J. Dan Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 I know there have been some examples and even threads about using Raspberry Pi for music applications (for those unfamiliar, it's a very inexpensive platform with a processor, USB, hdmi, som I/O lines - talking around $50 last I checked). I know it typically is running a version of Linux. I'm just curious if it is capable of running any of the MacOS or Win versions of commercially available VI's, Plug ins, Sims, etc. furthermore, is there a platform to write kind of a shell or something to do a custom interface and I/O. I'm thinking along the lines of building a hardware platform for software implementations. It could be something as simple as a pedalboard running an amp sim, or a tabletop synth with knobs. I know it has HDMI, but can you use I/O lines to do BCD to a backlit LCD? For a manufacturer that does large volume, it wouldn't be cost effective. But if somebody wanted to do short run, boutique or custom stuff, it seems like it has the potential to be a good platform. Quote Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Docbop Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 Raspberry PI is a lean and mean platform towards robotic control and embedded use. So Mac OS is definitely too resource hungry for it, but Mac OS was built on top of Darwin BSD one of the flavors of UNIX and that's why Linux another UNIX derived OS work. Normal Windows like Mac OS is to resource hungry for Raspberry Pi but Window does have stripped down version I believe call Core Windows the design for the IoT development again looking at embedded or dedicated use. What I understand Core Windows only runs one app with limited video capabilities. Bigger problem audio programs themselves are resources hungry so Raspberry Pi just to small for what your thinking of, unless you're of a programmer writing lean and mean app and libraries. You would be better looking at the small motherboard computers like mini-ITX that can have the horsepower, but in small size to handle what your talking about. If you thinking of selling your idea as a product that's going to open a whole big can of worms for licensing the your operating system of choice and any software you use. I'd say build yourself a prototype then decide if all the legalities and licensing cost are going to be worth making a product for sale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefan011 Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 Zynthian is Raspberry Pi based and can run Pianoteque http://blog.zynthian.org/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OB Dave Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 Echoing what Docbop said, the RPi requires a pretty lightweight OS. By far the most popular is Raspbian which is a Debian-based Linux distro. In addition to HDMI interface, there are a few low cost touch screen display options available such as this one. . I've built a few escape room props using this screen and it's pretty robust. Does not do multi-touch. I am aware of the Pianoteq port for the Pi but have not played with it myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Coda Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 Zynthian is Raspberry Pi based and can run Pianoteque http://blog.zynthian.org/ Quote: "we have been testing and improving the Pianoteq engine integration with the kind help of Pianoteq"s guys. Currently it"s working quite nicely and it can be used on stage with a decent probability of not having problems. Of course, RBPi-3 has limited power, and although we are using the multi-core capabilities of Pianoteq, we had to reduce some quality parameters for getting a good playability: Internal Sample Rate = 22050 Max Num. of Voices = 32 Anyway, the sound quality and playability you have is a lot better than anything else i"ve tried in a device of this size & price" I wonder what the reduced internal sample rate does to the sound. If it does what I guess it does,- it would be unusable for me. A.C. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricBarker Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 I had a local tech pop open my Mojo61 to do some minor work... we immediately recognized the inclusion of a Raspberry Pi, which handles the WiFi web interface and settings. I was surprised at first, but when I thought about it, it made perfect sense. Quote Puck Funk! Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted September 3, 2019 Author Share Posted September 3, 2019 I guess part of what I was getting at is that it would have to be written to run on raspian or whatever Linux is is running.....didn't know if there was any other kind of lightweight utility that could run a commercially available plugin. My initial thought was something in more of a stompbox format with a few footswitches that could run an amp sim with MIDI for patch change and some CC assignments. Seems like an amp sim would be a lot lighter than something like pianoteq. But I guess if it's written for Mac or PC, then that's the barrier. Quote Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EscapeRocks Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 Dan, I think you need to look into ARM. If you can get VSTs compiled for an ARM64 Linux target, you may be able to do it. I followed some threads years ago about this on some Pi forums, but didn't really go anywhere with it. Quote David Gig Rig:Depends on the day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baggypants Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 Dan, Have a look at the MOD DUO https://www.moddevices.com/products/mod-duo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted September 3, 2019 Author Share Posted September 3, 2019 Dan, Have a look at the MOD DUO https://www.moddevices.com/products/mod-duo I got really excited when I saw that until I saw that it's $700. Quote Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baggypants Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 Also here's a pianoteq demo on the zynthian that I found. