[ANN] ZynAddSubFX 3.0.0 - Zyn-Fusion

[fundamental]

Today marks the release of Zyn 3.0.0 aka Zyn-Fusion.
For those of you who haven't been following this development
the 3.0 release is all about resolving the major issues with the
existing user interface.
Based upon Budislav Stepanov's excellent mockups the 3.0 release
features a completely rewritten UI.

The new UI is a single window UI with nicely organized controls and a
much improved navigation system.
This release features pre-compiled binaries for both 64bit windows and
linux. These binaries are currently being sold to help fund
development.
For more information please see
http://zynaddsubfx.sf.net/zyn-fusion.html and
http://zynaddsubfx.sf.net/demo.html

Commit stats since 2.5.4:
Mark McCurry 164 (zynaddsubfx) + 739 (zyn-fusion) (903 total)
Johannes Lorenz 20
Hans Petter Selasky 10
FalkTX 8
Olivier Humbert 1
Jeremy Carter 1

Additionally I'd like to say thank you to unfa and grejppi for creating
the demo video shown on http://zynaddsubfx.sf.net/zyn-fusion.html

Big thanks to everyone who has helped make this release a reality

Now go make some noise!
--Team Zyn.

Project Page:
http://zynaddsubfx.sf.net/

Zyn-Fusion:
https://gumroad.com/l/zyn-fusion

Mailing List:
https://sourceforge.net/p/zynaddsubfx/mailman/

Forums:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=47

Bug/Feature Tracker:
https://sourceforge.net/p/zynaddsubfx/bugs/
https://github.com/zynaddsubfx/zyn-fusion-issues/issues

IRC:
##zynaddsubfx on FreeNode

[sysrqer]

Wow, this looks very impressive, I can't wait to try the new UI out.
Good work and congratulations on the release!

[briandc]

Holy cow...

So much for my weekend "off"....

FALKTX!! In the repos already?!?!?!?? Oh wait, it's not gratis. But the demo is.
Still, it might just be worth the purchase! (USD 59.00)

brian

[chaocrator]

FALKTX!! In the repos already?!?!?!?? Oh wait, it's not gratis. But the demo is.

it's already in Arch, with classic GUI.
but its relationship with Fusion demo is quite complicated )) trying to make them coexist.
at least banks are the same (except for olivers-100 & olivers-other banks — why?!), so at least for standalone versions coexisting should not be a (big) issue.

[chaocrator]

so, i've managed to make them coexist in my arch installation (ZASF 3.0 from arch repos & Zyn-Fusion 3.0 demo), and played with them for a couple of hours.
basically, both UI can do almost identical things (except for a few, such as visualizing EGs in non-free mode or LFOs), but the difference in the forkflow is HUGE. to put that short, new Zyn-Fusion is A LOT more effective. after fiddling with both UI to compare them, i found myself better understanding how to do things via classic one ))

btw, i have a question:
how do i bring a GUI window back if i have accidentally closed it?

[fundamental]

so, i've managed to make them coexist in my arch installation (ZASF 3.0 from arch repos & Zyn-Fusion 3.0 demo), and played with them for a couple of hours.
basically, both UI can do almost identical things (except for a few, such as visualizing EGs in non-free mode or LFOs), but the difference in the forkflow is HUGE. to put that short, new Zyn-Fusion is A LOT more effective. after fiddling with both UI to compare them, i found myself better understanding how to do things via classic one ))

Thanks for the positive feedback
Amid the justifiable flak received for the bugs, it's great to hear that the primary goal of taking the first step to fixing the major usability/workflow issues was a success.

If you're looking for another functionality/usability gain I personally enjoy the new bank browsing system which lets you search through banks much more easily than the old setup. It's a tradeoff if you're used to remembering where patches existed in the grids, but I think it's an improvement.

btw, i have a question:
how do i bring a GUI window back if i have accidentally closed it?

I'll assume you're referring to running it as a standalone.
If you have the OSC port that the standalone started with you can reconnect it via:
zyn-fusion osc.udp://127.0.0.1:OSC_PORT

You can set the port for the standalone via the "-P" option and it reports the selected port to stdout on startup via "lo server running on port PORT"

[chaocrator]

If you're looking for another functionality/usability gain

IMO, the best possible usability gain is harware controller, but ZASF still scares me with its number of controllable parameters

I personally enjoy the new bank browsing system which lets you search through banks much more easily than the old setup. It's a tradeoff if you're used to remembering where patches existed in the grids, but I think it's an improvement.

yes, i definitely like it. looks and feels similar to the patch browser of Helm, which is another piece of software with great usability.

[davephillips]

Greetings,

A couple of questions and a comment.

First, I'm trying to run the demo in Bitwig 1.3.13 on Fedora 21 x86_64. Alas, all I get is a black window and a bunch of error messages like these :

Code: Select all

...
[INFO] Reading through rate limited fields
[INFO] Shrinking rate limit queue 184=>56
[INFO] Hit rate limit
[INFO] Reading through rate limited fields
[INFO] Clearing rate limit queue
[ERROR] Invalid parameter cannot be accessed at </part0/Pname>
[ERROR] Invalid parameter cannot be accessed at </part0/info.Pauthor>
[ERROR] Invalid parameter cannot be accessed at </part0/info.Pcomments>
...

A *lot* of these messages are reported. What am I missing ? Btw, the errors occur when trying the standalone too.

