Empress ZOIA compared to three product types: boutique effects, multi-effects and modular environments

Shawn

Is ZOIA still an effect pedal worth checking out?

Thanks for writing. I think the point you mentioned about figuring out patches is Zoia’s currently biggest “con”. I not only mentioned that in my video but also in ideas submitted to the user feature forum and emails directly to Empress. So hopefully both they and the community of patch builders will make the process of figuring out a patch as easy as possible.... the Organelle’s OS inherently does that better - hopefully Empress will follows their lead, because while Zoia isn’t super simple to program it’s still much more approachable than pure data and indeed costs less than a modular setup...

Zacklur

Great video, as always. I think I'd consider myself all of the types of target audience you mentioned (I like weird effects, multi-fx, and modular synth patching), so I was very interested in ZOIA. And when I first got the ZOIA, I was indeed blown away by the preset sounds and all the possibilities. Very soon, however, I realized that whenever I felt like wearing any one of those three hats, I'd almost certainly prefer to grab another device that did those things. If I felt like using a wacky but awesome boutique pedal, I'd want to use one of those which would have been engineered to death by its developers with its own sound/style/labeled controls, etc. If I felt like having a multi-fx unit, I'd want to grab either a "real" multi-effects unit like the ones you mentioned (GT-1000, Line6, Zoom, Boss XD-500, Strymons, or even Empress's own). And if I felt like doing modular patches, I'd want to work with my modular rack, which is so much less cumbersome (and which represents a huge investment in modules, etc.). Finally, I started downloading all of the various community patches and then decided it was too much of a pain to load them (limited space) and hard to remember/explore the layouts if I wanted to tweak, etc. So in sum, I wanted to love it, and ordinarily really enjoy doing all the things it does... with other kinds of hardware. But this device wasn't for me. Empress is an awesome company, with fabulous customer service, a great style, and incredible products. I kind of feel the same way about C&G / Organelle--like it's an incredible device, but maybe does too much and, though the interface is brilliant/creative, it's limited as compared with dedicated devices. Maybe it would help if it were a little larger, with a bigger display and knobs below it to which you could add customizable labels (like GT-1000 or NI Komplete Kontrol keyboards). Or if it could hold more patches that could be organized in some kind of type/folder structure for easy accessibility. I'd like to try a ZOIAxL or something like that. And the ZOIA block interface for modular is really cool--perhaps it would be fun to have a tablet-sized device made especially for that kind of thing, with more screen real-estate. Like a modular Lite-Brite. So those are some reactions. Thanks again for doing the review!