user interface – Zynthian Blog

Zynthian Kit V5 is here!

We are proud of announcing the arrival of the long-awaited Zynthian Kit V5, the latest creation from ZynthianLabs.

It’s been a long journey and certainly i could tell a good story about the development of V5, its roots, epiphanies, setbacks and sorrows, but i better leave this for a next entry and put the focus in the device itself, the V5.

We could say that the V5 is more of the same thing, but it doesn’t sound very appetizing, right? Although it’s not false at all: more design, more display, more buttons, more connectivity, more power, more usability, more quality, more integration. More can be really much more.

An amazing travel thru the Zynthian V5 internals

New ZynthianOS version: stable-2211

It’s been a long way, but finally, the new version of ZynthianOS is here and its called stable-2211. Many things have changed, so be prepared to enjoy with the new features.

Here is the link to download the SD image:

https://os.zynthian.org/zynthianos-last-stable.zip

We strongly recommend you to download and burn the new SD image. Trying to upgrade from previous stable versions is a long and error prone process so we have decided to block it to avoid people’s complains. Old stable versions can’t be upgraded!

Regarding changes, the biggest one is the new mixer screen that totally replaces the old layer list screen, but the list of improvements and fixes is huge. These are the more important ones:

New Engine “Jalv”: LV2 plugins as standalone layers

Great news, @zynthianers!

I’ve been working in a new engine that allows to launch LV2-plugins as standalone layers. For doing that, i’ve used (and extended!) Jalv, from David Robillard, one of the creators of LV2 plugin specification. In his words:

“Jalv is a simple but fully featured LV2 host for Jack. It runs LV2 plugins and exposes their ports as Jack ports, essentially making any LV2 plugin function as a Jack application.”

Continue reading New Engine “Jalv”: LV2 plugins as standalone layers

New SD image: Gorgona Omega

The new SD image Gorgona Omega is ready to download. It’s available in 2 “colors”, pre-configured for the latest official kit v2 and also for the former kit v1:

Download Gorgona Omega for Kit v2:
SHA1: 601ab5e58d3f08b7cda6f5821d396f6622e93106
Download Gorgona Omega for Kit v1:
SHA1: 53ce2ba3c055698d27108750c2b80313f904c921

Continue reading New SD image: Gorgona Omega

Merry Zynthians and Happy New Image – Newsletter #2, December 2016

Greetings from the sunny BCN, where today the rain fall over and tomorrow the air will smell clean and healthy 🙂

It’s been a hard month preparing the new SD image, but finally it’s here. Its name is Gorgona!

If you already have a Zynthian Box, i’m pretty sure you would like to try Gorgona right now. You can choose between two different versions, compiled for RBPi3 and RBPi2:

Continue reading Merry Zynthians and Happy New Image – Newsletter #2, December 2016

Summer Synths & Swimming Sounds – Newsletter #1, August 2016

Greetings from MasFort, in Reus, where time passes slowly and tomatoes grow fast! 😉 I hope you are enjoying the summer and recharging your batteries for the coming season.

A little over a year ago I mounted the first Zynthian prototype and since then many things have happened. The software and hardware have evolved a lot and people around the world are building Zynthian Boxes. The project has grown and a small community of users and supporters is borning. It is time to meditate a little bit and consider new goals.

Among these goals is sending a newsletter, more or less regularly, to keep you informed of progress and news about the project. Let’s go there!

Continue reading Summer Synths & Swimming Sounds – Newsletter #1, August 2016

The Zynthian Emulator

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Developing software for Zynthian is slighty more complex than developing software for a desktop platform. You need a Zynthian Box (ZBox) over your desk running all the time and connected to the network. You must login by ssh everytime you reboot the ZBox. Every time you want to test your changes, you have to copy the modified files into the ZBox, compile if needed, and run the program from the shell.

This cycle makes development slower than normal, and although you use scripts and tools to agilize the process, finally you realize that there is a better way 😉

Continue reading The Zynthian Emulator

What is Zynthian?

IMPORTANT: Comments are closed in this post, please, use the forum.

Zynthian is an Open Synth Platform based in Raspberry Pi, some Open Software Synthesizers and more.

I’m trying to integrate all the parts in a realiable case with a nice and ergonomic User Interface, so everybody can enjoy this wonderful synthesizers in any place without having to install or configure anything.

When it’s finished, i would like to make it available for everybody, as a toolkit or as a finished product, so you can use it for Live Playing, Music Production or any kind of experimentation.

Of course, all the specifications will be freely available, so you can build your own device if you prefer 😉

Continue reading What is Zynthian?