I’ve been using testing for some time, so I’ve got a fair amount of lv2 patches saved as well as snapshots. Is there a ‘best practice’ way to transition to the new release candidate? Like doing backups on testing and then restore with the release candidate?
I would recommend some or all of these steps:
- Use webconf to backup the Zynthian configuration which will backup:
- Captures
- Custom presets (including favourites flags)
- Snapshots
- Custom soundfonts
- Ideally use a different SD card for the migration:
- Power off Zynthian
- Remove SD Card
- Write new image to a new / different SD Card
- Insert new SD Card in Zynthian, power on and wait for initialisation to complete (several minutes) - main menu will be displayed
- If not using a fresh image:
- Use webconf to change the repositories to Staging 2210
- Run update
- If using a fresh image:
- Use webconf to restore the Zynthian configuration
- Use webconf to search for new plugins and presets
You should have your user data backed up in case you need to restore it. An alternative to using a new SD Card may be to backup the whole SD Card image but that requires some technical knowledge and quite some time. I wouldn’t recommend it.
If you have added effects to the main mixbus you may find these don’t work after the migration to 2210. You will have to:
- Write down the main mixbus effects chain including each effect’s parameter settings
- You may be able to use webconf to show this detail which may save some effort (copy and paste to a text editor)
- Remove the effects from the main mixbus
- Save snapshot
- Clean All
- Load snapshot
- Add effects to main mixbus
- Manually apply customisation to effects
This issue was observed late in the development and testing cycle and deemed an acceptable manual fix because we felt that few users will have added effects to the main mixbus of Testing branch and to fix within code would have been messy, time consuming and prone to error.
[Edit] I removed some of the steps above as backup will do many things. I have also just partially fixed the webconf backup/restore so you may have to update webconf to get that working. (This could prove to be a catch-22 - you want to backup before updating but may need to update to backup!)
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Congratulations
It’s been a while I didn’t play with my Zynthians. So I’ve decided to burn a fresh SD card with the new baby.
And I have played a bit these last few days with the new staging image: Wouaouh it’s really really nice. What I appreciate:
- The huge software improvement with a lot of new features
- Workflow is excellent even with no physical controllers.
- The provided snapshots with associated sequences are fun for making directly some noise without any hassel. Maybe it could be an idea to load on the very first boot one of them by default so that a new user can play immediately.
I’ve noticed some little bugs that are aleady reported on Zynthian issue tracker.
And I think enabling hotspot mode by default when no network is available could be an enhancement during the setup process (ie: configuring Zynthian hardware with webconf).
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So I loaded up the Staging-2210 image, after first doing a Backup from Testing, and then a Restore when the new image started up. A couple of initial things:
- Tried to load up a snapshot saved from Testing. First I just got a grey screen, then after fiddling around and doing a reboot, I got up the snapshot partly: The ZynAddSubFX, OB-Xd and NoiseMaker chains where there but with no patches loaded. The Pianoteq and Dexed chains were missing entirely.
- For NoiseMaker, I could press Back and select a new patch which played fine.
- For OB-Xd, initially I could select a patch, but it wouldn’t play. Pressing Back when the parameter pages were up did not go the patch selection screen, but just removed all OB-Xd parameters entirely.
- After removing the OB-Xd chain and creating a new one all was well.
- None of my own OB-Xd patches can be found in the GUI; I can see them in /zynthian/zynthian-my-data/presets/lv2 though, and I can also see the bank (directory) in webconf using Library → Presets & Soundfonts…
- Creating a new Dexed chain went fine, but the custom banks I’d uploaded in Testing can’t be found, despite them being visibly present in /zynthian/zynthian-my-data/presets/lv2 . The banks are visible in the webconf when accessed using Library → Presets & Soundfonts.
I haven’t reported this as bugs yet as I’m not sure its even supposed to work to load a snapshot from Testing, given the issues I’ve experienced. But I still think that my custom patches / banks should be visible for for instance OB-Xd and Dexed. For ZynAddSubFX they do exist though. I seem to recall having the same problem on Testing, but eventually it got resolved during an update and suddenly all my previously uploaded banks were there.
EDIT: My custom patches and banks are back. Note sure what I did as I’ve been fiddling about quite a bit; one thing I have done is stop and start the zynthian service a couple of times. So can’t really give any specific actions here.
BTW, it’s a pity the ZynAddSubFX version is so old (3.0.5). There are a number of nice features in newer versions that Zynthian would benefit from. It’s easy enough to build from source; not sure how hard it would be to create a distributable image.
