Pisound (Raspberry Pi Audio/MIDI interface) is here!

zebra · 2020-04-25T12:01:32.433Z

i’ve been quite happy with pisound, great piece of hardware/sw.

with a couple caveats:

the gain stage is so hot that i actually need attenuation in front with normalized line level sources
it is both low-level and opinionated, meaning you kinda need to be comfortable with admin’ing a linux audio system to get the most out of it

specifically re: audio/video, you may be unpleasantly surprised by dirty ground noise when sharing ground between audio and video systems. (not specific to pi or pisound.)

spqr6510 · 2020-04-25T13:43:14.390Z

@zebra What are you using for attenuation on the pisound? Interested in trying this on mine.

Thanks
S

papernoise · 2020-04-25T13:50:25.063Z

zebra:

it is both low-level and opinionated, meaning you kinda need to be comfortable with admin’ing a linux audio system to get the most out of it

I’m not really a linux pro (more the opposite) but I was able to get a good system together following this guide. Headless Pi: Start to Finish - Tutorials - Blokas Community
For what I did with it (just headless Pd stuff) it worked better than the patchbox OS from Blokas. I had a patch that would only run glitch-free with my system, for whatever reason.
Mine was of course a different use case, so things might be quite different if the goal is to run norns on it.

zebra · 2020-04-25T14:07:23.762Z

i guess in my experience i’ve mostly used the pisound and patchOS as a system where i wanted to run “whatever” - mostly supercollider and custom Jack programs. (norns stack runs fine, but haven’t found much of a need for it in that context - viz., not having norns-compatible screen / knobs / &c.)

in this context i found it necessary to e.g. disable lots of stuff related to bluetooth, puredata &c, to make bootup time acceptable, and in general was fighting (a little) against the expectations of the patchOS script collection.

so yeah, agreed: depends entirely what you want to do!

anyway my initial and continued impressions are of a super solid and useful system that i would totally recommend as a good audio addon to vanilla raspbi. (big caveat about line level input still applies. in fact i had quite a bad experience actually around this with an important commercial client, and ended up having to fly in to a trade show to make hardware modifications to reduce input gain. that was not ideal.)

zebra · 2020-04-25T14:15:27.408Z

spqr6510:

What are you using for attenuation on the pisound? Interested in trying this on mine.

oh! sorry. i missed this. i used 2 resistors in an L-pair for each channel. small; 5ohms or something, i have forgotten (this was some time last year and my client has the board.) gain stage is plentiful and clean, so attenuation level not critical. but out of the box, there was no way to take a line output from a standard sony television without clipping. which is weird enough that i am now mentioning it three times.

in a musical context, its normal to be able to control the amplitude of whatever is feeding the Pi, so maybe not a typical problem.

wednesdayayay · 2020-04-25T14:16:33.876Z

I’ve got an extra 3b+ laying around that won’t work with my video stuff as I have it setup
so I may just check out the pisound board and see if I can’t get this running

@papernoise thanks for the link I had a glance through it and after all the RPI video stuff I’ve been doing lately I think I shouldn’t have any problem! I know I’m just wanting to play with one or two specific pure data patches

nonsmeddy · 2020-04-25T15:38:51.952Z

I tried using a Pisound on a Pi 3B+ with Patchbox OS, in the case that Blokas sells for them, and the Pi would shut itself down due to overheating when I ran SuperCollider—not even doing anything, just with the server booted—unless I put it right in front of a desk fan. This was with X running, not headless.

I haven’t really experimented with it since then for various reasons, but nobody else on the Internet seemed to have this problem. Anyone have any suggestions? Try going headless? Don’t use a case? Try a different distro? Jam a tiny fan in there somehow??

cfd90 · 2020-04-25T18:19:17.636Z

No solutions here - but just wanted to say I’ve also experienced similar seemingly heat related issues with my Pisound Very often has trouble booting after being on for ~15 minutes prior, waiting another 5 minutes seems to fix it.

papernoise · 2020-04-25T18:25:06.727Z

Did you try posting this issue on the Pisound forums, or on github?

disquiet · 2020-04-25T19:41:20.372Z

Thanks for the reminder. I was getting a lot of noise, so mine has just sat on the shelf for a long time. I should give it another go.

mzero · 2020-04-25T19:54:24.007Z

I’m surprised at the overheating issue: I routinely run supercollider doing my effects chain (see other posts for how much that includes) - and all my MIDI processing - for hours at a time, in just the normal Blokas enclosure - no heatsink, no fans - It never overheats. I’ve also run this same set up with an X server running & VNC out to my Mac … again, works for hours at a clip.

