Hi all:
I just got mine Zynthian running last night and got to spend about 2 hours with it. I have a lot of synths and have been in the synth / music-gear game for a long time and consider myself fairly adept at figuring things out without reading anything first. Despite the fact I am an engineer, I load the RTFM. That said, I am usually pretty good at this so how far I can get without reading things is often an indication of how good the interface is.
Initial setup: easy. Plugged in a midi cable, figured out to add a device, easy to select midi channel, instantly responded to incoming midi, no issues. Next, change preset. This was much harder for me and now today, reading the manual, I know why. I noticed the buttons were behaving differently and I see now they are timed. I tried feeling for timing yesterday along with double-click presses, neither of which worked for me. I will try again tonight by my first criticism is that the buttons are too spongy for a 0.3sec press to be accurate, IMHO. A denser button rubber would work better in my opinion.
Eventually I figured out how to get back to the preset menu and change sounds. Sound quality is good, mixer was easy to figure out as well. I still had the screen protector on for now so I didn’t try the touch component. Encoders were easily understood what parameters they were controlling. Navigation via the UDLR buttons was just fine. The left/right switching channels/parts took a little getting used to but is probably a good design choice.
Next was changing instrument, this was also pretty easy via the menu and I was able to see all the options, nicely grouped. I tried some soundfont stuff and the drum sampler. Timing seemed pretty solid, but I didn’t measure. I can see the sampler being a lot of fun once I get my own stuff into it.
Then I wanted to mess with fx. This was also easy to add to the chain, easy to select from the menu and dial in the parameters. I did find at time the screen was lagging. I read today about the CPU indicator and I believe it was green the entire time so maybe I just need to get used to load times. I am using a Lexar 128gb SD card U1 USH-I V10 speed.
The quality of the fx, I didn’t try reverb because I hate most of them, so that will come later, but with the choruses, distortions, phaser, I was pretty happy. Overall sound quality is high and I had only a couple dropouts when I was working with a preset setup that had numerous parts.
Positives: navigation of complex system largely clear through menu structures.
Negatives: button triple-state timing is tough given the feel of the buttons for me.
I’m guessing you can adjust the timing of the button states with a config?
Anyway, I was pretty positive about my experience and getting started without reading anything. I will do some real reading today and revisit.
