Classic ZynAddSubFX VST download

[fundamental]

Just to be clear, there's nothing that should stop this UI from having multiple instances of itself open at once.
Being able to have different parameter sets open is certainly useful and it is planned to allow for this use case.

[ishkabbible]

Very nice interface, @fundamental. Is it based on a package that is also available for us winders folk? I am planning on extracting myself from the pit I have been in at work for the last year, sometime in the next couple of months. Once I have some free time again I would be willing to take a stab at integrating it into Jackoo's VST.
One thing I would suggest is to leave plenty of empty space for future expansion. I added one lousy checkbox to the LFOs, and I am STILL running into cases where it ends up overlapping other controls.

[fundamental]

Once I have some free time again I would be willing to take a stab at integrating it into Jackoo's VST.
One thing I would suggest is to leave plenty of empty space for future expansion. I added one lousy checkbox to the LFOs, and I am STILL running into cases where it ends up overlapping other controls.

Well, it's more likely that any useful bits of Jackoo's VST will get integrated back into the mainline code as the modifications to the source are pretty darn large and they touch pretty much every single file (which I assume isn't necessarily true to the same degree for the VST).
As per future expansion I'm hoping that that can be mitigated to a degree by incorporating intelligent resizing of widgets and panes (via a constraint based UI).
With that sort of setup even if things look a bit silly there shouldn't be anything overlapping.

[ishkabbible]

Well, I've been agitating for years now to bring the various forks back together into one big, ugly, conditionally-compiled mess. Perhaps this is the right opportunity to do that.

Spent a few minutes skimming through the code you've written so far - I think I understand what you are doing at the UI end. Is this hooking into your earlier work on an OSC interface between the GUI and the DSP?

[fundamental]

There's certainly going to be some uglyness if you use MSVC, but it can be mostly contained within a few compatibility headers which can make it look like some of the normal POSIX functions are there even when MS never implemented them.
Not great, but as long as there are testers on both platforms it shouldn't be too hard to make it relatively clean and contained.
(at least this looked like the case last time I ported the core over to MSVC/windows)

Yeah, the whole OSCification was originally designed to get the UI as far away from the DSP as I could as it was responsible for a very large portion of the large jittering which lead people to deem zyn unstable.
Some of the UI was fine with this transition, but other elements needed a lot of work to get them to behave correctly with effectively transforming a previous synchronous/blocking set of widgets into ones that can only make weak asynchronous requests.
Right now I'm pretty sure the only pointers left in the UI are the startup settings and the IO backend options.
Everything else is through OSC which means changes to every stupid little bit of that darn fluid based UI.
That was one dreadful merge :p

So, the UI is going to work over that link from now on as it makes the interactions a lot more sane and it is self documenting (for some definition of "documenting").
Port listing: http://fundamental-code.com/zyn-ports/

[Marginal Ray]

Hi,

I would pay for an update of zyn and some good sound banks. Do famous sound designers know what Zyn can do? Is there a market for commercial sound banks for a freeware?

I’m under Windows, using VST. The development of Zyn for Windows was totally stopped years ago. Is there any hope somebody takes over?

What is Paul Nasca doing now? Musician? Math teacher? Does he work for Yamaha, Rolland, Korg or Native Instruments? Hey Paul, your synth is a miracle. Don’t give it up. Don’t let us alone…

Raymond

[ishkabbible]

The development of Zyn for Windows was totally stopped years ago.

I beg to differ. Windows VST development is alive and well. Jackoo brought the windows VST version up to date (as of a couple years ago), and as soon as fundamental gets the new UI running in linux, I plan on moving it into the VST version.
Don't despair - stay tuned right here on this forum for updates.
(and see the first message in this thread to download the latest, greatest VST version)

[Marginal Ray]

Good news! I'm using the latest version of the VST. It works fine in Reaper, with some precautions. It would probably be too much to ask for a 64 bits version?

