Speaking of ROM emulators integration in the Zynthian OS, I have noticed that lately - after a surge of activity in the forum about ten days go, by virtue of collaboration between our main coders and @dsp56300 – the subject has fallen silent.
If my understanding is correct (which may also not be true) @riban, as one of the leading coders and maintainers of the Zynthian project, has understandable reasons for a certain reluctance to include DSP/ROM emulations in the OS: potential increase in support queries, legal inability to provide firmware of the original hardware, advice on usage criteria for preserving performance stability of the system.
As an advocate of the Access Virus emulators integration, both in the related Discord channel and this forum, I honestly believe that not taking full advantage of the recent interest and contribution from the Usual Suspects, an advanced programming team with a technical expertise comparable with the Zynthian Labs, would be a bit of a missed opportunity for this platform. This is not to diminish the impressive solo endeavour of @ricard, in developing a bespoke synthesiser plugin for Zynthian: they are simply different things, and I don’t think that one overshades the other.
In my understanding, being a long-time keyboard guy and hardware synths owner, there seems to be little in the software instruments area, commercial or open-source/freeware, that stands on-par with the DSP56300 emulators, in terms of raw sonic quality. For a good reason: almost nobody, especially in the field of unpaid plugins, can afford the staff and R&D time allotment required to develop sophisticated and highly optimised algorithms, like that implemented in the late 90’s and early 2000s on DSP chips, by major actors of digital hardware synths.
Since my heart has warmed with time to this amazing project, initiated by @jofemodo, I wish to highlight that new potential Zynthian users might prefer other DIY synth solutions or OS-based platforms, that will or can already integrate ROM emulators.
I think that presenting a disclaimer about autonomous firmware sourcing would be legally and technically straightforward (unless our coders have found further legal advice of a different rationale), and that DSP emus could be discreetly included, for the moment, as optional engines in a separate category, not enabled by default. Zynthian users might employ them with the required computing load awareness, as they already do with other CPU-heavy processors and plugins.
Just my earnest opinion, which I hope will not annoy anyone nor hurt anybody’s feelings.
Cheers to all @Zynthianers!