Koala Sampler is an amazing SP-404 based sampler for iOS, Android, MacOS, Linux… There was a Raspberry Pi compatible Alpha a while ago, just asked him about it on twitter…
Is there any way that Koala could be integrated with Zynthian? Seems like it would be best run separately, wouldn’t play nice with the Zynthian UI, but I’m almost definitely going to put this on a separate device to be able to send MIDI commanders from Zynthian or my Nektar Aura and audio out into Zynthian to be an additional instrument. Perhaps an engine loaded in Zynthian and touchscreen on the VNC?
This seems to be a closed source app for phones. I can’t find any mention of how it might be ported to run on a Zynthian. I don’t see any documentation on interfacing, etc. It looks like it depends on its own GUI. I can’t see at this point how (or why) it could be integrated in Zynthian.
I’m also a big fan of Koala and of course Zynthian too.
It’s hard to imagine how the mashup would work in their current form.
Koala has some nice FX though (which are also available as standalone AU). Outboard your Zynthian to a separate RPI running Koala and you’ve got way more than double the fun!!! Of course you could do this on your phone/iPad/Mac…
@bigdumbidiot - did Elf post the Linux version of Koala? I would probably mess around with it just for a laugh. How did you plan to use the two together?
He hasn’t posted anything yet but sounds like he could be easily compelled to do so.
Honestly I hadn’t fully thought about the use case or issues with it being closed source when I posted, but I was aware that the UIs had no real way to play together on one screen so was thinking kind of along the lines of “is there any way these two great pieces of software could be used together?”
What I would like is to be able to apply Koala’s effects to other instruments and recordings within Zynthian, and also when playing from Koala’s sampler be able to route that through a Zynthian effects chain as well.
The effects sharing is possible I’m sure with some audio I/O routing, on a separate Pi with Koala running and one could record samples from Zynthian’s output, and send that output back to Zynthian as an effects box.
The idea of having them in one box is less practical, I mean I guess if he ported the effects auv3 to ARM Linux LV2 those effects could live on a chain and be controlled by midi or UI via VNC.
At the end of the day it probably does make the most sense to just run Koala on an iPhone for the portable recorder aspect of it and maybe connect iPhone to a USB Interface to do what I described above.
Hadn’t thought it through too far, had just finished building my Zynthian when I saw that Koala had a Pi compatible release. Might make for another project honestly, with a mic attachment and audio I/O could make a portable sampler box and in my opinion Koala punches way above its price point and a box running that exclusively would be cheaper and better than say a lot of what’s out there. Is there a reason not to just use a cheap android tablet for that? Not really.