Back to the preset issue. Like many (hobby) musicians, I mostly use presets. One (or two) dozen of professional sound designers work for almost every synth editors. Of course, the free extra banks for Zyn are very good, but is there any chance to convince those famous designers to work for Zyn? I don’t know if Zyn is an insider tip or if many musician use it…

[ishkabbible]

AFAIK there are no plans for a 64-bit version (fundamental can correct me if I'm mistaken) - Personally, I don't see any advantage. Remember, ZASF was originally written to run in DOS - I don't think there is a single calculation that would benefit from 64-bit math. One of the things that drives me nuts when using ZASF is that the interface between the UI and the DSP is all 7-bits, for no good reason except history. The controls have arbitrary precision, then they get rounded to 7 bits, sent into the DSP, then immediately converted back to float. I assume fundamental is fixing that in his new OSC interface. But my point is that the entire system is pretty low precision - it isn't really even a fully 32-bit app yet. I use 64-bit Reaper, too, and have found no issues running ZASF inside their 32-bit wrapper. "Panda" has 34 instances of ZASF running with no issues. What would you hope to gain from a 64-bit version?

I don't know what you mean by "professional sound designers". Do people really DO that? I don't get paid for my sounds, but IMHO they are pretty damn good (check out my soundcloud - with the exception of "Panda" and the Coupland piece, everything is 100% ZASF, and "Panda" is 50% ZASF). People have been bugging me to release my patch library for a while - I really DO plan to get around to it. If there are any sounds I've created that you really want, I'd be happy to send you the patches. Folderol has created a bunch of awesome patches in his released libraries. Check out his soundcloud.
ZASF has a very 80s underlying architecture - extremely powerful, but with an intimidating number of knobs and switches (it has a "PANIC" button for a good reason ). There are much easier synths if all you want to do is crank out samples that people like. It isn't aimed at that audience. But there are a lot of excellent musicians using it and developing patches. There are a couple of groups on soundcloud devoted to ZASF, and a lot of ZASF professionals hang out here as well.
One thing that has hampered ZASF's acceptance in the industry is that most professional keyboardists use macs, and the mac version of ZASF was abandoned for years. That has changed very recently, and I have a couple of my professional musician friends already experimenting with it.

[fundamental]

All of my machines run slackware at the moment, so I have to rely on others for compiling to windows/osx.
There are some advantages to running 64 bit software which in this case are mainly the exposure of more recent x86_64 instructions which can speed things up.

Per the 7 bit interface of things, the problem with killing it is that it breaks compatibility with the save files *.x?z.
Part of the problem is there is no consistent scaling function from 7bit->floating point.
I want to kill it, and I intend to kill it, but I want the UI separation stuff to be tested first.
The only way I see testing happening is to make another release.
While the input space may generally be limited to 7bit numbers, the core is lots and lots of float based math (with an occasional section with doubles).

[ishkabbible]

Per the 7 bit interface of things, the problem with killing it is that it breaks compatibility with the save files *.x?z.

One of the beauties of XML is that you can add new stuff without breaking old code. Why not include an "_F" field with each control that gets the full precision, but keep the 7 bit value to maintain backwards compatibility? The load and save functions could handle keeping the two in sync.

[folderol]

The problem there is you potentially double the load and save time. Saving is probably not too much of a problem, but loading needs to happen as quickly as possible if you want to change voices on the fly.

I'm inclined to reprise a suggestion I made a very long time ago. Save two copies - an XML one and a binary one (to whatever precision is needed).

At load time it looks for both copies. if the binary one is older or doesn't exist it loads the XML one. Old versions of the synth will simply ignore any binary files so there is no problem with them being in the instrument banks.

P.S.
In an interim binary file still save as 0 - 127, but floats. You can then use exactly the same routines as the XML version, in parallel.

[Marginal Ray]

I use 64-bit Reaper, too, and have found no issues running ZASF inside their 32-bit wrapper. "Panda" has 34 instances of ZASF running with no issues. What would you hope to gain from a 64-bit version?

Same for me. But 3 windows opened for one instance is a bit too much. It’s mostly a question of integration in a 64 bits system. If Zyn is still in development, it should probably become 64 bits one day. But as it is not a commercial product, nobody will be blamed if it remains 32 bits. Paul Nasca and all the Zyn fans who work on it and made it run on PC disserves congratulations and more (Zyn is an exceptional synth).

I don't know what you mean by "professional sound designers". Do people really DO that?

