Author Topic: Sunvox/Raspberry Pi  (Read 7453 times)

PrincessDan

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Sunvox/Raspberry Pi
« on: December 23, 2016, 10:55:51 pm »
I'm really a fan of early Dabrye and he used an early "tracker style" software to make 1/3 which led me to Sunvox. It's developer is *extremely devoted Russian dude* and is free/cheap and runs on any garbage hardware imaginable. So it runs on Raspberry Pi also, and there are available DAC "hats" for the Pi that sound spectacular in the $20-50 price range. Mine cost $40. Anyone else tried this stuff out? For not much more than $100 you get a *massive sounding* midi compatible setup. Pic is my rig.

Marrow Machines

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Re: Sunvox/Raspberry Pi
« Reply #1 on: December 24, 2016, 04:24:16 am »
my friend who is majoring in computer science told me about this particular product.

It seems really cool and extremely versatile.

i'd be interested to see if you can manage to make a fully modular synth out of this thing.
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PrincessDan

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Re: Sunvox/Raspberry Pi
« Reply #2 on: December 24, 2016, 04:15:27 pm »
As far as "fully modular synth" it is already getting close: the GPIO pins on the PI can be used as triggers for analog devices. Already works in Sunvox. I rigged up a breadboard, and it triggers my old Drum-x brain just fine. So you can sequence and trigger things, both in/out, midi and voltage(3.2). All with acceptably low latency. And there are ways to set things up to run "headless" so you can create stand-alone physical instruments, no screen. But Sunvox is a real DAW with many voices/choices, so it's all bits and bytes and not at its heart a modular synth. The DAC makes it very large and warm, at the end.

Marrow Machines

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Re: Sunvox/Raspberry Pi
« Reply #3 on: December 24, 2016, 05:24:39 pm »
That's pretty cool.

What are some challenges involved with getting this thing to run efficiently and effectively?
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eidolon

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Re: Sunvox/Raspberry Pi
« Reply #4 on: December 24, 2016, 10:04:40 pm »
this sounds really really cool!! do you have any demos of what youre working on that you could post, or videos of something similar? id love to see this in action!
check out the chat!! you can join here.

PrincessDan

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Re: Sunvox/Raspberry Pi
« Reply #5 on: December 25, 2016, 01:03:55 am »
Challenges involved:

1) My DAC is made by hifiberry. You need to use their custom "flavor" of Raspbian. They provide it free. You need to disable Bluetooth, and maybe mess with the "dtoverlay" portion of the operating system, which is a word document that you edit and save. My DAC is the PRO+ version, has its own clock in it, but it disagrees with the PI 3 clock, so you have to tell it to ignore it's own clock, and respect the Pi 3's clock. The not pro version of the DAC is cheaper and doesn't have this problem.
2)make sure the latency is set right in Sunvox and in the USB to midi interface.
3)get everything agreeing on MHz.

Most of the problems I had, were with the clock issue. Otherwise easy issues solved by light research in forums.
Sunvox is JACK and ALSA compatible, which are like two standards for audio stuff in Linux. Hifiberry DAC, also JACK and ALSA compatible. They shake hands real nice.

As for finished work you can hear, now I'm trying to learn to use the software. Which is why I started this stuff, because I want to make beats with "tracker" style interface. It's a real deep program, and I'm just finally finding my legs on my MPC and digital recorder without integrating this yet. I'm getting there though.