New stable version is almost here: Staging-2210

jofemodo · October 5, 2022, 2:13pm

Hi @zynthianers!

It’s been hard work to get the new stable version to land, but we are very close now. So close, that we have a good Release Candidate, so you can start enjoying right now and also help us with the final testing. Here is the download link:

~~https://os.zynthian.org/test/2022-10-07-zynthianos-staging-2210.zip~~
~~https://os.zynthian.org/test/2022-10-26-zynthianos-staging-2210.zip~~
https://os.zynthian.org/test/2022-10-28-zynthianos-staging-2210.zip

The biggest change is the mixer that totally replaces the “layer list”. It looks like this:

but the list of improvements and fixes is really long. These are the more important ones:

Mixer, including full MIDI learning
“Chain” is the new word. No more “layers” anywhere.
Main FXs (aka Master-FXs)
SooperLooper Engine, including a nice custom GUI
Audio Player Engine
Multitrack Audio Recorder
Improved chain management
User presets for many engines (save preset!) => LV2s, Audio Player, SooperLooper, etc.
Audio FXs on MOD-UI engine
Improved ZS3s subsnapshots
Improved MIDI learn
Improved MIDI Output
Customized GUI Widgets => i.e. SooperLooper, Audio Player, Tuner, 1/3 Octave Spectrum Display,
Metronome
Improved remote control: new CUIAs
Listbox “drag action” is now very usable, especially on capacitive touchscreens
Improved on-screen buttons
Touchscreen calibration now supports rotation
Touch control is improved in many other ways
Lots of GUI improvements and bug fixes

Some of these changes deserve extra comments:

1.) Layers are dead. Long live Chains
We decided to replace the word “layer” because it’s confusing and it doesn’t reflect the concept. “Chain” is the new word and we feel it reflects quite nicely the concept. We avoided the word “channel” because we will release the limitation/association with MIDI channels in the near future.
2.) Main FXs and more
By bold clicking the Main mixer strip you will access the “main-chain options” menu. From here you can manage the FX chain and also access other specific functionality like “start/stop audio recording”, etc.
3.) Audio Player Engine
Now you can play more than one audio track. And you can use it as a basic sampler, recording and using midi notes to play the recorder audio at different “speeds”. And you will see the wave. Yessss!
4.) User Presets
One of the long awaited features. You can now save presets on all LV2 engines, SooperLooper and Audio Player. For doing so you have to access chain options and click the engine in the chain tree. If the engine support user presets you will see the related options. From the preset list, you can bold click any preset for accessing the preset options. From here you can mark/unmark it as favorite and if it’s a user preset, you would be capable of renaming or deleting.
5.) Multitrack recording
Zynthian’s audio recorder records a stereo wave file from the mixer’s main output (post effects) by default. If you enable any chain to feed the multitrack recorder (within chain options, audio output submenu) then the audio recorder changes to a multitrack recorder with a stereo pair for each enabled chain. The main output can also be enabled to add it as another pair of tracks in the recording. This creates a multitrack wave file.
6.) Audio FXs on MOD-UI engine
MOD-UI engine now can be chained to FX’s from zynthian UI. It’s also fully integrated in the mixer, so you can control how MOD-UI’s audio output is mixed with the rest of chains.
7.) Improved ZS3 subsnapshots
Subsnapshots now include the full chain’s state: clone, capture, audio routing, MIDI learning. Also, on multitimbral mode, ZS3 subsnapshots are global and they include the state for ALL chains.
8.) Improved MIDI Output
MIDI output works much better. Stepseq and MIDI player output is always routed to the enabled outputs. By default, MIDI input from controller devices is not routed to output, so you can cleanly route through the MIDI chains. From the admin menu, you can enabled/disabled the “Bridge MIDI input to output” flag. Remember that enabling/disabling MIDI outputs must be done from webconf. We hope to improve this very soon.
9.) Customized GUI Widgets
Now we have a mechanism for creating customized GUI widgets for every engine. It’s not difficult if you have some programming skills, and it would be a good entry point to zynthian development. You could enjoy developping a nice GUI for your favorite LV2 FX or synth. It’s not documented yet, but the existing examples should be enough.

We hope to update the wiki documentation / user’s guide in the next days/weeks. Of course, you could help us with it and gain some reputation points

If you find bugs, please, report here before opening a ticket in our issue tracker. If you have doubts about how to report a bug properly, this link could help you:

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

Finally i would like to give ALL credit to @riban, who has been working so hard in this development cycle. He’s the main developer behind most of the new features, while i’ve been roaring most of the time because he changed too many things.

Thanks a lot, @riban … and please, get out of my brain, mate!!

Enjoy!

wyleu · October 7, 2022, 9:40am

Could we break the documentation down to manageable chunks and allocate to various blessed individuals…?

jofemodo · October 7, 2022, 9:51am

We should. But before that, we could think about how this documentation should be structured. Perhaps it’s a good time to “change the user’s guide structure and style”.
Let’s talk about this in a separated thread. Please, do the honors, @wyleu !

