I have a possible fix for the meters. It works so I will have another look at the code before submitting a PR upstream.
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I have updated zynthian page with a table with all models that I could find from sources available. I could not upload excel file there - wiki is probably not allowing excel files to be uploaded.
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Using zynthian with AIDA-X and other audio effects for last few days as my main digital guitar fx-amp box I have realised that there are few things that we should enhance.
I am listing them for discussion specifically in regards of potential lv2 host replacement.
Universal effect bypass feature. Guitarist often enable or disable fx in the chain during play. Typicall example is switching on overdrive for soloing. Many effect plugins do have bypass feature but not all. Probably this can be done outside the plugin fx and doing something on jackd directly. Maybe be a part of bold press screen where preset, remove, replace features are. The same should be assignable to midi cc so that midi foot switch can be used.
Universal way of setting a delay and modulation tempo. Guitarist often tap to set a delay tempo. Specifically when playing doted 8 delay (Gilmour and Edge are famovous for it). I assume that this is going to be harder to implement. We already have a tempo feature that can be set by tapping metronome button. However, that tempo is mostly used by sequencer and not used by any delay effect that I have tried. I donât know if we can somehow sync zynthian tempo with delay plugin tempo settings.
We may want to move this to another thread.
Yes! Some effects have bypass. Some are labelled incorrectly, e.g. bypass=on for effect on! Some do not have a bypass. We could do this with jack routing but that adds complexity to design and is likely to cause disruption to audio on switching. (Changing jack routing can cause undesirable effects - it should be better.) A LV2 host replacement should ideally include bypass. mod-host provides this feature. We could add a control for bypass to every effect as part of the default LV2 engine handler.
We are planning to revisit the transport and timing in Zynthian. This is a complex area with many interactions that are challenging to resolve. What we have now is suboptimal without the level of integration with plugins that we desire. Some (most?) plugins allow non-synchronised timing which can be advantageous as well as sync to jack. The latter should work but we currently only run the jack transport (and hence clock) when sequencer or MIDI player is running so the plugin sync only works under those scenarios. We could run the jack transport constantly and use another flag for sequencer & MIDI player. That would probably require a separate timebase too. If jack clock is always running (to provide tempo for plugins) then its timebase is constantly advancing and we donât have instant start for sequences. (Need to wait for next barâŚ) Trust me when I say that, time is complex.
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Yes, I spotted this and therefore I am not trusting it. Often I would drastically change some parameter to figure out when effect is on.
For delay effects, where tempo is most important we do not need to sync timing to single clock. We only need to make sure that tempo value is the same. Delay is always linked to original note played and therefore as long as original note is played in correct tempo by musician or sequencer, delayed note will be in sync because it has a same tempo value.
In other words, we just need to somehow allow user to set delay tempo value by tapping. We donât need delay to be synced to a clock.
Here is the sample of what can be quickly configured using a clean default amp model in Aida-x and little bit of delay, chorus and reverb.
and with new strings it could be even more sparkling - strings on my strat are almost year old.
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Remember that the input impedance of Zynthian (official kit) isnât high enough for direct guitar coil pickup connection so an impedance matching âbufferâ (like a Boss pedal) is highly recommended.
Just adding that I really appreciate the work to get this plugin into Zynthian as well! I am using Zynthian for guitar 98% of the time and while the other amp sims were usable, this one really sounds much better. Thanks again!
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Bollie Delay will pick up the metronome setting if you set the Tempo Mode to MOD/Host. it doesnât display the tempo you are tapping but it does work.
I think the best solution for tap delays is what Bollie is supposed to be doing - either pick it up from the host or have an independent tap tempo that isnât used for anything else. That would possibly be the easiest to implement as well as it doesnât need to tie in to the sequencer, etc
Yes, you need to set the LV2 to use host sync for it to synchronise with⌠the host 
. This is a mechanism that allows us to synchronise our plugins or leave them free running or to use their own timing. There are sometimes seperate options to lock to host clock and to sync to host (bars).
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I am not sure that syncing delay to clock is priority.
However value of the delay tempo is important. We could start configuring what delay lv2 expose tempo value settings and enhance code for setting global tempo so that whenever it saves its value it also set any delay processor in opened snapshot that has this capability. IMO that would be the simplest approach.
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