I missed a step in my procedure (which I have just added above): Use webconf to search for new plugins and presets. This will update the Zynthian’s cache that is uses to optimise access to the vast quantity of plugins and presets.
We aspire to ensuring seamless migration from previous Stable to next Stable (staging-2210 is being used to validate this). There may be some (small) issues with migrating from some previous testing versions but what you describe sounds bad. I will try to figure out what the issues are. Will you please provide some broken snapshots?
You could submit a feature request to update ZynAddSubFX.
Ah, this is probably what fixed it for me. While trying out different things, I was going to try and see what would happen if I added one of the Dexed banks that had seemingly gone missing, but mistakingly went to the ‘Search for new plugins and presets’ page and clicked on it. After half a minute or so of inactivity (just the progress indicator spinning), I realized my mistake and went to another page (or possibly restarted the whole zynthian service, can’t remember).
Is this something which should be intrinsic to the restore operation then? It’s not really intuitive.
Will do (on both accounts).
BTW, am I supposed to tag bug reports in the issue tracker which relate to the Staging-2210 release? I see that some issues have a Milestone associated with them but it seems something that only administrators can do?
No, leave the tagging to us. The milestone tag is used to define what we feel should be resolved by the next release. It isn’t necessarily what the user wants 
. We need to be pragmatic and hence some things may need to wait for a later update.
The search for plugins and presets is a bit clunky. The upstream library has some issues which makes this a difficult process (either slow or prone to excessive use of resources). It isn’t something that is easily incorporated into a timely process. It is run during a fresh install but not during an update because of the time it takes to run. We could possibly run it as a background task in its own thread… but not today!
Sure, no problem, I was just thinking if there was something I should have done that I’d missed.
I did some more experiments with snapshots. The problem seems to be with snapshots that contain a Pianoteq (lv2) layer/channel . Basically, I can report the following.
- On my Testing SD I have a Pianoreq PRO license. Some of the snapshots written using this image contain an LV2 Pianoteq layer (LV2 because I wanted access to all the parameters from the Zynthian UI).
- I initially hadn’t transferred Pianoteq to the Staging-2210 version.
- When loading these snapshots into the Staging-2210 version (as yet still with the default trial Pianoteq version), I end up with a blank mixer (blank as in all grey - no chains/layers - not even a main strip!).
- So, I uploaded the Pianoteq binary to Staging-2210, and supplied the license key, which worked fine, although the webconf listed it as STANDARD (I think, at least it was neither TRIAL nor PRO) rather than PRO, until I rebooted the Zynthian, and it then showed PRO.
- Setting up a layer/chain with the standalone Pianoteq works fine.
- Setting up a layer/chain with the LV2 Pianoteq doesn’t work. After pressing Select when selecting the MIDI channel for the chain, the Zynthian logo animation runs for a couple of seconds, then stops, and the same screen (channel select) remains.
- Trying to load a snapshot containing an LV2 Pianoteq chain has the same effect as before: all-grey mixer and no sounds.
An additional artifact after having failed to load a snapshot with an LV2 Pianoteq chain, is that when loading (valid/working) snapshots subsequently, the Main strip in the mixer is muted. It’s easy enough to unmute, but a bit surprising. Perhaps Zynthain does this as a safety precaution after having failed to load a snapshot (to protect users’ ears?)? This only happens after having tried to load a snapshot with an LV2 Pianoteq chain. If I reboot Zynthian and load a (valid)
snapshot, Main is not muted.
I’ve attached two snapshots containing LV2 Pianoteq layers, which fail to load in Staging-2210:
029-Pianoteq.zss (25.7 KB)
030-220922.zss (47.6 KB)
Apart from the snapshots with Pianoteq, other snapshots loaded fine. I’m not 100% convinced that the channel volumes were right, because some of them had a large spread from chain to chain, but I didn’t A-B-test against the original snapshots so can’t say for sure.
Are you using the latest update of staging 2210? We did have an issue with blank mixer that was fixed about a week ago.
During snapshot loading the mixer’s main output is muted to avoid undesirable noises. There tends to be xruns during snapshot loading and also some synths are noisy during shutdown. If the snapshot failed to load triggering an error then the mute may have not been removed. It is handy to know because it points to an exception in the code during the snapshot loading.
