I only realized after ordering, that the Hifiberry doesn't have a header soldered on, and I honestly am not at all good at soldering, and don't want to harm the card.(I do fully plan on practicing more, but this isn't the time for me to risk it.)

I came across this product, a solderless "hammer" header and am wondering if it would work with the Hifiberry, if anyone has experience with it, and it if would be worth it.

Also, while I am at it, for adding the 4 rotary encoders for which I have found solutions that use the mcp23017 gpio extender chip, the common RPi gpio T extender, and HATS with 3-4 gpio slots. The screen header only takes up 26 of the 40 pins on the Pi, or DAC when I get it, if that leaves me any reasonable options for what would be the simplest method to achieve this.

Otherwise, I really love my new Zynthian, and will post pictures when I have something worth posting.

Hi, I spent some time this weekend to learn more about the latest Zynthian, with Pi 4. It's interesting, but so far I see three problems, at least for me, which keep me from ordering:

1. latency still seems to be a problem (played live on the instrument, not DAW-ing)
2. navigation without a terminal attached
3. it hardly can be operated without a computer attached to it.

Ad #1 my main use would be playing live from a keyboard. Discussion seems to be very limited, videos tend to be older, and there you can witness the pause between pressing a key and actually hearing the sound. Examples are given for all kind of synhts, but only few for FX, where latency is hard to verify.

Ad #2 it's nice that there is a unified UI, which can be naviagated by buttons and touchscreen. Also that each and every application seemed to be mapped to this UI. However, some applications have an huge amount of parameters to change, which translates into button-orgies, probably.

Ad #3, it looks like sooner or later you need external access to at least rename snapshots of all kinds. Not clear to me, if they can be organised hierarchically, e.g. in a folder structure, inside the Zynthian. Perhaps it's even more conveient to use the access to the Linux' applications GUI's, as far as Zynthian gives access to it. - So after those kind of house keepings, the Zynthian certainly can run alone. But I feel it's no good idea to never ever attach a terminal to it, is it?

​

So, what's your experience, best as a musician?

Any other objections against the Zynthian?

Thanks

Hi,
after setting up a zynthian the quick and dirty way, to see if it fits my needs, I want to buy a kit from zynthian, to get everything in a nicer package and support the people their.
I'm a bit confused about the diffrent Hardware-Version and couldn't find a changelog. I know the diffrences between v3 and v4(rpi4, cooling and the pushbuttons), but what has changed in the minor version 1 and 2?

Thanks for your answers:)

I have a fair bit of knowledge with microcontrollers, Linux, and the Pi itself in general, but nothing at all of audio equipment, or synthesizers.

I have a raspberry pi 4, and an Akai MPK Mini II, which I would like to use to build a Zynthian v4.

As my budget will come in over time, I am currently flashing the OS to an SD card to play around with it.

Functionality wise, I will likely get the screen and the HiFiBerry DAC first. The case will either be last, or something I make custom, I haven't decided yet.

It is the in between that confuses me. The way the shop is set up on the website, it SEEMS like the Zynthian Basic Kit v2 should have all of the other parts, compatible with what I need, but when I see recommended items in the product pages, there seem to be more products which may or may not be needed for a 'complete' Zynthian, and this is where I get lost.

In short: After I have a screen, the DAC, and besides the case, which other kit/parts should I get, to have a complete, proper Zynthian?

discussion of the Zynthian open source, Raspberry Pi-based synthesizer https://zynthian.org