Hi @Voskomm! A veryh warm welcome.
I think what you are describing is all doable…
Zynpad allows you to configure each pad’s sequence with a lot of flexibility but we are working on a change that will restrict this so I will describe the elements that are likely to continue to work.
By default, each pad has a sequence with one track containing one pattern. The track’s MIDI channel is inherited from the pad column, except the last column which is MIDI channel 10. This can all be changed in the menu. Each column of pads have sequences in the same mutually exclusive group, i.e. starting a sequence will stop sequences in the same group at the next sync point. (You can consider sync points as end of bar.)
The default quantity of pads depends on the screen resolution so, on a V3 that would be 4x4. (Zynpad is square, with equal quantity of rows and columns but this will change in the future.) You can change the grid size in the menu so for your use case, you would set the grid size to 8x8. You would then ensure each pad had the MIDI channel you want it to control, e.g. first pad might be MIDI channel 1 to control synths on MIDI channel 1.
You access the patterns by bold SELECT the pad, so you can go in and create MIDI patterns. You talk about “clips” which sounds more like audio than MIDI. Maybe you can clarify what you want to launch.
You can assign a MIDI channel for triggering pads from an external device and you can assigne a MIDI note for each pad. A neater way to do this is to write a device driver which maps the external device to zynseq sequences.
Each sequence may be configured with a variety of start and stop modes, including one-shot and loop.
V3 (often based on RPi3) and V4 (using RPi4) have the same form factor but you could use zynthian mini which aims to keep the form factor small or build a custom device. (My first zynthian had a 2.4” screen.) There are many ideas in the forum on how to build unique devices!