Oootini · 2020-04-25T21:07:16.097Z

Also never experienced any overheating or anything like that. Running the stock patchbox os.

spqr6510 · 2020-04-26T13:21:50.444Z

No worries and thanks for the details,

Will try similar method for sure

S

wednesdayayay · 2020-04-26T14:19:24.275Z

in my experience with Pis I found that before I got a proper RPI power supply I was often running out of power when lots of things were plugged into it (webcam, mouse, keyboard, MIDI controller)

I haven’t had any of those pesky lightning bolts pop up since getting a new supply

I think 5.25v is the key the 5v ones I’ve used in the past will work but show signs of low power.

maybe something similar is happening here?

TheTechnobear · 2020-04-27T12:51:35.286Z

No overheating issues here either.

I’d echo @wednesdayayay comments, I found a decent psu with rPI is vital, before when I used an underrated one - I had no end of odd issues, and shutdowns.
( and seems to become more important with each successive pi model !)

nonsmeddy · 2020-04-27T19:31:43.382Z

@papernoise I have not posted on the Blokas forums on the Pisound Github. I guess I should. I neglected to mention that I had soldered header pins onto the Pisound (where it passes through the GPIO pins that the Pisound itself doesn’t use) although nothing’s attached to them. Maybe I damaged something in the process, although I don’t know why that would do this (and nothing else).

@wednesdayayay @thetechnobear I was using a Pi-branded AC adapter from Newark/element14 that’s nominally 5.1V 2.5A… for whatever that’s worth… using the HDMI port and a USB dongle for keyboard/trackpad. I think it still overheated when I SSHed in & wasn’t using either of those, but I don’t remember. Might try again.

Small shrug, big sigh.

cata · 2020-10-24T19:57:32.722Z

Anybody doing anything interesting with these things still?

Stumbled across this cool little gadget but alas, the pisound is no longer in stock. Spoke with a customer service rep on their page and they informed me they should be available again come November so I’ll be excited to get my hands on one then.

For now I’ll have to just make do with a basic setup but that still obviously allows for a lot of complexity, especially with the higher spec’d pi4

mzero · 2020-10-24T23:02:09.171Z

I have two pisound + RPi setups and I use them all the time… and still ever evolving my set up with them. They sound great, and “just work”. Blokas has even made this easier in the last year with Patchbox OS: You can just load that up, add the Modep module - and wham you’ve got a multi-effects box. Load up the PureData module and you can code that way if you like.

Of, if you’re more comfortable in code like me - I just use SuperCollider on it - with a mix of supercollider patches, and standard Linux MIDI utilities (ALSA) - and the box is the control center of my rig: Distributes MIDI, runs my final mix effects chain (EQ, Reverb, Delays) - AND records my sets.

Most recently I bought a Genki Wave ring for MIDI expression control over Bluetooth and was able to incorporate that right in!

cata · 2020-10-25T04:35:25.800Z

oh wow, that Genki Wave ring looks pretty cool!

One thing I’m wondering is if I will be able to use a MIDI over USB device. I was looking at the Beatstep which has a nice form factor with both knobs and pads but until the Pisound is available again I’m not sure if I’ll be able to use it. Seeing as its a MIDI USB device I don’t see why not unless the lag is just pretty awful…

I might just snag one and play with it over the next few days

mzero · 2020-10-25T06:05:20.398Z

RaspPi works with MIDI over USB just fine. I typically have the following connected to the RaspPi all at once:

MIDI over USB:
- Launchpad Pro mkIII for playing notes, and using it’s built in sequencer
- Boppad drumpad
- Digitakt synth & sequencer
- MicroMonsta synth
- Faderfox UC33 knobs & faders
MIDI over DIN on Pisound:
- Pulsar-23
MIDI over Bluetooth:
- Genki Wave
Audio in on Pisound: sub mixer out
Audio out on Pisound: to front of house
Wifi:
- running as access point
- distributing Ableton Link

I’ve done many live performances this way. In general, the lag of MIDI over USB is much less than over DIN. It is no different here. Also - I’m using a Raspberry Pi 3 - and it can easily handle all of the above.

Beatstep Pro + RaspPi should be just lovely! You can load up Patchbox OS, and plug in any class compliant USB audio interface and it’ll all just come up and work. You can decide later if you want to replace the audio interface with the Pisound card.