[LAU] Raspberry Pi and real-time, low-latency audio

[Jeremy Jongepier]

On 03/13/2013 12:01 PM, Atte wrote:
> Interesting!
>
> Am I right it's only $25?
>
> How about compiling software on the arm, is is possible to compile and
> run stuff like ams, fluidsynth, pd, csound, sooperlooper, freewheelin
> and such on raspberrypi?
>
> How's the quality of the onboard audiocard? Is there also audio in?

Hello Atte,

The Model A is $25 yes. But that model comes without an ethernet 
connection. All the software you mention runs on the Raspberry Pi and no 
need to compile it because packages are available in the default repos 
of the distros that are available for the RPi (Debian, Arch, Fedora). 
Don't expect great performance, especially GUI driven software might be 
problematic. pd should be no issue though, Miller Puckette even released 
a SD card image specifically for the RPi. If you want to compile newer 
versions, that's possible too, but something like guitarix already takes 
hours to compile natively.
The Raspberry Pi has no audio in and the quality of the audio out is not 
really HiFi, it's actually 11bit. Also because the kernel module for the 
onboard soundchip has no ALSA mmap support you can't use it directly 
with JACK.
Audio out (and in) is easy to solve though with a $3 USB audio 
interface. I'm awaiting a Behringer UCG102 clone that I'd like to use 
with the RPi which would solve both the audio in and out issues too. 
I've also ordered a HDMI to DVI cable with a separate audio output just 
to test if the output of such a cable would be usable.

Jeremy