Great to say hi to you all earlier. Was a touch surreal at first and also quite funny in places.
I felt on the spot a bit when asked to show my setup - was not sure where to begin… and i just glanced over my Zynth - how rude
Here’s a photo if you found it hard to see on camera. It’s a small desk on wheels so I can move it about depending on how i’m working.
As Simon showed us his setup the discussion moved to different areas including various devices - it is interesting to see and hear what others use and what they think of it. That is a really neat setup. Cheers Simon.
Yep. It is a fork of High Fidelity which I had a role in adding midi support to the windows version. So I have several Javascript programs that use it. Like a giant piano keyboard you can play with your feet if you have the foot trackers. Or one that lights up the virtual keys when you play a real keyboard…
Another day after the night before and a chance to reflect on a lovely evening spent chatting with new friends. Attendance at Zynth Club was down on last week but that didn’t stop us chatting about:
Hitchhiking
The great hardware vs software step-sequencer battle
How the world is rapidly understanding cultural differences and yet we don’t recognise the geography of foreign nations
Embryonic plans for a post-apocalyptic physical meet, possibly at a German trade show
Laser cutting of plastic fascias
We saw a real (almost working) DIY OPL3 FM synthesizer
We saw the tidiest (so far) workstation on a trolley - like an audio Dalek
Why Python sometimes needs help from a real programming language
Why Raspberry Pi sometimes needs help from an external microporcessor
Some people’s obsession with rotary encoders and the difference between 4 and 5 pin units (4 has the switch and encoder common connected together)
The connection between brassicas, greenhouses and sound modules
There was some discussion on issues that people have with their units and how best to resolve such issues without burdening developers. I believe the answer to be: try what you can to resolve it then ask for help in the forum. If it looks like a lack of feature or a bug, report it in github but before either of those things, search both for similar issues.
There was a suggestion that we might concentrate on a particular topic at future meets. (Yes - it was suggested to do it all again…) This might be a demonstration of some features or issues, etc. Also suggested was a bit of musical demonstration - maybe even some collaboration.
@Simon that is a really neat setup with a lot of kit I am quite envious of. You seem to be buying all the devices that have piqued my interest recently . We talked about the Behringer semi-modular last night briefly which looks like a nice compact analogue synth. How do you find the Zoom L-12 recorder? I like the look of it but it will likely remain beyond my budget for the foreseeable future. I did some work a while back on building a multi-track recorder using a Raspberry Pi but stopped when I hit issues with storage bandwidth and physical i/o issues. I may return one day to that project. One thing I see missing from your configuration is space for notes. I guess you can wheel it to a desk / table though .
The L12 is great. That plus the pyramid means I can arrange and record with a fair amount of flexibility and not have to touch a PC (which I’m on all the time for my day job) I wish there was more stereo channels but it was hard finding one that had those and recorded multi-track. The digital aspect is quite nice - LED markers for fader positions, scene memory. The FX is OK but nothing special, it records multi-track pre-fx but also a master if you want that in too. I guess for anything serious, you can pull the SD card and pop it into a DAW for mastering - at the moment i’m just noodling. I’ve just recently got the Pyramid so creating an actual structured track until now, has been challenging.
I have a few shelves under the unit with manuals and notebooks. Also some hobby draws with my electronics stuff in.
But yeah there is no free desk space on the unit and I end up resting a notebook on something else. I do have my PC desk, which like last night, I can have them either side of me and swing my chair around.
All this is at one end of my living room so I don’t have much space. 1 bed house and ideally i’d have a spare room to spread out.
Let’s do it again this / next week. We have been having meetings on Monday evenings. Does anyone want to suggest a time and date (in UTC) for the next?
Zynthian Club Monday 18th May 2020 at 19:00 UTC. Same connection details as usual. If you need these IM me.
If anyone has any ideas for topics let us know. I am sure the old favourites will make an appearance, Zynthian ST, GreenhouseZynth, TuneinZyn and of course… the weather .
I do hope so. In fact, we can have a chat about touch interface. Last time we saw a sneak preview of enhancements to touch interface. Now that some have been playing with it we can learn some lessons.