Yes, there are many. Some of them are also producers or musicians. A few names: Simon Stockhausen, BigTone, Michael Kastrup, Himalaya… They sell soundbanks for different synths (often around 20-50 € for one bank).

check out my soundcloud - with the exception of "Panda" and the Coupland piece, everything is 100% ZASF, and "Panda" is 50% ZASF

Of course it sounds good, very good. I use Zyn not mainly for electronic music, but for its ability to sound like a real instrument. The goal is not to mimic the exact sound of a specific acoustic or electric instrument, but the behavior of natural sound. Non-linearity plays probably an important role.

People have been bugging me to release my patch library for a while - I really DO plan to get around to it. If there are any sounds I've created that you really want, I'd be happy to send you the patches. Folderol has created a bunch of awesome patches in his released libraries. Check out his soundcloud.

I grab every patches I can for Zyn : Cormi, Companion, Federol, Laba, Oliver, Sixtease, XAdriano Petrosillo, Zen Collection, the_mysterious_bank, etc… But you know that when it’s so good, you want more and more!
Thanks for sharing your patches. When I have time, I’ll carefully listen to all your compositions on soundcloud and let you know if I have interest in a specific sound.

ZASF has a very 80s underlying architecture - extremely powerful, but with an intimidating number of knobs and switches (it has a "PANIC" button for a good reason ). There are much easier synths if all you want to do is crank out samples that people like. It isn't aimed at that audience. But there are a lot of excellent musicians using it and developing patches. There are a couple of groups on soundcloud devoted to ZASF, and a lot of ZASF professionals hang out here as well.

I’m just a hobby musician. No competence in informatics and no time (and competence) for sound design. You’re totally right: ZASF is extreme powerful (its architecture reminds me VAST from Kurtzweil, with many layers, but forgive me if I’m totally wrong). When I want to play around with knobs, I use Camel Audio Alchemy. I tried with ZASF, but it was a disaster! So I look for presets and sometime tweak them with 3rd party tools.

[ishkabbible]

Once you understand the architecture, I find ZASF to be very logically laid out. Another thing that I'm sure has hampered ZASF's acceptance is the lack of a decent users manual - the ones that I have seen are very sparse and quite out-of-date, and the one figure that would make everything clear to new users, the top-level diagram of how sounds and control "voltages" flow through the system, has been re-compressed so many times that it is utterly unreadable.
This is another area that I hope to spend some time on (once I get the Osiris-Rex spacecraft safely on its way and return to having some semblance of a life). As I've studied the code, I have found numerous neat capabilities that folks have slipped in over the years that AFAIK have never been documented. One prime example that I have just started exploring is that each of the 16 oscillators in the ADDsynth can be configured as a relatively powerful FM synth - combine this with the arbitrary envelope generators and trigger delays and you can design sounds where each note morphs through a series of FM sounds through time.
Anyway, I think if these capabilities were documented in some human-readable fashion, it could drastically reduce the intimidation factor for new users, and make it a little harder for folks like you to get into trouble when twiddling the knobs.

But 3 windows opened for one instance is a bit too much.

I assume the 3 windows you are referring to are the Reaper FX window, the ZASF VST "splash" window, and the actual "main" ZASF panel? That is apparently because the very old and very clunky UI library in ZASF is somehow fundamentally incompatible with the VST spec. It can't be integrated into the Reaper FX panel, and can't even be directly opened from the panel, hence the intermediate "splash" screen, whose only function is to initialize and close the real UI from outside of the FX panel. Fundamental's new UI and interface may well fix that. BUt the current ZASF UI is a many-window interface anyway - you need to have at least 3 ZASF windows open to do anything at all (the main window, the "Edit instrument" window, and the instrument you want to edit). Then the windows proliferate from there. I kind of like it that way - I can arrange the controls that I am playing with to all be visible at once. But I understand that a lot of people find that annoying. I get the impression that fundamental's interface will keep everything in one tabbed window, so you may be in luck there

[fundamental]

Why not include an "_F" field with each control that gets the full precision, but keep the 7 bit value to maintain backwards compatibility? The load and save functions could handle keeping the two in sync.

That could be done to get reading old files done right, however it would be a huge pain to continue to save the 0..127 values after the change.
Additionally it would be wonderful to translate things into meaningful units which would introduce a bunch of random scale factors on the parameters as they currently exist.
It's doable, but certainly something that's going to be a tedious pain that's going to produce a few hard to track down bugs.
Lastly, it's something that I only want to do once in one go, so some thought is going to have to be put into the new scalings.