Raspberry Pi 3 SunVox Synth HiFiBerry DAC+ Standard vs. Behringer UCA202 USB Audio (Saga Continues) 

Good to know my friend! It has been a few years since I've tried it, but there have also been newer versions of Raspbian since I last recorded this. I think it's worth another try to revisit the HiFiBerry! I still have it in a box somewhere and haven't used it yet. Thanks for the update and hope it works well for you!

Hi there Chris, I'm definitely curious on the make and model of the USB DAC you're using. There seems to be a vast difference with each manufacturer in how well they perform for things like MIDI on the Pi. Perhaps I'll snag one up myself and give it a little test. Are you using SunVox in your testing? How about ALSA vs. JACK? I appreciate the insight!

It was a much different situation back when Raspbian Jessie was out. We're talking 4-5 years now. There was no real-time support compiled in the Linux kernel at the time and audio was very finicky in general with 3rd party devices. We've come a long way since then and the process is basically effortless.

I totally hear you on the iPhone and iPad Apps! I purchased them as well and they work beautifully. There's something about the challenge of getting it working well on the Pi that intrigues me enough to continue working on it. I really love the idea of building a totally stand-alone unit with a custom box, MIDI keyboard with button labels, hopefully a future touchscreen, and everything you need ready-to-go from the moment you turn on the power. It takes a lot of work to get there and has made for a fun project thus far. It looks like the UCA202 uses the PCM2902 from Texas Instruments. That's what shows when I perform an "lsusb" at least! I haven't tried a CM108 yet, but I can honestly say that each manufacturer from what I've seen so far, has fairly different drivers and software options. It's definitely a guessing game with these Pi's. I've had great luck with the Behringer so far. It's holding up to the test! Audio In works perfectly fine. I plugged in an old turn-table and captured audio in Audacity without any problems. Great quality too!

Glenn Meader good to know! I really dig their platform. I’d be curious to try it for myself. Sunvox in particular runs awful with it. Maybe a software problem? I’ve since reused my DAC+ for audio listening and it’s much better as a stereo component for me. Either way it’s good to hear that some music platforms are working well with it because it certainly looks the best out of everything I’ve tried :-)

Marky Shaw I downloaded the Zynthian image and booted it on my Pi3 with just official RPi touchscreen and DAC board. Just works. Easy configuration with built-in web UI. No need to build the box with the 4 encoders and hardware MIDI. Stunning collection of synths built-in. Touchscreen interface is cool. PS thanks for your videos on Sunvox - learning a lot from you.

Awesome to hear, Glenn! So much has changed since I looked at Zynthian over a year ago! It was confusing to even find the downloads for their image. Now it's all there and much more easily accessible! Looking forward to trying out the HiFiBerry DAC+ again to see how it works! Are you using the latest DAC+ ADC from HiFiBerry? I see they have a new version of the DAC as well, which I don't have. I really wonder what has changed. A big thing that irritated me was an "Auto Mute" setting that couldn't be disabled in ALSA. Sounds like a fun new project to explore again! Thanks for the update my friend. Super glad to hear how well it went!

Hey there ZipSnipe, I wonder if this is because the Pi Zero doesn't have the same audio outputs as the Pi 1,2,3? That still might not explain why the heck that line isn't showing up in /boot/config.txt - I assumed you've scrolled all the way down to the very bottom of that file. Do you see other param lines at all? Since the Stretch image download is the same one regarding of a regular Pi vs. Zero, it would make sense that those lines should exist on both devices. Although it's possible that some kind of auto-detect feature disables the need for that param line in config.txt because it might not use the same audio chipset or audio outputs? I believe audio only passes through HDMI on the Pi Zero, which might have to be disabled through a different option. Seems unlikely though! Perhaps you can skip this step entirely as long as it doesn't cause any issues for ya. You'll just need to make sure to select the right driver in JACK. Let me know how you make out!

