Been using my hack of a Zynth for about a week now, its not a finished artical just yet, but im almost there with the hardware.
Just waiting for components to arrive to add midi, using usb for now.
My aim is to use it as a production tool, something on a smaller scale than sitting in the studio.
Already i can see/hear that it has that potential, however for my needs, there are a couple of limitations.
Please acknowledge this is intended to be constructive only, and my restrictions at this point may be due to my lack of understanding, however either way i think this project is simply amazing.
My first issue is sampling, Zynsampler has recently greatly improved, however, on my Zynth it is too inaccurate to use for anything beat related.
I have been using Samplv1 as the time keeping is pretty much bang on. The drawback is that i have to save each Samplv1 patch in UI, and then navigate and load the patch upon reboot for every instance of the plugin.
Secondly, some of the major synth plugins (eg Surge) revert to default of the selected preset, even after saving the snapshot and saving the patch in UI.
I totally understand that this is all work in progress, and that implementing these plugins in to this platform is not an easy task. However they sound so good and think it is a much necessity for composition on this fantastic gizmo.
As earlier said, this may just be my naivety and over expectations, apologies if so.
Its just i have been experimenting loads recently, and have actually made some really good sounds, just disappointing when its all gone after a restart.
Thanks to all!
Yep. ZynSampler is still not ready for production, specially if you want to trigger long samples from the sequencer. We hope to improve it very soon. Stay tuned!
It seems this workflow needs to be improved. The problem is that the UI is not re-scanning the plugin’s preset list after you save from the UI, so the patch you saved is not found by zynthian. Currently we lack a mechanism for signaling when a preset has been saved from the plugin’s UI. Please, open an issue in our tracking system so we don’t forget to fix this in the next iteration:
Option 1: Save presets from the zynthian UI instead of using the native GUI. You can still edit the presets with the native GUI (VNC), but do the “save” step from the zynthian UI. You will find it in the processor options.
Option 2: This only works in Vangelis branch (testing). After saving from the native GUI, scan for new presets from the processor options and when finished, choose the preset from the list. Most of times you can’t save presets inside a “factory” bank, so your presets will be saved inside the “None” bank. You can create new user banks if you like and move your saved presets.
I have another question regarding midi contol of parameters of synths that aren’t fully supported. Is this not possible when the parameters are not shown on the Zynth pages of the selected plugin?
If you can MIDI learn the parameters you want from the native GUI, you can use any of the MIDI control tools for controling. Some usera are using this path to MIDI control the virus emulator, for instance.
Anyway, we are working to have access to all parameters in surge and other engines. Stay tuned.
“You can still edit the presets with the native GUI (VNC), but do the “save” step from the zynthian UI. You will find it in the processor options.” Not finding anything that looks like “processor options” in the Zynthian UI. Obviously I missing something that probably obvious. Or, maybe by processor options, it’s all the parameters that are exposed for a givn processor. In that case I’m not seeing anything that allows me to save changes to a given parameter for that specific preset.
Sincere appologies, I did miss the reference when I first searched for “processor options”. I found it but could not find a reference to the save step in the processor options. 5.14 Processor Options is unpopulated in the Oram UI Users guide. I assume it’s “Export chain as snapshot”.
Maybe it’s better to describe my workflow. With no chains present, I create an instrument chain and select an instrument. In the instrument options, I modify some parameters (say filter cutoff, osc1 volume, etc., etc.). Now I want to save the changes to this instrument (export chain as snapshot? is there another way?) Now I want to add this (modified) instrument back into another snapshot that already has multiple instruments in it. Basically I’m trying to create and store a new preset that can be freely used in other chains using the VNC-UI and seem to be stuck. I have spent a good amount of time looking both in wiki and in discourse. I’m currently in Oram Staging.
Sounds like a feature which could be named “Import chain from a previous Snapshot or ZSS” I’ve never seen it although I’m still new. It’s also a feature I could really use. Thank for describing it.
What you describe sounds like this which is a new feature, added only yesterday to vangelis branch. It is so hot-off-the-press that noone is yet to test it but it works like this:
Export a single chain
Navigate to chain options menu.
Select “Export chain…”.
Select bank.
Enter a name for the snapshot.
If duplicate file, confirm save.
A snapshot is saved with just the single chain including its mixer and MIDI binding config.
Merge/import chains
Navigate to the snapshot view and select the snapshot to import.
From the context menu, select “Load Merge Chains”.
The following elements will be merged with the current config:
Each chain within the snapshot:
Title
Next available mixer channel will be assigned
MIDI channel
Index of last accessed processor (doesn’t seem to work)
Processors in chain (assigned next available processor ids)
Position of fader within chain (can’t test due to issue 1275)
zs3-0:
Processor configuration (remapped to new processor ids)
Mixer strip controls but not MIDI binding
Chain configuration: audio/midi in/out, transpose/keyrange, midi binding, etc.
It was requested by @gonzoB in November 2021 but only when I was using my zynthian this week did I get the enthusiasm to implement it. (I had a nice guitar proccessing chain that I wanted to reuse and realised that it wasn’t that easy. There are export and import preset options in webconf but the ability to save a whole chain is better.)
Be aware that this is very hot and is likely to change implementation before hitting Oram so don’t expect it to work and continue working the same way throughout its development cycle. Indeed I know of some flaws and am working on some other stuff that will impact this.
So, in summary, and maybe I should have put this TLDR; at the top: it is not currently possible to export individual chains and merge them into a working system in Oram, but it will be soon.
Thanks so much - this seems to do most of what I want. I would not have expected the option to save a preset to be under “Add MIDI-FX” but there is was “Save Preset” and it saved my parameter edits under a new preset name I provided (in the “none” directory). In this case it was changed parameters in the Helm instrument. To view the none directory took a bit of experimentation. So if I go: Add MIDI-FX > Helm > Processor Options > Preset List it gives me the native presets but if I hit the back arrow the “none” directory shows up and there’s the preset. This is fine.
@jofemodo the reason we had the preset management option in the processor options menu is because some presets do not have any default presets and so they do not display the preset list - hence you can’t access presets or preset options.
Will you please describe how to acess the preset optons?
although I’m still new. It’s also a feature I could really use. Thank for describing it.