Question regarding knobs and the OS in general

Hi there,

I’m new to this world and I’m thinking of buying a raspberry pi. I don’t know if buying the whole zynthian stuff, so here I have a couple of questions:

  • I have a MIDI controller with plenty of knobs (novation launch controller), so would it be possible to control the zynthian UI from this device?

  • and a more general question: would it be possible to have a raspberry that loads, let’s say, 10 instruments, each in MIDI channel, when booting up? So I’d select the instrument from my MIDI piano. This would be possible with zynthian or should I go the raspbian route?

Thank you all. Sorry if any of this is already asked, I was not able to find it

Zynthian is implemented on the Raspberry Pi with additional hardware for user interface. It may be controlled by a MIDI controller or class compliant USB device. There are several different Novation Launch Controllers, at least some are class compliant. If it works with Linux then it should work with Zynthian.

You can add different instruments on different MIDI channels. The RPi has limited resources which will run out if you assign too many different instruments. (Each instrument type that you assign will simultaneously run.) If you use the same instrument type with different patches on each channel then it is a shared resource so will not add to the resource load, hence will allow more simultaneous instruments.

Zynthian may prove a good match for what you want.

Thank you riban, very useful answer, I’ll give it a try