Hey I am thinking of getting the zynthian kit. My usual workflow is heavily based on looping. I have seen that zynthian support sooperlooper and other looper plugins. my question is, can i do the following with zynthian:
play internal samples, synths
connect external instruments like bass through audio in
have effects running
loop all this with a built in looper plugin
record the entire audio at the same time onto a usb stick
would that be possibly or is this too much for the raspberry pi/ will this lead to bad performance etc.
That’s a really difficult question as it will mostly depend on what internal synths and effects you run as to performance issues. If you just run Dexed and some reverb it will be fine, if you run Surge with setbfree and Pianoteq through a massive stack of choruses, delays, flangers and haas effects then you’re guaranteed x-runs. @riban has had a go at some benchmarking somewhere.
I’ve always found doing long recordings in the box go a bit odd and I prefer to record on a seperate machine. I’ve usually put it down to cheap usb sticks though. I loop with alo.
It’s fairly easy to get a simple Zynthian running with just a Pi, SD card, monitor and USB keyboards (QWERTY and musical). You will get better performance with a Pi 4. Pi 3 will work but will struggle with some engines.
i have a pi already, maybe i try to get zynthian os running there to see if it fits my purpose