Elk Audio OS on Pi 3&4 + HiFiBerry

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stez-elk
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Elk Audio OS on Pi 3&4 + HiFiBerry

Post by stez-elk »

Hello everyone,
public disclaimer: I'm working for a startup company making a very low-latency distribution focused on professional audio for embedded Linux systems, Elk Audio OS.

We have always restrained to promote our activities in a forum like this. Even when we released the entire codebase the last year, we still didn't like the idea because until now it required a custom Hardware that we are selling.

However, now we just released a version of Elk Audio OS for both RPi3 32 bit & RPi4 64 bit which supports the HiFiBerry line of audio HATs:
https://github.com/elk-audio/elk-pi/releases/tag/0.7.2

It has also been reported to work on other audio HATs that use the same codec.

So now, it is quite cheap to get started with Elk and if you have one of those HATs, you can just grab the image and start hacking around to make your own low-latency FX unit or synth. Elk can run down to 16 samples buffer size @ 48kHz with no audible glitches and our audio engine SUSHI can host VST2, VST3 and LV2 plugins.

Even if you're not a plugin developer, you can just get one of the many precompiled open-source plugin binaries for the board:
https://github.com/elk-community/elk-plugins-pack

and make an audio device just by writing a couple of JSON files and do the logic with any language that supports gRPC or OSC (we actively support both Python and C++).

We will be curious to know if other people start using Elk, let us know!

Stefano
Elk Audio OS
https://elk.audio
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Re: Elk Audio OS on Pi 3&4 + HiFiBerry

Post by bluebell »

Are class compliant USB interfaces supported?

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stez-elk
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Re: Elk Audio OS on Pi 3&4 + HiFiBerry

Post by stez-elk »

Unfortunately, no USB audio support. We need to write custom drivers to use the audio system with Xenomai, and it's quite hard to do it with USB audio.

However, there are quite a decent numbers of I2S shields supported that have the same audio Codec that's there in the HiFiBerry.
Elk Audio OS
https://elk.audio
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Digital Larry
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Re: Elk Audio OS on Pi 3&4 + HiFiBerry

Post by Digital Larry »

I'm waiting for my Elk Pi Hat and Blackboard to get here! I'm mostly interested in developing things in Faust and couldn't seem to get past the glitches in Ubuntu Studio using a USB interface. I'm sure it can be done theoretically but it's a huge distraction. We'll see how the Elk thing works out. I got some Faust stuff running with OSC on an ESP32 board recently so am looking forward to something with a little more CPU horsepower.

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Re: Elk Audio OS on Pi 3&4 + HiFiBerry

Post by uns4ph3 »

Wow, I have been scouring the internet for a good DIY audio interface solution and I should have just looked here.

I have some questions about it:

- Does it run USB2 or USB3? Have you tested for a performance difference between the two?
- Have you tried running it at 96khz instead of the advertised 48khz?
- Can it run a patch bay application like Carla (as an LV2)? My ideal audio setup is one where I'm using the card to do some basic processing but running DIs into the DAW. Most commercial audio interfaces do this on Mac and Windoze, but can't do it on Linux.
- Has anyone tried building a cluster computer from the underlying hats and running these as a single unit?
- Have you tested performance running 2 or 3 of these into a computer?

Finally, thanks for making something awesome. Keep us updated here about new developments and new boards you're offering!
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