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baggypants Posted September 3, 2019 Share Posted September 3, 2019 Dan, Have a look at the MOD DUO https://www.moddevices.com/products/mod-duo I got really excited when I saw that until I saw that it's $700. Well, MOD DUO is a very nice well put together piece of kit. To build a stage ready kit with an Intel Nuc with the VST's you want you're probably going to be in the same ballpark. You can do similar things with the Zynthian, the new v3 has a mono audio in, and uses the same lv2 effects, and you also get the same web interface that the MOD DUO uses as it's open source. However it's not quite the same experience. The Rpi 3B+ is a capable board, but even then I get xruns with complicated patches using OB-Xd or Helm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted September 4, 2019 Author Share Posted September 4, 2019 The Line 6 HX Stomp is $600, is the format I want, and is already loaded with all of the amp models and effects anybody would ever need. But that's overkill. I really just want a few dedicated amp models with a couple footswitches and MIDI selectable patches. EDIT: It states that most parameters can be controlled via MIDI and that presets can be saved Not sure if something like Guitarix would run on Raspberry Pi 3 - says it will run on Ubuntu. But doesn't look like it's set up to have patch storage/MIDI. It's open source, so maybe I could add to it. At that point you're looking at $35 for the RPi, I found a basic display as cheap as $17, some footswitches, enclosure, power supply, and cheap USB audio/midi interface. The other initial comments about running VI's or other plugins was just out of curiosity once I started thinking of the possibility of using it for my actual current need. Quote Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doerfler Posted September 4, 2019 Share Posted September 4, 2019 The Line 6 HX Stomp is $600, is the format I want, and is already loaded with all of the amp models and effects anybody would ever need. But that's overkill. but it's a damn nice piece of overkill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baggypants Posted September 4, 2019 Share Posted September 4, 2019 You're also going to need a soundcard for the rpi. The built in audio is noisy and has an intrusive gate. Usb soundcards have issues with contention with other usb devices, which can be fixed by limiting the bus to only use usb1 speeds. I used a usb one for a bit with a usb midi keyboard and some engines like dexed had wierd stuck notes and the like. At least for the rpi 3.TBH Whatever you do with the raspberry pi for audio, and I hope ypu do! it's going to end up looking like the zynthian in some form. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dan Posted September 4, 2019 Author Share Posted September 4, 2019 Well I need audio in which will have to be USB, but what about stripping audio off the HDMI? MiDI in really only needs to receive patch change messages, that's it. I was thinking one of those USB interfaces with a single audio I/O and single MIDI I/O would be fine for this. Quote Dan Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baggypants Posted September 4, 2019 Share Posted September 4, 2019 In my experience HDMI < USB audio interface < gpio soundcard. I used the HDMI but it wasn't great quality and it seemed to have a weird gate when you initialise it. meaning the first note I played was always silent. I had a Behringer U222 usb audio input, perfectly fine with my PC, but as I've already mentioned the usb host for the rpi can have some odd mercurial issues on the Pi 3, Mine used to cause hanging notes when I used a particular synth engine and which you can get around as long as you don't want anything that uses usb2. I now use a HiFiBerry DAC+, lower latency than the usb, 192kHz/24bit vs 48KHz/16bit for the usb. The HiFiBerry DAC+ ADC has stereo line in too. Other (cheaper) gpio soundcards are available. Obviously the downside is it doesn't do MIDI. But you could use a cheap usb to midi adaptor. Or there are serial to midi schematics available, such as the one for the Zynthian. But I suppose at that point you're probably better actually getting a Zynthian. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Coda Posted September 4, 2019 Share Posted September 4, 2019 Dan, Have a look at the MOD DUO https://www.moddevices.com/products/mod-duo Wow, thx for the link ! Haven´t seen before ... Made in Germany and EUR 499,- incl. 19% VAT @Thomann. EUR 479,- for UK customers ... A.C. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theo Verelst Posted September 4, 2019 Share Posted September 4, 2019 The latest Pi's are like currently second rate phone-processor powered boards with a low price. The ARM is capable, but compared to a high powered desktop, not so much, dependingon what you do with it. Just about everything that the RPi runs in terms of audio is based on Linux standards, alsa, possibly jack, probably ladspa and a newer plugin container + effects called lv2, which isn't all mature yet, and not the only way to run a quite wide variety of plugins available as ladpsa plugins. There are various hosts to run plugins, and there are programs with synthesis and effect tools in them that connect for instance over Jack, which is a connection tool, so you can run various programs or plugin hosts with output and intput connected in any topology, with guaranteed fixed delay paths, which isimportant for pro work. There are cheaper boards with more compute power, and there are possibilities to connect other compute power devices like FPGAs, which is what I'm interested in, but I went bigger scale. The Pi itself is cheap, and well maintained, but all linux tools run on it, which is cool. It's really not like a windows mobile or something, it's a pro Linux, recent kernel, and full multi processing. The audio plugins that it runs are almsot always general Linux ones, which run on any Linux, so you can also put a Linux on your PC and run them, usually that's a lot faster, in spite of the ok usability of the Raspberry and the likes for serious computer use (it also runs a free Mathematica, wen server, sat server, 4k video playback, etc etc. It hasn't been optimized for audio in any way, and it will have limits with heavy PC acceleration based FFT computations or complex software with a lot of cache memory requirements. It's a lot less power, too, of course. T Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threadslayer Posted September 5, 2019 Share Posted September 5, 2019 Great post Theo. Very informative and clearly written. Well done. Quote Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. -Mark Twain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baggypants Posted September 30, 2019 Share Posted September 30, 2019 Al Coda, Sorry it's taken so long. You can hear pianoteq on the raspberry pi here https://discourse.zynthian.org/t/new-engine-pianoteq/1679/10?u=baggypants Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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