I am able to add a Pianoteq LV2 chain but I haven’t loaded a licence into this unit. I just did that (and am reminded that it is a bit irksome, download binary, upload to zynthian, wait whilst it verifies then installs, reboot zynthian, activate license (wait…), update presets. Having done all that - it still works although like before, there are no presets in the LV2 version. I have STAGE version.
Hm, by now it might have been a week since I updated. I’ll check.
The thing I find strange about the muted main output, is that it’s the snapshot loaded after the failed one that exhibits the mute. And possibly the one after that as well, etc. It’s like the error status from the failed snapshot load is not cleared but remains until the machine is rebooted (most likely restarting the zynthian process will suffice).
I had noticed unexpected muted output several times during development but didn’t investigate further. The output is muted at the start of snapshot loading then returned to its previous state (muted/unmuted) at the end. So if the output is muted before loading the snapshot it will remain muted after the snapshot is loaded, even if the snapshot was saved with the output unmuted. This may appear to be inconsistent behaviour because the other chain mutes are restored to the state saved in the snapshot but I think it makes sense. If you have muted the output there may be a good reason for it and loading a snapshot may not be the best workflow for unmuting. (I can see it might be argued that workflow is desirable but i would suggest it is a minority workflow that is easily resolved by manual unmute.) Anyway - that is the behaviour by design. If it differs from your experience then let us know.
I used to get it a lot but it seems to not to occur now. Especially after rebuilding snapshots from scratch…
Just flashed the new image and started setting it up, looking great so far, can’t wait to get off work and mess with it some more
Again, doing a Search for new Plugins & Presets seems to have cleared up my Pianoteq issues. My Pianoteq (-LV2) snapshots now load fine. I suspect the reason I’ve not considered doing Search for new Plugins & Presets that often is because I’ve rarely started with a fresh image.
@riban I agree that what you describe regarding the main output muting makes sense. Right now with everything loading fine I’m not getting any issues with it, but I seem to recall that when I was having issues, if I had a patch failing to load, then loaded a valid one, and mute was then set, the next snapshot loaded again had its mute set even if I unmuted the output prior to loading it, which is not really how you described it. But my memory may be playing tricks on me.
So right now, the release seems very stable indeed. I’m still thinking that the behavior could be more predictable in terms of not requiring a user to search for new LV2 plugins if that is not what the user actually wanted to do, but I suspect that’s nothing new for this release and can be worked on a later date.
I like the new messages on the zynthian screen. Didn’t manage to get a screen shot.
Not sure about the 7" screen settings. I had to remove the kernel settings to get it to fly…
Like the one when you power off, says “TTYL” noticed that last night, love it
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Hi all!
I just wanted to contribute a little bit to the final test, so I’ve installed a fresh image of the staging-2210 version to give it a try before using it on stage. My main use is to play different instruments which I choose with Program Change (PC) MIDI commands, learnt with subsnapshots.
Everything works fine in the stable version, every PC loads. the appropriate subsnapshot.
But in this new version, although PCs are properly received, as seen in to MIDI Log, subsnapshots are not loaded,
Are old snapshots incompatbile? Must I MIDI learn them all again?
I can provide the zss on demand 
Thanks for your help!
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Hi @pau - nice to see a new face here on the forum. Let’s make sure you enjoy the experience!
We aspire to full compatibility with old snapshots so please do provide one that we may test. Have you checked the settings for program change handling? There is an option in the admin menu (and webconf) to enable “Program Change ZS3” behaviour and another to enable “MIDI Bank Change”. These are the most likely candidates to affect this behaviour.
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Thanks for the warm welcome @riban , I’ve been reading and learning for the last 5 months since I became a proud zynthian owner and ambassador
I have Program Change ZS3 enabled, I had doubts about the new MIDI Bank Change switch, so I’ve tried to enable and disable it to the same result.
I also had doubts about the new behaviour. In the stable version you have to be in the Control Screen to be able to receive PCs (layer screen does not work). In the new release I’ve tried to remain in the mixer screen (chains view) and in the instrument screen, with the same result.
I can see the ZS3 controller values inthe the snapshot’s chain information, so I’m pretty sure they are there.
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I concur! ZS3 works when created in staging but a ZS3 created in stable does not seem to work in staging. I will take a look…
I have created issue #783 and assigned to @jofemodo who may be better placed to investigate. It looks like the ZS3 configuration has changed. I observe that webconf still decodes the old file format, i.e. it will show the ZS3 info for old snapshots but not new ones.
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