Zynth club. .. There's just one rule in Zynth club

News & Events
, ,
182

Monday!

1 Like
183

Again!

1 Like
184

The last one was on a Monday and it was fun. (Your definition of “fun” may vary.) Unfortunately whilst I was writing up notes my laptop’s own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilisation, leapt straight up through its neck and throttled its brain. This is all I managed to write before it died…

Amongst other things:

  • @wyleu appeared, briefly
  • Turn away now if you don’t want to know the scores - Wolves lost.
  • Cricket was identified as the most superior sport (by dint of failure to include any other sports in the discussion)
  • @ronsum and @riban demonstrated their OSC client controlling zynmixer and other parts of Zynthian
  • In true agile style, a non-working wire-frame was also shown with drawbars to control setBfree

There was much more said but it was not yesterday and this poor old brain doesn’t do not-yesterday. I look forward to not taking notes at another gathering then making up nonsense to write here. What day?

1 Like
185

I should be able to be on

186

Yeah, but what day?

187

let’s meet nowwwwww!

188

Well, a rather impromptu summons resulting in a fine evening spent conversing on subjects not limited to:

  • Benchmarking Zynthian plugins - more of this should be done, e.g. how does a RPi3 behave?
  • How do you make a better enclosure? Is 3D printing your answer with applications such as tinkercad or maybe you want to machine away material rather than add it in which case you could combine both to create your own CNC milling machine. Maker Muse has some advice on the subject.
  • How does Otto synth stack up against Zynthian (it loses on most metrics but the graphics are pretty) and should its sister project be called Anna? Does it bear more than a passing resemblance to Critter & Gui­tari Organ­elle or indeed Teenage Engineering OP-1?
  • Given a university project to make some noise, do you build a blackbox solution from MAX DSP with a couple of switches labelled with abstract descriptions? Who really needs to know what their controls actually do?
  • Not open of free in any sense of the word but a bit sex is the new Vector synth. You can watch those electrons orbit their nucleus whilst playing some cool riffs.
  • Is the Korg SuperDrums DDM-110 really the worst drum machine (as recently posited by an online blogger)? General consensus was that the toms were pretty good but the clap is… indescribable. I have one of these and cherish it (but don’t play it).
  • It is another month so Behringer must have released another synth, the Pro-800 which is reported to have a good drum machine. I may have heard that wrong because the linked review of this Prophet-600 mimic doesn’t seem to mention that and reference was made to this beast.
  • How do you solve a problem like Maria saving patch details with your MIDI recording? Maybe SYSEX is our saviour (like the actual proper solution any other supplier might provide). This has been discussed in the past and we should make it happen but we need a MIDI Manufacturer’s ID (or just use someone else’s as many have suggested). This led us to review the list of MIDI Manufacturer IDs and enjoy some of the less obvious ones like Nokia, US Robotics, etc.
  • OpenLabs was one of those in the list that triggered memories which led us to look at this review of the OpenLabs Neko 64. Behold the behemoth that is a PC and keyboard/s in a massive box. Much drooling ensued.
  • A love story was told of listening to almost all of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (BBC Radio 4 production) on Santa Monica Beach off MiniDisc sharing one earbud each. And of spending a long-haul flight entering cast list for that recording into the MiniDisc to later discover that it would not scroll the full cast within the period of one episode! And one should not start sentences with, “And” unless they are a rebel without a thesaurus.
  • There was discussion before and after I attended but that remains part of the dark matter that we know must exist but cannot currently explain. Some of it may involve vegetables.
7 Likes
189

The Beringher Pro 800 does not have a drum machine, neither does the Prophet 600. But his video that was used to show off the Prophet 600 does

2 Likes
190

For some reason I remember reading a revue of that sequential device whilst standing on Tottenham court road tube station in London. Which is probably of interest to only me…

I was attending a zoom call on HS2 so was unable to attend.

1 Like
191

I’m on holiday. ZynthClub on Sunday, Monday, both or one massive one that runs for 72 hours?

192

I am fitting windows. (I installed Windows XP this week but that is unrelated.)

Not only must we decide a day but also a time. DST ended today here in the UK so whatever time we choose is bound to confuse @wyleu :wink:.

How about Monday, 19:00 UTC?

3 Likes
193

I can do that

194

I be there. Probably while prototyping things™ again.

195

A select committee met to discuss an every changing world…

  • Korg still make stuff worth playing with but good luck trying to get it to play nicely with Linux
  • Amstrad made cheap stuff including a portable PC that might not fit on your lap and video conferencing and email fit for lock-down. Some of us may have some of these devices
  • There were hard disk protocols before IDE
  • You can relive some of that nostalgia during a virtual tour of the National Computer Museum
  • If you use a Debian based package manager and want an update notifier for your system tray, someone might have built one
  • ebay tells us that there is money to be had in those there junk buckets
  • High-end PC motherboards being manufactured today still include PS2 connectors!
  • It can be a bit of a stretch reaching some manuals in your keyboard setup but others have it sussed
  • Casio make watches, calculators and things that make sound and we all have a guilty secret that involves a Casiotone or PT10
  • Cardew’s Treatise - was it the greatest musical score ever designed?
  • Don’t tell anyone if you have a contraband copy of the Real Book
  • Should Zynthian be promoted on some podcasts such as Sonic Talk?
  • YAD is a handy toolkit for displaying notifications or other ad-hoc graphical windows on a computer desktop
  • Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so
  • Not all RAM modules play nicely together
  • @ronsum demonstrated his very sexy setBfree controller on a tablet
  • Can you convert a clock radio into a Zynthian when it only has two encoders? We say YES!
4 Likes
196

Damn, missed it again. Can we have more notice and/or regularity? Hope to see you guys soon

1 Like
198

I was ummimg and arring about this, btw… In the UK the pubs are shutting for at least a month from Wednesday.

199

I thought I was the only one suffering cos I am not committed enough to check at 3am in the morning just in case an impromptu meeting is called :> Vote 1 for regular meetings :slight_smile:

1 Like
200

In my defense, I was left unsupervised.

1 Like
201

So one more rule for Znyth Club … don’t leave @Baggypants unsupervised :>

1 Like
202

especially when you lick the output jacks before inserting them into the back of your zynthy…