of a simple rotating foot like the ones that testers for electronics have… it’s just an idea not to have other objects if you use this tool live…
How about adding some mounting screw threads to the base to allow it to be mounted to a stand, e.g. vesa mount? Ideally these are blind threaded holes so that any screws are limited in reach, i.e. long screws won’t go beyond the threads and hence protect the innards.
Yes, it’s a good idea. I think of when I used to play outside and had a Yamaha CP70b piano and the legendary Poly61 and had to rent a van to carry stuff around… With the Zynthian so many less problems… too bad I don’t play live anymore. …
With the threaded holes anyone can also 3D print raised rubber feet…
I don’t think that would be very beneficial. There are cables to consider and each user wants a different configuration. Having a method of mounting the device will allow each user to mount how they want. Of course you could just use a mounting that clamps the unit, like some of the tablet holders you can get for mic / keyboard stands.
It looks very professional, with the larger desktop and screen feeling much more comfortable in real world usage. The current V4 case is maybe a bit too diminutive and lightweight, to be handled safely when you move things around, or arrange your Zynthian among other gear.
I personally prefer the proposed flat and non-wedge-like section of the box, since it might prove to be more manageable than a tilted one, on an inclined studio shelf or custom 3D-printed supporting base.
I also throw a purely aesthetic idea, with no clues as to its financial viability for the first production batches:
what about envisaging one or two added colour options for the case? I personally would love a light blue one, and my suggestion for possible alternatives would be blue/grey-cyan/red.
I realise that this is a matter of personal taste, but I guess that this would potentially broaden the commercial appeal of the Zynth, as an even more diversified and peculiar instrument.
I am very happy overall for the increasingly exciting news coming from our Zynthian creators!
Thanks for your comments and kind words! Some comments:
Regarding the angled top, we decided to move to a flat design because it simplifies integration and case manufacturing. Also, we love the new flat & slim look & feel. But don’t worry, we intend to provide a good solution for attaching the V5 and using VESA holes is a very good idea, although it will take some months as design is frozen until the first batch is released. Only fixes. As the distance from the case’s bottom to the main board is less than 4mm, we are thinking on a case U-adapter: a piece of bended aluminum that would be attached to both sides using the already existent holes. This U-adapter would include a set of VESA holes for several sizes and could act as an angled stand too. I will show you some draws very soon .
Regarding offering several case colors. it’s a nice idea, but we couldn’t offer a wide range of colors because we need to manufacture a minimum quantity to get a workable price. Light blue certainly isn’t one of my favorites, sorry. But i could envision a dark-red case with black knobs
Also, we are considering the possibility of offering raw silicone keypads without engraving. This raw silicone keypads could be laser-engraved locally and would allow people to develop highly customized workflows.
Thanks for the feedback. I would probably have the V5 with already engraved buttons, but the idea to also offer them in a flat rubber customisable fashion sounds interesting for mod projects.
And, for the colour of the case, an alternate livery in dark red with black knobs would look rather cool!
It could be also very interesting for some V5 owners. Think that from webconf’s wiring layout panel you can modify a good amount of zynthian’s workflow, customizing the actions triggered when a button is pushed in different ways (push, short release, bold release and long release). Implementing a good workflow is really complex and very dependent of personal likes and use-case, so i really think other workflows are possible, and perhaps better than my proposal, or better suited for specific use-cases or mind-sets.
It would be amazing to have several workflows available, optimized for specific use-cases!
Anyway, the black-without-labels silicone zynpad would be available as an extra, not as a replacement for the official one
