Zoia

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

So, is anyone else here Zoia-ing? Mine arrived this week, and I've already careened through amazement, frustration, bemusement and vague glimmerings of comprehension. Which is to say, the learning curve is as steep as anticipated, but the flashes of "say, I could do this" leave some tasty brain frissons.

So far:

- I've gotten the patch library utility working on my computer, so that's made it easy to dump the bulk of the stock patches and do a preliminary stripmine of promising stuff from patchstorage. Promptly found out this isn't a one-step install-and-go sort of thing, as people's documentation of their patches is sometimes a bit lacking.

- I followed the walkthroughs and made a basic effects patch and a simple synth patch. I even managed to understand those enough that I was able to elaborate on the latter a bit, stretching out the attack/sustain in the ADSR module to make something more pleasing to my ear... and, more excitingly, dropping in a ping-pong delay with "old tape" modulation.

(in an extra triumph, I also managed to figure out how to get Windows on my new computer to accept the USB output from my mixer as a stereo input, so I can actually pipe audio into OBS in a more satisfying way. Means I can document this a bit better!)



So... yeah. Anyone else on here have one of these? And otherwise, are there folks who are interested in my puttering around?

[frigid midget]

No experience what to so ever, but I'm definitely curious..

In the same kinda way I'm curious about trying a backflip on my snowboard though, or getting a neck tatttoo. I don't have the balls, nor the money to purchase/recover.

I usually pass for any pedal that has a learning curve equavalent to mastering a new language. But the jury's still out on this one, the demos just sound way too sick to ignore.

[01010111]

I have one. It’s easily one of the most useful pedals I own, but it’s not one that I’d say is fun to use in any way. Whenever I have an idea for a sound or I want to try and recreate some effect I heard, it’s what I think of first. Usually I use it to make one-off, simple effects for recording.

I don’t use it with a PC, and I definitely don’t try to mess with other people’s patches. It’s confusing enough on its own without trying dive into the confusion that someone else assembled.

[BitchPudding]

The more I see one of these things, the curiouser I get....almost enough to break my $200 pedal spending limit.

I like the tweakableness of this the most. It would probably live on my desk in between shows just so I could have it close to program new shit.

EEEEEEE, its cool. This and the helix stomp will have to fight for their right to be on my board and win my love.

[Dandolin]

I'm interested - I ended up grabbing a Poly Digit/Beebo last year, but the Zoia was absolutely a consideration. I can see advantages and disadvantages the pad array vs. touch screen.... I do tend to like Empress stuff, so that tends to leave me with an eye peeled for Zoia developments. I think at the time I decided to go Digit wind had gotten out about the eurorack iteration of Zoia, so I decided to wait on Zoia to see what was up with that

The sounds in your video definitely pique my interest, especially since the device is new to you.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

The sounds in your video definitely pique my interest, especially since the device is new to you.

Ya, I mean, anyone who actually knows anything about synthesis could really hit the ground running. I have a vague notion of the basics, but I'm, like, looking up what an SV filter does. There's a real danger that this will lead me to looking for a MIDI keyb.

I think in terms of learning curve that's the bigger climb as opposed to the actual operation of the pedal, which, once you get your hands on, is really intuitive, I'm finding.

I have one. It’s easily one of the most useful pedals I own, but it’s not one that I’d say is fun to use in any way. Whenever I have an idea for a sound or I want to try and recreate some effect I heard, it’s what I think of first. Usually I use it to make one-off, simple effects for recording.

Out of curiosity, what sort of problem-solving have you managed to get done with it?

Besides just puttering and getting more familiar with some of the nits-and-bolts stuff (CV flow!) I do like playing with the patches other people have made. Part of the justification for the Zoia is, "once I have this, then I don't need to buy x or y!" so checking out people's approximations of other pedals is mission critical. Shallow Water and Wardencliffe knock-offs are on board, but not investigated yet.

[Dandolin]

yeah, i don't know, but it seems like user-base may be firmly in Zoia's column - not sure how much of a thing patch-sharing is/will be (I haven't even really looked into it tho because I'm using it as a home effects lab to increase my understanding of effects and their interaction without having to mess about with the whole pedalboard).

hopefully when (if) the world returns, I'll return to thinking about how to use it in a performance....

[01010111]

Out of curiosity, what sort of problem-solving have you managed to get done with it?

90% of the time it’s stuff like: I don’t have effect X let’s make effect X with the Zoia. Other times it’s something like, I have effect Y but I also want to use effect Y on another instrument I’m currently playing. So, I make effect Y on the Zoia for the other instrument. Usually it isn’t anything too crazy. Usually it’s a basic effect with some added complication for tonal flavor (like adding some overdrive to the signal with a chorus/flange instead of just a straight chorus/flange).

I have made some weirder things with it, though. My wife started playing ukulele and wanted to run it through effect pedals. The effects she liked the most were things that made the input unrecognizable. So, I put together some patches that took the input and turned it into synth pads/organs/pitch-shifted nonsense; all of it was fun, none of it was useful. A more useful example was when someone on here wanted to make a custom wave-form tremolo. So, I made one on the zoia with a slew limiter and a sequencer. Other times I’ve just made glitchy loops to futz around with.

I think the first thing I tried to do with it was make a self-playing synth patch. I had the idea in my head that this with a battery pack would make an excellent couch-jam item with the Volca FM. I actually made quite a few synth patches. But where I have other synths, using the zoia to do something I could accomplish quicker with the “real” thing didn’t make sense.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

The outcome isn't great (I have something nicer cooking at the moment with keyboard input), but this is a 4-looper patch I grabbed from patchstorage inspired by "Music For Airports". YOu can et a sense of the possibilities here, though, maybe.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

Coming back to playing after being busy with other stuff the past few weeks, exploring patches that I grabbed from patchstorage. This is mostly just using one called "Tesserae". (You can hear some FEBER in the right channel in the second half, too.)

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

Made my first "proper" ZOIA patch! I still barely know what I'm doing — part of the "assignment" here was figuring out, like, how to assign stompswitches to things. This is dead simple, but it does something that's pretty useful for me.

The patch uses a pair of reverbs with extremely long tails as a sort of looper substitute. (There are also a couple modifiers on the stompswitches — the centre drops the first reverb trail by two octaves, while right runs the second trail's output through a random pitch filter that's attached to a granular freeze buffer. These are both possibly still works in progress.)

[lumena]

That was lovely.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

Putting my new midi controller to work! I built a synth patch!



It's not very fancy under the hood, but it makes some drones and blips. My main goal was really getting used to working with the midi controls, which was pretty easy once I got the hang of it. The synth itself is just a sine wave oscillator controlled by the midi keys, hooked up to a filter and ADSR module. Then I just kept hooking more stuff up to the knobs and sliders until I ran out of cpu headroom.

[Paul_C]

I'm thinking about getting one once I have some spare funds (in the next few months, with a bit of luck), so I shall return to this thread later today (once my daughter is out of the way) to have a proper listen.

I doubt I'll need much convincing once I start listening to what can be done (I've avoided doing so up until now to keep me from spending money I don't have )

I've got a midi controller which I've used to run Fruity Loops out of my PC and into my pedals, so being able to include that would add to the fun, by the looks of things.

[qersty]

Do you Zoibois think zoia is worth it over full on mad scientist equipment? (modular, max/PD) sometimes i get nord modular nastalgia when i see this