Folderol wrote:
On Sat, 3 Feb 2007 01:01:18 -0500 (EST)
Larry Troxler <lt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
yn isn't RT safe? Could you elaborate or point to a link? I remember
reading something about this, and was hoping to use it for live
performance.
I have heard several comments to this effect, and also that the code
in Zyn is 'a nightmare' however I have not heard anything specific that
one can really get a handle on.
While I agree the GUI is poor and could do with quite a lot of work, I
don't know about the rest, although there are changes I would like in
the way voice banks are managed.
This all causes me quite a lot of concern. I find that Zyn gives
unparallelled results, and conceptually most closely matches my grasp
of sound. I am concerned about talk of unspecified jack problems, and
also the lack of any visible development by the originator.
Zyn will occasionally just pop itself out of the JACK graph, I'm not
sure why. Paul Nasca had talked about upgrading Zyn's JACK support, but
I don't think he ever got around to it.
Personally I don't mind the GUI. Zyn is a rather "deep" synth, I
certainly wouldn't want to see all of its controls in one panel or even
two. However, I will agree that its interface design does make it
problematic to program. Fortunately its included sounds work beautifully
for my purposes.
Finally though, Zyn is open-source and GPL'd, so whoever wants to pick
up the torch is more than welcome to do so. I have no idea how its code
looks, and I'm not likely to make the effort to find out (IANALAD), but
surely there's a fledgling (or not-so-fledgling) Linux audio developer
out there who wants to make a significant contribution to the Linux
audio workplace ? A stable JACKified Zyn seems to rank highly on users'
wish-lists.
I, personally, would be willing to expend a great deal of effort to
help revive Zyn, and would be quite happy to put my hand in my
pocket as well.
Developers, are you listening ? The man is offering his time *and* his
money. And are any other users out there who are willing to pony up some
dough for a bounty on this item ? (Assuming of course that the task is
actually do-able within a reasonable time).
Synth development in Linux has seen a severe slowdown over the past year
or so. We need things like stabilized Zyn, Om (or whatever DR wants to
call it these days), and AMS. Or does everyone plan on waiting for
better VSTi support ?
Best,
dp
