Sounds good
Iâm wondering what you meant by âbothâ - was there another date suggested, or did you think I suggested two alternatives, orâŚ?
It is seldom wise to attempt an analysis of such matters. What occurs within the safely contained confines of @wyleuâs mind should remain encapsulated with just the occasional erruption of barely comprehensible utterings that, gathered together as a whole, may form some record of a troubled soul. Maybe, one day there will be a classic emerging from the belfry! (Some of us have to endure his wit in person!)
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and the B sideâŚ
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Well, Iâm certainly glad I asked!
I tried to join but Iâm not allowed without an adult supervisor
We eventually let @MrBroccoli in but not before discussing some of the following.
- Guitars need some help to work with Zynthian (as being discussed in a thread on this forum) and there are various ways we might improve that but, is it our job? Is there a sufficient userbase to warrant the extra hardware inside zynthian?
- COVID continues to impact our lives.
- ASML do cool things with lithography and Philips sold them off.
- Someone (you will never guess who!) is creating an installation that syncs instrumentation to a church clock mechanism.
- Is timecode of much use in an age where tape machines are obsolecent? There are other (better?) ways to lock machines together.
- ChatGPT is providing boiler plate (and more) code, saving hobbiests (and probably professionals) much time in starting projects.
- Could we use ChatGPT to decipher event logs in a bid to help with diagnosing issues?
- We marvelled and criticised Tubular Bells which is over 50 years old. I wonder if my vinyl picture disc is worth anything.
- Interfacing Zynthian with modular systems was discussed again. The main concern regards the lack of protection of the GPI. Modular users are notoriously hazardous / care free with plugging large d.c. voltages to any socket that fits!
- The Expert Sleepers ES-9 was again highlighted as a wonderful unit that may be worth its ÂŁ550 price tag to someone.
- Mod Dwarfâs problems with choice of MCU were discussed (unexpectedly EOL) and how the Raspberry Pi Compure Modules have proven to be consistently supported. The CM3 is supported until 2028. It is a shame the Mod guys felt that RPi was inappropriate (ironically due to temporary supply chain issues). They need to find a replacement for their current board so may reconsider, especially if a CM5 appears soon.
- Oram is near to release. There are currently 4 outstanding issues of which only one is challenging. We need to update the documentation then get it out the door.
- Some recently attended and imminent gigs were discussed. Some beardy hippy suggested Body Count are quite good.
- At 03:14:07 UTC on 19th Januray 2038 the Unix 32-bit clock rolls over. There may be the opportunity to wheel out (from our care homes) a crack team of C/C++/etc. coders to save the world once more from certain doom. We may be like the current bunch of old rockers, topping up their pension fund with overpriced and underdelivered tours.
- There are units like Behringerâs PP1 to convert audio to MIDI / CV&Gate (apparently very well). If only Zynthian did that⌠oh wait - it does! The configuration parameters for aubionotes could be improved, e.g. it should at least reach down to the low E on a standard tuned guitar and ideally down to a bass low E.
- @MrBroccoli described building a 5 string telecaster style guitar with humbucker pickups. (Oh I know - the indignity of it!) Some of us learned to play 5 strings (because we couldnât afford to replace the high E when it snapped) and some continue to ply their trade this way.
- @ronsum enthralled us with tails of his recent purchase of some Enya carbon fibre guitars. (Drummers shouldnât be allowed near such things!)
- Whilst looking around for info on carbon fibre guitars we noticed that Steinberger seem to be back in business.
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What if found crazy about TimeCode is how few physical devices it exist to :
Show the time
Show the tempo
Have the controls
It ruled my life for about twenty years in video post production.
SMPTE timecode is a video thing that was adopted by the music industry in a bid to lock tape (then later sequencers) together. We distributed SMPTE/EBU timecode around our buildings to feed wall clocks to display accurate time of day, replacing the venerable 1PPS clock signals. (How many times I watched my school clock step forward excruciatingly slowly towards break / lunch / home time!) There have been several attempts to provide similar synchronisation and lock including DIN Sync / Sync24, MIDI Clock, MIDI Timecode and Ableton Link.
Zynthian supports some of these and we plan to improve this soon.
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If youâre referring to the idea of adding a buffer to one of the inputs, this does seem like a pretty basic functionality, particularly since the device includes tools aimed at guitars. I would even like to see some of the level controls broken out to dedicated switches/knobs on the outside, like my mixer has, so when youâre plugging in a bass or whatever, you push the switch and it ups the impedance.
