Empress Zoia // Euroburo

Got mine a few days ago. I have been quite busy these days so I haven’t been able to spend enough time with it, so I’m barely scratching the surface here…but man, is this thing cool or what. Just scrolling through the factory presets and trying to understand them is extremely fun - feels like I could be doing this for days and I’d still be happy even if it meant I’d got nothing done. This thing is amazing!!!

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Couldn’t resist anymore and found one here in Montreal. I’m quite astonished by how easy it is to get into the interface ! I have been into modular synths for a while so it’s probably why I felt home immediately. In a matter of minutes you start anylising presets and start building your first little patch project. It is deep and for sure looks like it’ll take time to use it to its full potential but so far can’t be more pleased.
The buttons are definitely tiny but they feel great and I’m surprised that I really like the ZOIA as a custom controller for synths as well
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Oh, btw : are the pads velocity sensitive or at least aftertouch enabled ?
I watched people play notes and shake their hand but couldn’t tell if the change in tone was due to the hand shaking or if it was only cosmetic, while an LFO was doing the thing :smiley:

Ordering!

Great to see all the positive feedback! Super excited to get my hands on mine.

So what’s the real-use word on CPU ceiling: do you find it limiting (which can be a good thing with a unit like this), more than enough, do you often hit max?

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Regarding pads velocity / aftertouch >> actually haven’t even looked into that, was more focused on the overall programming blocks together thing. Good question !

CPU use is definitely what I wanna “investigate”, I’ll give my insights after finishing a proper patch. Currently working on a dual looper thing, mixed with effects, we’ll see how deep I can go. But some of the presets are pretty complicated and running flawlessly, so not too worried about the limitations.

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Can anyone explain how the ‘ratchet’ effect works on the sequencer? I’m not entirely sure how I’m meant to be hooking it up to achieve that classic ‘double step’ sound…

[edit] scratch that: sussed a way to make it work. Two tracks on the sequencer: CV out to osc input (track 1), ratchet out to ADSR gate in (track 2). I’m getting some nice, skippy rhythms going on!

Re: pad velocity. AFAIK, there’s no velocity sensitivity on the pads. Might be something for a future firmware update?

My impression of CPU usage, with the latest firmware installed: pleasantly surprised. I don’t have it in front of me, so I might have details wrong. For building synths, I don’t think I’ll have many issues with reaching the limits. There’s an obvious limit to adding oscillators - I think they’re around 10-12% per oscillator module. But control modules (LFOs, envelopes, etc.) and standard logic utility stuff are cheap and will only cost you around 1-2% per, so you can actually get fairly complex with modulation and generative self-patching without hitting the ceiling (I haven’t hit the ceiling yet). And although connection strength on patches appears to be the only way to attenuate/attenuvert at the moment (hopefully fixed soon? or maybe there’s a workaround with VCA modules or multipliers in the meantime), it’s not to be underestimated - it’s like having an attenuverter built in to every single patch cable.

Keyboards and sequencers also not as CPU costly as I might have expected, but forgetting details.

Effects modules will be more costly, with fancy reverbs being the most expensive. Others might be able to elaborate there.

Loopers not bad at all - I remember doing the math and thinking “oh, I could actually have 10 loopers on this patch, not just 4”.

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Yeah, pretty sure there’s no pad velocity or aftertouch. Those sound like expensive features anyway - I like the price point exactly where it is!

I had that moment, too. I was all like ‘IT’S A SUPER-LOOPER!’

I need to look at how to make the generative stuff happen with the sequencers… I am LOVING this pedal.

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These are simple buttons, not pads. So neither velocity, nor aftertouch. But you can connect an expression pedal or some MIDI controller to get a variable input source, of course.

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Yes, those are definitely just buttons.
I am at a point where I am considering selling my OPz and switch to a second Zoia ( but it’s honeymoon right now, gotta spend more time with it first). We can’t exactly compare them but the Zoia is actually providing all I want from a self contained small system. Despite its bonkers sequencer, the OPz remains quite fiddly to use in my opinion, not exactly user friendly while here it’s all very simple to connect, experiment, expand, etc.

Regarding the CPU limitation, I am indeed quite impressed by how far you can go with one patch. I have a 3 parallel loopers + ghostverb+ ping pong delay patch running at the moment, with a few controls on the reverb tail/modulation and loopers speed, all in stereo, that actually reach 103% at its peak and all still runs flawlessly. (Just add the tiniest module and a little bit of clipping comes in, so it’s really tthe limit :slight_smile: )

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How do you plan to remplace the opz by a zoia? They seem like pretty different beasts… Can you, for instance, program a bass synth with its sequencer + a little sample player with its own sequencer as well on the zoia?

I guess with two Zoias I can picture many ways for them to interconnect; midi seems pretty solid both ways. Plus, I find the synths in the Zoia good enough on their own, and deep generative sequencing is definitely possible. No sample player in it though, but I find it so bothersome to inject samples in the OPZ that I wouldn’t miss it that much.
But yeah, they are totally different machines, not trying to start a comparison or whatever between the two of them. I guess it’s just a testament of how much the Zoia is inspiring to me

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Well. I managed to sell a guitar today (I swear I barely touch them anymore haha) and just placed an order for the Zoia.

Really looking forward to experimenting and getting to know it. I’m particularly interested in its potential as a looper. I’m thinking it will be pretty simple to recreate some of the magic found in the Count to Five. Anyone out there getting lots of use out of the looper, or multiple instances of the looper at once?

It might even manage to replace my Timeline, but we’re going to have to wait and see on that. I’m thinking it will fit really nicely on the little gap on the right hand side of the Rev 2 :ecstatic:

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Strikes me that as well as all the awesome audio stuff Zoia can do, it could also be set up as a fairly crazy and user configurable midi and cv control surface? Anyone delved into that side yet?

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Not yet, but as soon as I get a minute I’m going to see how I can make it play with the MIDI side on my Strymon big-box pedals and the Red Panda Tensor. LFO all the things!

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After the honeymoon phase, how you are finding Zoia?

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So many great user-made patches, so little time! It’s a keeper.

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Is it easy to load the new patches on?

Relatively easy. It’s not eventide’s iOS app easy… you basically drop them on a micro SD card and load through a menu on device. You have to watch the patch numbers in the filenames, and rename them with the numbers you want at the front of the file. The manual is really clear about it.

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