Is there interest in having a dev room at this year’s FrOSCon?
The event takes place at St.Augustin, Germany from 2025-08-16 to 2025-08-17.
If there is enough interest we might get a dev room.
It’s also a really nice event for meeting people involved in Free Software.
Projects can also have booths (not good for hacking but for getting the message around) and maybe there would be some place and time to show off live music with the Zynthian.
@guybrushdeepwood
Before this post disappears completely….
I would have been very interested to help out, my home is incredible near, unfortunately the dates are bad as I will be on vacation.
Is there a general interest of users (locally e.g. NRW-de) to meet up together, shairing tips?
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Not really near (BaWü-de) and the same conflict with holiday season…
Looking at the Zynthian around the world map I also had the idea of a kind of local user group meetings. Enough Users around and maybe more as the map seems not to reflect the current state. Those also might be a useful platform to discuss presentations of Zynthian on local Linux fairs like “LinuxTag”, “Linux Presentation Day” etc. as people with local interest and availability will come together.
@guybrushdeepwood I’m with your idea generally to spread the word (or the music). I on myself thought about a possible demo during the Lightning Talks on Tübix (Tübinger Linuxtag) but it might be better not to do a one man show but show ideally different versions and ideas.
Oh Tübingen, wohne in der Nähe von Stuttgart 
Well, BaWü zynthian meeting would be a nice idea though… 
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Would immediately join
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Sorry, just missed the last 2 entries.
I’d be in too for a BaWü meeting.
Would we prefer a pysical location or shall we start via jitsi to sound ideas, possibilities, locations etc.?
Should we maybe start a separate thread for that?
- We shouldn’t simply take over @guybrushdeepwood 's thread
- We might attract more people in range with a dedicated headline…
Well, did that:
BaWü, Germany meeting “Zynthian Stammtisch”
Hi Chris,
That would be nice!
Bin dabei, auch online via zoom oder jitsi.
An Turmsuppe mangelt es uns nicht, wissen Sie.
Sie brauchen eine Zeit und einen Ort. Alles andere sind nur Details.
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I talked to a client of mine about holidays today, and to my surprise he’s on of the organisers of FrOSCon event. Perhaps we should look at next year to do something with Zythian (spread the word) he’s a good contact.
Hi, this is a bit on short notice, but we have a booth at the Froson 2025 coming weekend with our local audio meetup called “Open Source Audio Meeting Cologne” (https://osamc.de) and part of our setup, where we demonstrate various things you can do with Open Source audio software, is a station, where visitors can play my Zynthian V4.2.
I only recently got this device on the used market and am still learning the ins and outs of the user interface. In this Froscon setup, I will have two MIDI controllers attached, a M-Audio Oxygene Mini Pro (or maybe a bigger, 61-note keyboard, if there is space) and a Novation Launchpad X, and the main goal is to enable people to try out the different Open Source synths and sample libraries installed by default on Zynthian.
Maybe you can boost this toot on Mastodon about our booth:
If you are there, please say Hello! (mention my user name here).
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Hi @SpotlightKid ,
Just out of interest, how much curiosity did your Zynthian appeal to visitors at Froson 2025, was there much interest, feedback, etc…
Thanks
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The main attraction at our booth was a DJing station with two record decks with timecode records synchronising the player software on two Raspberry Pis and people could play around with applying effects to the mix, provided by a MOD Dwarf.
The Zynthian setup got much less attention, because it didn’t look very impressive next to those record desk. In fact, the Zynthian V4 has such a small footprint (which is what I like about it), that I guess that for people who weren’t really looking for it, it was easy to miss among the attached keyboards and Novation Launchpad.
But the, about a dozen or so, people who tried it out for longer than playing a few notes, seemed really interested and I had several interesting discussions about the capabilities and concepts of the device and were it fits in with other self-contained music production boxes (e.g. Electron Products, Novation Circuit, MOD, etc.).
I observed that several people had trouble with understanding the navigation of the interface screens and getting a grip on what each of the buttons does. We had printed a short diagram with an explanation of the main mixer screen and what each button does there and I had customised what the S1-4 buttons did, to make it easier to get back to the mixer screen, open the presets list and start/top the audio player and recorder. But most people didn’t really look at that and just experimented and then got confused because of the difference between a short and “bold” click, which they didn’t realise was a difference. IMHO this distinction doesn’t really work and I would like to eliminate the bold click completely if I could.
People were also interested in how to get the devices or kits and its price. Most seemed to think it rather affordable.
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I found a similar situation, demonstrating zynthian. I found it useful to give punters a short overview first, else they would just be lost. This is a challenge for demo, not ownership. I don’t think the UI is bad, it just needs to be learned - just like very other UI. (I often flash the windscreen wipers (instead of lights) in a hire car - because the control is on the opposite sitck to that of my own car!)
Thanks for the feedback. Trade shows are very useful places to enlighten us on matters of design.
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BTW, here are the two handouts / mini posters I created for the Zynthian station (German labels):
Also, as a note to the Zynthian project: it was impossible to find an SVG version of the project logo with the “zynthian” name for a white background.
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Nice graphical presentation @SpotlightKid
Well done!
“Factory Sounds” are often the end of the story in terms of sounds in a device, because of the difficulty in learning interfaces for actual programming/performance splits, etc. Howard Jones notoriously made a whole album or two using factory DX7 sounds.
I’m actually unclear on this: do we have a “patch collection” website yet? When I dream about having time to spend making music, one thing I think about doing as a learning exercise, is picking an appropriate song and seeing how closely I can match the recording for chains on the zynth. In theory, if engines are chosen judiciously, there is no reason the Zynthian can’t be a whole band.
But it would be great if there was a place with an ever-growing collection of such patches. I could put one up, if we don’t have it yet.
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Ironically, I was at FrOSCon (behind the FSFE booth) but did not read these messages beforehand. I completely missed your presentation.
For gaining attraction to a booth, having a talk can be beneficial.
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