Phantom Power would also be excellent, really. I have a very nice LR Baggs acoustic guitar DI that takes phantom power. I think adding these things to a future generation would increase interest from casual observers and string players of all kinds.
The other keyboard player in my band could easily have afforded a $6k stage piano when she decided it was time for something new, but I demoâd the zynthian for her and now thatâs her thing, sheâs showing up with new patches all the time, she really loves it.
I think with a few guitar-and-other-piezoâd-string-devices-friendly enhancements, I could sell more units to the guitar players in the band. :>
21 days later⌠Probably time to restoke the boiler.
How about a meet next week? I should be available most nights so letâs see who is willing to narrow that down.
Tuesday 8/13 at 19:00 UTC works for me.
I am free any evening next week apart from 15th and 18th.
Tuesday 8/13 19:00 UTC works but most date times next week are okay.
I suppose someone should have confirmed the date and time but it did happen and there were a few of us there. I have given up taking notes so you are only hearing stuff that has lodged itself, maybe inexplicably, in my mind.
- It is a season somewhere in the world so we Brits talked about the weather. (Itâs hot over here.)
- The use of Raspberry Pi in Korg synths was looked at, including this article and this picture showing its inards.
- Accessing machines on your home network via Apache Guacamole is cool. You gain http access (so easy to connect from almost anywhere) with menu driven ssh, VNC, etc.
- The terminal in webconf is fixed! It used to become almost useless after a few lines but now seems to work well.
- There are limitations with the wiki used for zynthian docs. A common (and quite neat) documentation method is used by many projects like this. There isnât currently the resources to migrate from the wiki so we persevere.
- How do you differentiate between a microcontroller and a computer? Is it the ability to run an OS? Its complment of resources? This chart may help.
- Some of us have been playing with microcontrollers and Hall effect sensors to build continuous foot pedals (useful for Pianoteq) and considering a full sized keyboard with CC on every key. It might do something like the osmose.
- There may be advantage to using a microcontroller as the interface to physical UI (switches, knobs, lamps, etc.) Zynia has been looking at this.
- What do we think Raspberry Piâs plans may be, following their production of a RISC-V based device. Maybe it is a foray into watersan area that they want to expand into or maybe they are giving credence to the hardware so that others will invest more resources into supporting and developing it (which in turn may lead to themselves investing further into it).
- There is growing interest but continuing sceptism in how Pipewire might be used to replace Jack in zynthian. All research in this field is useful and we should document it to benefit from the communityâs efforts. Its big attraction is hot-pluggable, multiple audio interfaces.
- An attempt was made to add multiple audio interface support to zynthian. It almost worked. Some changes to how the code handles audio input and output would be required and the module that provides this (alsa_in / alsa_out) may have substantial resource usage - TBC. Maybe this could be added in a future enhancement.
- A coincidence with a Laurie Anderson reference led to the BBC music radio station 6 Music being mentioned and the singer Nico being introduced to most of the assembled crowd.
- Is zynthian Oram release-ready? Is it just the documentation that is delaying release? Kinda - yes! The user interface documentation occuring now is showing up various issues with the as-built UI which should be resolved before the release but maybe, after this is done, the rest of the docs could follow th release. It has been simmering too long and the ever-growing chorus of response to new users is, âtry Oramâ - to the point that the current stable release is almost already depricated!
- The new release scheme means using a codename for the release throughout its life, from development, through release to deprication. Maybe we should give the current stable version a name so that we can refer to is in a similar way, including its documentation.
- Weight loss, drinking lots of water, getting physically fit - these were some of the non-technical topics discussed. See - its not all about knob twiddling! (In fact it is rarely about zynthian. This meeting had an unusually high zynthian content.)
Until next time, stay safe and be kind.
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I was thinking it was a Jack issue, that let us chose only one device for input and an other one for output ?
If it work itâs great because the Rockband usb-mic and Rocksmith usb-guitar-jack are good interfaces !
An easy way to have more audio inputs !
Youâre right it is a Jack limitation. Zynthian already uses alsa_out to let people run the headphone out alongside their existing interface. Riban was looking to see if it you become a more generic option to allow multiple interfaces. I donât think itâs âeasyâ though.
I still think Pipewire, which does this by design, and provides a Jack-compatible layer, is a better choice for this, but at the moment itâs only a theory as the latency isnât proven.
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