Tabula · October 7, 2022, 1:53pm

Tabula · October 7, 2022, 5:02pm

Wow ! Audio player engine is a amazing new feature !

wyleu · October 7, 2022, 5:30pm

@riban did that, we were looking at how to play audio clips into a live show with a decent degree of accuracy.

Lumm · October 7, 2022, 8:31pm

Thanks for all the development on Zynthian! I really love my Zynthian-Kit but unfortunately I am not able to play with it very often at the moment … I really look forward to the new release.

le51 · October 8, 2022, 8:05am

Great !

I’m downloading the image right now

paingrille · October 8, 2022, 11:57am

Congratulations ! Thanks to all for this tough work !

Only knew the testing version which I use since I finished my build this summer (mostly because of the mixer and “chain” concept which I find easyer to understand).

I wish I will find some time to contribute on the next evolutions as I find this project amazing !

Thanks for your dedication and really hard work !

jtode · October 8, 2022, 2:43pm

Heya, I’m running the new image in a touch-only configuration with just an RPi3 - I have an RPi4, but for whatever reason it doesn’t work with this screen, which is otherwise pretty great for this purpose in terms of size and features. I’m only using this for keys at the moment so I’m not overly concerned about the lack of power, and I’m interviewing for an awesome job later this month so probably I can get a kit pretty soon.

Anyways, I’ve got “Enable Onscreen Buttons” checked in the web config, but there appear to be no onscreen buttons. On the current stable they appear across the bottom of the screen. I tried checking and unchecking the box with a save between, I saw the UI reload on the screen but nothing changed.

Possibly this is due to the weird resolution (1024x600)? Anyways, lemme know if I can send some logs, or alternatively, it’s Saturday, give me a hint where to look to fix it myself and maybe I’ll have a go. Who knows, might even work. :>

riban · October 8, 2022, 2:51pm

Hi @jtode

We changed this behaviour somewhat. The buttons only appear if there is not already a method of performing the button actions for the view with the touch screen. You should see the buttons on the chain control view.

jerash · October 9, 2022, 1:42pm

3.) Audio Player Engine
Now you can play more than one audio track. And you can use it as a basic sampler, recording and using midi notes to play the recorder audio at different “speeds”. And you will see the wave. Yessss!

oh yeah, this is really really a feature i’ll use a lot in the coming future (studio remake in progress)

Many thanks for the awesome continuous progress on Zynthian, which is now coming closer and closer to competing with some branded workstations … well probably even outstanding these !

wyleu · October 9, 2022, 3:16pm

7 posts were split to a new topic: Staging-2210 Snapshot Loading

daycleier · October 10, 2022, 6:14am

Hey. Really awesome work. This thing is getting better than I hoped for, when I bought it.

I’m really interested in 9.) Customized GUI Widgets
In particular for Pianoteq and Surge. Do these support that feature? I, being a designer, am interested and ready to develop custom GUIs for those engines. How can I start? Do you have any documentation about it?

riban · October 10, 2022, 6:18am

When the control page is displayed it checks if there is a custom gui available for the engine and shows it, otherwise it shows the list of control pages. You can use an existing custom widget as a template and develop for any engine. There isn’t specific documentation for this but the use of existing code as a base plate will get you far.

STM · October 10, 2022, 6:32pm

Great! Looking forward to try it out and test the new features!

Thanks for the hard work!

Tabula · October 10, 2022, 9:38pm

I am a newbie on linux architecture, where do we find the widgets templates and templates for the list of controls ? Thanks !

le51 · October 11, 2022, 11:56am

have a look here:

github.com

zynthian/zynthian-ui/blob/testing/zyngui/zynthian_widget_base.py

#!/usr/bin/python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#******************************************************************************
# ZYNTHIAN PROJECT: Zynthian GUI
# 
# Zynthian Widget Base Class
# 
# Copyright (C) 2015-2022 Fernando Moyano <jofemodo@zynthian.org>
#
#******************************************************************************
# 
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
# published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
# the License, or any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.

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and implementation here:

github.com

zynthian/zynthian-ui/blob/testing/zyngui/zynthian_widget_tunaone.py

#!/usr/bin/python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#******************************************************************************
# ZYNTHIAN PROJECT: Zynthian GUI
# 
# Zynthian Widget Class for "x42 Instrument Tuner" (tuna#one)
# 
# Copyright (C) 2015-2022 Fernando Moyano <jofemodo@zynthian.org>
#
#******************************************************************************
# 
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
# published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
# the License, or any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.

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Andres · October 11, 2022, 5:08pm

Very Impresive work. The new face of the mixer looks very nice

As a guy that has complained about channels before, I must say that I think channels are very useful, the limitation is on some controllers that makes the life very difficult if you want to change channel in the middle of a song. In other words, the problem are not the channels but the implementation in some midi controllers.

Anyway, I want to thank you for the really great job on the zynthian os.