I have not heard of it until now! That is definitely great info. I'd love to hear your results. I had a feeling IQAudio was going to be a much better solution. I believe their custom image has everything ready to go for their device. The moonbox is definitely what inspired me to look in to this further. I had a feeling IQAudio was on to something good. The thing that intrigues me the most, is that these DACs are targeted towards the Audiophile which doesn't necessarily mean it's good for musicians. I'd love to try our their product side-by-side with the HiFiBerry. It could just be something as silly as the chipset or driver software differences! I'm definitely going to play around with DietPi. Maybe I'll try it on my Pi Zero :-) Thanks so much for your comment!

I had a problem with sunvox requiring 1.2 version of the libSDL, and the dietpi installer installs version 2.0 Investigating a remedy for this problem now. Hopefully I will get it sorted and can post a blog post or something to help walk people through it. I will try out a few of DACs and hopefully report back good news. Someone recommended installing libsdl1.2-dev so I will try that today and see if it works. EDIT: Yes that worked. Sunvox now runs. Will have to update later when I can do some further testing - cheers!

BTW what audio software are you running on your pi? Im still waiting for some DACs to come in to test further, in the meantime I am running a behringer UCA222, but sunvox doesn't find the audio device with the super skinny image file (500mb one with no GUI and no menu installers). I know you can generally run ALSA, PULSE, JACK etc.. I am trying not to clutter up my box too much tho. I will re-test on the bigger raspbian image later. I am having to isolate a major problem on my dietpi image due to sunvox freezing up after changing parameters, loading a sunvox file etc... The odd thing is, the keyboard still keeps playing, but the windows are completely frozen requiring a ALT-SYSREQ-K to be used. EDIT: This could be due to sunvox version 1.9 I am going to try to run an older version and see if the freezing still happens. UPDATE: Older version (1.8) freezes as well.

Hi Allen! I've only really played around with SunVox, amsynth, and SonicPi. Unfortunately SonicPi doesn't work with either DAC I use for some reason. I have yet to be able to figure out a way to choose a different audio interface that isn't the built-in one. Even when I disable the built-in audio device, SonicPi just doesn't even load at all. I thought it would have been fun to program some sounds that could be invoked through a MIDI device, but alas, no love quite yet. That's interesting that the UCA222 doesn't work on the skinny image. The driver module must have been omitted from the build. I would definitely try the standard Raspbian image. I have a feeling it will work no problem! But I hear you on wanting to keep things as minimal as possible. I will say that my UCA202 worked just fine on Raspbian Jessie Lite as of a few months ago. I have not tried it on Raspibian Stretch Lite. I was hoping that by decreasing the bloat as much as possible it would help with audio performance, but honestly, at least with SunVox, I've noticed no major performance increases by using a Lite version. I bet you'll get different results on a different Raspbian image. It would definitely be worth a shot. SunVox would only ever freeze on me if I had it set to JACK, and JACK wasn't configured properly. I'll set it back to ALSA just to try troubleshooting issues with the program starting, but that's about it! Best of luck and feel free to keep us posted on your progress.

I've isolated my freeze to a faulty SD card. Still waiting for my DACs to come in the mail. The stretch image actually works pretty darn well. Installed qjackctl to help setup virtual patching. I was contemplating setting up a blog, since there are probably quiet a few people interested in getting the best performance for this kind of thing.

There's nothing to install my friend. You unzip SunVox and run the binary. It sounds like you're not running it from the Terminal. Open up a terminal, use the "cd" command to change to the directory in which SunVox is located, for example "cd /home/user/Downloads/sunvox" then cd again to the raspberrypi directory, and run ./sunvox. There are several video parts to my series on Raspberry Pi synths, and it takes patience to understand how all the components tie together. The latency issue is why we use JACK to address those problems. You can use some of the settings I've outlined in qjackctl. But don't click the "Start" button in Jack. Close out of it. Once you've set that up, run your software, whether SunVox or Grand Orgue. Check any audio settings in the software to make sure you're using the "JACK" driver if the option is available like it is in SunVox. Then, run qjackctl AGAIN while the other software is running, check the MIDI tab, and connect your instrument in there.

Please feel free to contact me via email mark at wbsounds.com or Discord - Comet#9899 and I'd love to try and help you get this working properly.

I also discovered my linux was out of date & crashed after updating it. Downloaded a new distro & started again, still got big Latency but, so yea more work & more gear on order.