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

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 :smiley:

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.

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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. :slight_smile: 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.

Let’s do it again, soon.

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Sorry - I had no time the last two meetings… I hope I can join the next one!

BTW:

That sounds very interesting! Which synth was this? Can I learn from this :slight_smile:?

Regards, Holger

@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 :grinning:. 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 :wink:.

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.

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Monday evening…?

Works for me.

This is becoming a habit! Same time, same place. See you there.

Monday evening 20:00?

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Sure: 1900 UTC

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Is this still a thing? If so, I’d be happy to hang out sometime.

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?

i lost it again …

How about Monday ? :smiley:

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 :grinning:.

Will I be able to announce I’ve got the touchscreen to work with the help of @sailort ?

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.

Could I join? Have some ideas about touch screen after fighting with my so far encoderless Zynth.