zynthian-sys VS CloudSeed

There's a bunch of people doing some pretty amazing synth builds with the Raspberry Pi -- the Zynthian crew [0] springs to mind.

Basically bring your own USB midi keyboard / controller - these tend to be cheap, but also engender very strong opinions, so there's some distinct advantages to having them as separate components, but with the synth box being much more portable than a laptop or desktop.

As to the Korg Wavestate - on this side of the pond (AU) it has an RRP of A$1500, though street pricing is around A$1000.

[0] https://zynthian.org/

Another option might be to get a Raspberry Pi and a USB audio interface to run Zynthian. Zynthian can be built from scratch with a TV, mouse and keyboard. You will need the USB audio for a line input from your amp. Heaps of DIY learning building your own Zynthian. You can scale up to the full hardware kit if you like what you see.

I suggest something Raspberry Pi based, Zynthian for example. It's the total opposite in this regard, allowing so much freedom and possibilities that it can get overwhelming.

There are several great RPi synth projects around, including mt32-pi, mini-dexed and samplerbox, but they're all intended for headless use (or with a tiny embedded display). The outlier in that respect AFAIK is Zynthian: https://zynthian.org/

Exactly opposite situation in my case - my Ubuntu Studio rig has been rock solid for tracking and many projects .. but the good news is that even if, for whatever reason, you can't qite grok things to be as productive as a pro Ubuntu Studio user (hint: you can) we have all the good things happening in ZynthianOS to explore, anyway - and this just wraps up the same essential goodies into a hardware device that is push-button-user friendly:

http://zynthian.org

And of course there are bleeding edge lessons learned, applied in things like monome, etc.

Zynthian is a good option but a bit hard to get your hands on in the silicon supply chain crisis.

Zynthian is a good one to add to this list.

You might get some more traction by integrating a Raspberry Pi in a eurorack adapter (or RPi Pico) with some sort of CV interface and leveraging an open source project like Zynthian.

My favourite method for getting a reverb similar to Alesis' bloom is Cloud Seed

Cloudseed is a pretty good one that's free.

There is this open source CloudSeed reverb, which has a C++ and C# version, I prefer the C++ one. With some knob fiddling it gets closer to infinite reverbs, like in Valhalla and Strymon Big Sky clouds.

https://github.com/ValdemarOrn/CloudSeed

I guess it can be compiled for Linux with some kung fu build skills. I ported it over to Electrosmith Daisy STM32, which is very cool too: https://www.electro-smith.com/daisy

Especially CloudSeed!

For "shimmer" reverb look at cloudseed or Valhalla DSP's reverbs. The sound itself could be any synth vst. Sounds like it may be based on a vocal sound source or have a formant filter in it somewhere. I hear a bit of arpeggiation or possibly a quantized pitch envelope in there to add movement to the sound. For me I'd attempt to duplicate it with something like U-he Hive, Parawave Rapid, or Vital.