I play my wind controller in a concert band. I use flute (in various transpositions), oboe, glockenspiel and others. Generally I have the luxury of a bit of time before needing a preset, but quite often I need to change a preset in less than three seconds. I currently use a DynaSample XpressO with pre-configured presets, and I have a stomp box to change presets quickly.
I’d like to do the same with Zynthian and FluidSynth so I can have control over the source samples. However, it doesn’t quite work. I can create the presets tuned the way I like (snapshots), but it takes quite a while to change them as it involves re-loading Fluidsynth. In my case, reloading FS is not necessary, as all my snapshots use FS. In addition, I can’t drive them from the stomp box.
OK, so I can use sub-snapshots. The problem here is that I have to pre-create the snapshot with the sub-snaps that I’ll need, and that means that if I decide to “improve” a snapshot of, say, a flute, I’d have to tweak each snapshot that contains the flute. There’d be no guarantee that they are all the same.
So, what I’d like to have is
the ability to select a snapshot via a stomp box
the ability to not re-load Fluidsynth on change of snapshot (so the change is fast)
Is there a existing functionality that I’m missing?
I would expect to load a snapshot for a whole performance or at least a significant section of a performance, e.g. set / song / movement. Subsnapshots should allow rapid selection of presets from the instruments loaded in the snapshot. Another option is to use stage mode which directs all MIDI input to the currently selected layer but that may not give you much advantage as you are using just one engine.
I don’t really follow the issue with having a snapshot with fluidsynth and each required fluidsynth preset configured as a ZSS
@riban , you are right that ZSS works. The difficulty I have is that the each snapshot is not just a single sf2 preset - it has plugins in the chain (reverb, equaliser, etc). So if I create a snapshot with Eb Flute, C Flute, Clarinet, etc sub-snapshots for Performance A, then for Performance B I might need some of the same, but a few different instruments. In that situation I will have multiple copies of, say, the C Flute sub-snapshot. If after creating these I then find a better reverb plugin I have to adjust ALL of them, rather than one “master” snapshot.
An alternative is to be able to load "master"snapshots into a multi-layer mixer arrangement, and create a mechanism to jump between the layers. Unfortunately, the mixer (as it is) doesn’t allow loading of pre-configured snapshots - you have to build them from scratch, and you end up with the multiple copies problem I described above.