A few days ago my Zynthian Kit came in. Thanks a lot, it’s amazing.
At first I had some problems, because it didn’t recognize the buttons, but someone in the forum posted that you have to switch to Kit V3 via the web interface (default was v2). And immediately everything worked. I am absolutely impressed.
I bought it mainly for a side project (synthie-pop), to have an inexpensive synthesizer-device for a live gig in March, so I can use my Yamaha P120. I am convinced that it will work great.
I solved the problem of not having a headphone output by using an old Behringer UCA222 (USB powered), connecting it to the Zynthian with a cinch cable and switched it to “monitor” (instead of using it as an audio-interface).
It works. Now, if the whole thing would become portable with a rechargeable battery, …
Now my real question: I also use the Zynthian as a midi interface to collect 3 keyboards (Yamaha P120, a master keyboard and a midified organ pedal) and send the midi signals to my PC (with 3 MIDI-channels). On it I run the new Organteq from Modart, so I can use my keyboards as 2 manuals and 1 organ pedal. Since Pianoteq apparently works on the Zynthian: Would it be possible to install ( technically and performance-technically) this software on the zynthian (beside Aeolus)? Or at least Organteq Alpha.
Unfortunately I am an absolute newbie.
According to the Modartt ForumThere are no Raspberry Pi builds for Organteq at the moment. As it isn’t open source we can’t build them either.
The only other pipe organ software I know for linux is GrandOrgue It’s sample based, so it could be a problem on a 1GiB RPi 3. We don’t have a build for that either but I can have a look at getting it working with Zynth. For now, Aeolus is your best, most immediate, bet.
edit: also, that’s a great tip about the UCA222 as a headphone adaptor!
Did you have a chance to try Grandorgue ? It could be very interesting if it can be adapted for our zynthian ecosystem as it is compatible with Hauptwerk organ libraries (those are plenty !).
Aeolus is good, but it has it’s own temperament and I didn’t find an option to make it equal or werkmeister yet as well as creating my own patches, presets.
Why not concentrating on improving Aeolus integration?
I think the Aeolus sound engine is quite good, and we could simply improve the current weak points:
Tuning => We have an interesting discussion about this: Aeolus Tuning
Well, Because this is me we’re talking about, why do something sensible when I can cobble together a fragile wire-and-string federation of loose ideas?
Aeolus and GrandOrgue are two sides of the reproduction coin too though. Why do we have Pianoteq and Linuxsampler? One is a modelled instrument with potential for great flexibility, one reproduces the sound of a specific instrument at a specific point when it was recorded. It’s the same with the two Organs.
Aeolus has the flexibility of function to be whatever the player wishes it to be, custom ranks, number of manuals, theoretically tuned however they like, to whichever timbre, whatever they want.
GrandOrgue means that a player can faithfully reproduce the sound of the church in Bureå, Sweden, or the organ in Peterborough Cathedral. Hauptwork make a big deal of reproducing not only the organ, but the resonances of the building that the organ is sat in too.
Yes, i understand all this … but GrandOrgue is not very zynthianic. It’s strongly attached to a GUI and there is no headless mode. From my POW, all zynthian engines should be capable of running from Zynthian-UI without an extra GUI.
And I would prefer to have a good “Pipe Organ Emulator” integration instead of having 2 poor ones
And I agree with you, @Baggypants that playing with the sound of historical organ is nothing alike modelled one. They are just different and have separate value. Maybe we can communicate with the developers of grandorgue and discuss a possibility of headless mode for the future ? Who knows, maybe they could be interested ?
