Request/suggestion: automount usb-storage (soundfonts etc) for offloading sdcard read/writes

Software
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Hello!
New on the forum, tried the latest image and it works great, im using it “headless” no screen, no knobs etc. My plan is to use the rpi with a planned homemade keyboardenclosure. It will mainly be used to play epiano and aucoustic piano. I initially used a HDMI display to setup a default snapshot, once done the rpi can be hidden inside the chassi.

What i came to think of was that it would be quite great if usbstorage (where i would like to place soundfonts and other samples) was automounted and that fluidsynth + linuxsampler knew where to read this directory. Or even cooler if there was and added ui for this in the webconf.

Big thanks to the developers! Take care
/B

Edit: clarification

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This looks like a job for autofs.

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AAah but we need to see hardware pictures, inputs, outputs and . . . :face_with_monocle:

What platform are you observing the zynth from ? and how do you access the GUI?

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I will provide some pictures when the wooden build is done :slight_smile: I initially used a HDMI display to set up a default snapshot. Now i don’t use the interface, it might change later(and the I might add a display) but the primary sound will still be epiano.
For output I use a USB sabrent with a 3.5mm to 6.3mm converter.
The actual keyboard will be a salvage from and Old digital keyboard.

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Good idea! If I assume right the program would autostart and run in the background waiting for a usbstorage to connect, I would only need to ad a link from where fluidsynth or linuxsampler reads soundfonts. Would a symbolic link work? Regards

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A symbolic link should work fine. But you could configure autofs to mount the USB over the existing directory.

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Ah great! And it wouldn’t change the files already there? It would only add the mounted content?

Also, I tried to copy the files (before I thought of the idea) from my USB to the zynthian directory where the wiki says it looks, but none of the programs found any soundfonts. Do I need to set permissions for the files copied?

Note that I only have some knowledge about the Linux system

Thank you

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If you mount over an existing directory then you can’t access the existing files. Zynthian has a system dir and a usr dir to read soundfonts from so you could pick one of them to mount over and place the ones you want to keep in the other.

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Ah i see, will try it and report back.
Thanks heaps!

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Currently, automount is installed and configured in zynthian. When you plug-in a pen-drive, it should be mounted automatically on “/media/usb0”.

For getting FluidSynth & LinuxSampler to read the soundfonts from the pendrive, you should create a “soundfont” folder in the pendrive and copy to it the soundfonts you want to use. You have to use a very strict directory structure, that is different for SF2 and SFZ/GIG. Take a look to “/zynthian/zynthian-data/soundfonts” and use it as a reference.

After that, you should create a “soft link” from “/zynthian/zynthian-my-data/”:

mv /zynthian/zynthian-my-data/soundfonts /zynthian/zynthian-my-data/soundfonts.bak
ln -s /media/usb0/soundfonts /zynthian/zynthian-my-data/soundfonts

Of course, if enough people find useful this trick and start to use it, i would consider to modify the engine code for looking at the pendrive without needing a soft-link …

Kind Regards,

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Ah i see! Thank you for explaining. Will look into it further tomorrow.

If enough ppl find this useful, an Idea would be to have the system look in a document for places to look. Kinda like sources.list

Regards

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Also since the rpi 4 have the USB 3 and seems to be superior over the microsd controller in speeds, it should load soundfonts faster than when on sdcards, if the soundfonts are big :slight_smile:

Best regards

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I can’t try it for now but this would definitely be usefull for me :slight_smile:

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I would implement like that:
When a zynthian folder is found in the usb mount, link everything in that folder as symbolic link.
@jofemodo, tell me where and and try something…

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Let me think about it … and please, open a task in our wonderful Tracking System :wink:

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Hi @zynthianers!

I just commited an implementation of this. Now you can access presets & soundfonts stored in a USB drive. Simply plug the drive and that’s all. The presets & soundfonts from the external USB-drive will be shown in the zynthian UI with “EX” prefix (external).

You have to use this directory structure:

  • soundfonts

    • GIG
      • bank-1
        • soundfont-1 (file)
        • …
        • soundfont-n (file)
      • …
      • bank-n
    • SF2
      + soundfont-1 (file)
      + …
      + soundfont-n (file)
    • SFZ
      • bank-1
        • soundfont-1 (directory)
        • …
        • soundfont-n (directory)
      • …
      • bank-n

  • presets

    • zynaddsubfx
      • bank-1
        • preset-1
        • …
        • preset-n
      • …
      • bank-n
    • puredata
      • bank-1
        • patch-1 (directory)
        • …
        • patch-n (directory)
      • …
      • bank-n
    • etc.

Some volunteer to write a brief explanation on the wiki? :wink:

Enjoy!

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11 posts were split to a new topic: Zynthian + Vintage Keyboard build

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I’m writing the wiki page for external storage right now. Does the presets search path get expanded only to /media/usb0, or to every usb mass storage device connected? (Or does the automounter only mount one in the case of multiples?)

Edit: Here’s the page. Can you check it for correctness, esp. with regards to multiple drives? External storage - ZynthianWiki

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Only one: /media/usb0

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