HARDWARE & SOFTWARE - noiseorchestra/noise-audio-web GitHub Wiki

Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi https://www.raspberrypi.org/ is a popular single board computer used for a huge range of different applications. The newest version (RPi 4) is a fully stand alone computer which can handle many of the tasks you perform daily on your laptop. You can install an operating system (normally linux based Raspbian https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspberry-pi-os/) attach a keyboard, mouse and screen to setup a desktop environment. They start at around 40GBP for just the computer, so they're also affordable.

For our use, we need a device which will run the audio and network software needed to make networked audio connections possible. We will be running the RPi "headless" which means no screen or other peripherals.

Raspberry-jam

It's best to run jackd and jacktrip in an environment optimized for realtime audio. The raspberry-jam disk image is packaged with everything needed to get started quickly with jacktrip on a RPi. https://github.com/rbultman/raspberry-jam There seems to be lot's of development happening on this project at the moment, well worth keeping an eye on.

RPi Audio Hats

In order for the RPi to receive audio you need to also add an audio HAT (Hardware Attached on Top). We have been testing these 2 audio HATs.

Choosing between the two would depend on your specific requirements. The pisound has higher audio processing specs and comes with gain and volume controls built in. The hifiberry has fewer features and therefore cheaper. For transmitting audio on jacktrip both work well though. You can see performance comparisons on the latency testing page.

JackTrip

JackTrip https://github.com/jacktrip/jacktrip is the network audio tool which allows users in different locations to send and receive lossless low latency audio over the internet. There are different implementations for Linux, MacOS and Windows. It is currently being developed and actively tested at CCRMA by the SoundWIRE group.

Jacktrip + RaspberryPi

There is a detailed paper published by the JackTrip developers here https://lac.linuxaudio.org/2019/doc/chafe2.pdf documenting how to setup an RPi ready for use with JackTrip.