Next, the home page for Zyn-Fusion tells me that

If you have a copy of the zynaddsubfx source and want to produce the same binaries that are distributed then simply set 'GuiModule' to 'zest' in cmake's options.

I did that and just got the black window. If I set it to ntk I get a working Zynaddsubfx. What's up ?

And last, a comment regarding your "GUI for $$" plan. I think it's a good plan, but I think you should make it abundantly clear in your information that Zyn-Fusion is currently NOT free. State the pricing at the outset of the product description - it's a reasonable amount, and a major bang for the buck. I buy u-he's synths, their prices are prominently displayed on the product description pages, and I haven't been scared away yet.

At US$59 it costs just about what u-he's Repro1 is selling for currently (the price will rise after the beta period). The advantage in purchasing Zyn-Fusion is the investment in an eventually open-sourced high-quality synthesizer's GUI.

Best,

dp

[fundamental]

First, I'm trying to run the demo in Bitwig 1.3.13 on Fedora 21 x86_64. Alas, all I get is a black window and a bunch of error messages like these :

This is the not-at-all obvious result of the UI never connecting to the audio generating side of things.

As per the blank window, that could be a few things:
- OpenGL version is too old (the new UI needs opengl 2.1+some framebuffer extensions or opengl 3.0+)
- Install can't find files needed to layout (e.g. fonts in /opt/zyn-fusion/font/)
- Some bug on my side of things

Btw, the errors occur when trying the standalone too.

How are you running the standalone?

I did that and just got the black window. If I set it to ntk I get a working Zynaddsubfx. What's up ?

That sounds quite like either a too-old openGL version or a broken install.

And last, a comment regarding your "GUI for $$" plan. I think it's a good plan, but I think you should make it abundantly clear in your information that Zyn-Fusion is currently NOT free. State the pricing at the outset of the product description - it's a reasonable amount, and a major bang for the buck. I buy u-he's synths, their prices are prominently displayed on the product description pages, and I haven't been scared away yet.

At US$59 it costs just about what u-he's Repro1 is selling for currently (the price will rise after the beta period). The advantage in purchasing Zyn-Fusion is the investment in an eventually open-sourced high-quality synthesizer's GUI.

Thanks for the comment.
This was more clear when the demo page was the only web presence, but I agree, some of the other pages need more detailed information.

--Mark

[chaocrator]

and probably about demo limitations too.

[ssj71]

And last, a comment regarding your "GUI for $$" plan. I think it's a good plan, but I think you should make it abundantly clear in your information that Zyn-Fusion is currently NOT free. State the pricing at the outset of the product description - it's a reasonable amount, and a major bang for the buck. I buy u-he's synths, their prices are prominently displayed on the product description pages, and I haven't been scared away yet.

At US$59 it costs just about what u-he's Repro1 is selling for currently (the price will rise after the beta period). The advantage in purchasing Zyn-Fusion is the investment in an eventually open-sourced high-quality synthesizer's GUI.

and probably about demo limitations too

I've adjusted that page to hopefully make those things more clear, though that page was meant more as a press release than a product page or a store description so I kept all that info at the bottom. I suppose that period has passed though now and its serving more as the latter. But maybe the front page should serve that purpose. IDK. Anyway I appreciate the feedback too. I think we'll have to do a full re-evaluation of the zyn website and how to present this fairly unique project.

[Norlick]

YES

[sysrqer]

How do I try this new gui with my current install of zynaddsubfx? I had that installed with my package manager and I don't particularly want to run the install script to potentially mess with package manager files.

[glowrak guy]

Try renaming all your existing vst, .vst, lv2 and .lv2 folders, adjust your daw paths,
make new empty folders, install the new zyn-fusion, and test like mad.
Since zyn-fusion all goes in /opt and uses links to other folders, I think /usr/share data is safe.
I also renamed the zyn-fusion banks folder, and replaced it with my somewhat phatter collection.

So I temporarily uninstalled the old zyn, temporarily renamed the lv2 and vst folders,
made the new empty ones, just to make sure scanning had no old/weird vst conflicts.
Later I added back the U-he/discoDSP items, for black-friday testing.

I actually like the old gui, but yoshimi is still improving. and works using the same sounds
in that familiar old gui territory. So I'll keep the new zyn-fusion version installed,
as a few bugs/limitations are taken care of, and reintroduce other linux vsts as I need them.
Cheers

[fundamental]

How do I try this new gui with my current install of zynaddsubfx? I had that installed with my package manager and I don't particularly want to run the install script to potentially mess with package manager files.

It depends on how you want to run it.
IIRC you should be able to cd into the extracted tarball and just run the zynaddsubfx binary there.
Alternatively you can put it in the install dir ( /opt/zyn-fusion ) and connect the zyn-fusion UI to any running zynaddsubfx instance (2.5.x+ for limited functionality, 3.0.x+ for full functionality).
Both the new and old UIs talk over OSC to zynaddsubfx instances, so the zyn-fusion binary should function similar to the zynaddsubfx-ext-gui binary shipped in the 2.5.x series.

glowrak guy's description of how to test it out is also a solid option.

I actually like the old gui, but yoshimi is still improving. and works using the same sounds
in that familiar old gui territory.

For those that don't like the new UI the 3.0.0 tarball and git repos support using the fltk/ntk one (it even got a few bug fixes from 2.5.4). I'd love to be able to convince you/them of the advantages of the new interface though
Per yoshimi working with the same sounds, that's becoming less true over time, though the difference isn't huge at the moment.