Pisound – Raspberry Pi Sound Card & MIDI Interface

Pisound is an ultra-low latency high-quality sound card and MIDI interface specially designed for Raspberry Pi pocket computers.

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Meet Pisound!

Pisound is an ultra-low latency high-quality sound card and MIDI interface specially designed for Raspberry Pi pocket computers.

Equipped with 192kHz 24-bit Stereo Input and Output driven by the legendary Burr-Brown chips, DIN-5 MIDI Input and Output ports, user-customizable button and bundled software tools, this little Raspberry Pi HAT will bring your audio projects to a whole new level!

Make things!

Using Pisound you can turn your Raspberry Pi into a music instrument or effect, audiophile network player, portable recording studio, internet radio station or anything you can think of as long as it's audio related!

Pisound works great with Patchbox OS, Raspbian, ArchLinux, Pixel, Ubuntu Mate, Audacity, Pure Data, Sonic Pi, SuperCollider, Volumio and any other Linux software!

The Button

When we were designing Pisound one of the main goals was to empower everyone to use Pisound and Raspberry Pi in headless mode - without an external monitor, keyboard or mouse.

As it turns out, one button is all you need to achieve this and we call it The Button.

Its functionality can be customized according to your needs. By default using The Button you can open patches straight from a USB thumb drive, safely close them, shut down the Raspberry Pi and even launch “Pisound” Wi-Fi hotspot, so that you can connect to the device via SSH, VNC or send WiFi-MIDI messages directly to your Pi using smart phone or tablet.

Our favorite use-case for it - you can run your Pure Data patches, without any need to connect a display, keyboard or mouse, just by plugging in a USB drive containing “main.pd”, any optional MIDI controller / keyboard, click The Button once and Voilà!

* Triple-click WiFi hotspot works with Raspberry Pi models with WiFi integrated. Other versions require SoftAP capable USB WiFi adapter to be plugged in.

The Case

A simple but really sturdy and beautiful case for your Pisound and Raspberry Pi. The enclosure is cut from semi-transparent 3mm thick acrylic sheet.

Round engravings indicate the Output ports and the Volume potentiometer. Button cap, standoffs and screws are included in the package.

You can find the assembly instructions here.

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What Are People Saying?

Setup is Eaaasy!

Pisound mounts directly onto Raspberry Pi, no additional power adapter or soldering is required.

You can use our Patchbox OS distribution or just install Pisound drivers by entering the following command in a terminal window:

curl https://blokas.io/pisound/install.sh | sh

And that's it. Done. Thank You!

Change Pisound settings anytime via our configuration utility by running 'sudo pisound-config' command!

Specs

We used the legendary Burr-Brown Op-Amps, ADC and DAC chips in this little board to ensure flawless signal amplification and conversion. Of course, everything is hooked to the dedicated ultra-low noise power supply in order to get maximum signal fidelity and minimum interference.

Thanks to wide-range gain control, you can connect audio sources ranging from your bass guitar to a CD player or your modular synth. Using Stereo Output you can hook Pisound to any mixer, speakers or just plug in your headphones.

Furthermore, unlike usual MIDI solutions for Raspberry Pi ®, MIDI on Pisound is implemented using high speed SPI and a dedicated MCU for translating SPI data to serial MIDI byte streams and it's readily recognized in audio software as an ALSA Raw MIDI device.

* G = 0dB, Fs = 48kHz
** Fs = 192kHz, Pi Model = 2, Buffer Size = 128 Frames
Audio Parameters Value
Input Type ¼" (6.35mm) Stereo
Output Type ¼" (6.35mm) Stereo
Input/Output Resolution 24bit
Sampling Frequency (Fs) 48kHz, 96kHz, 192kHz
Input/Output SNR @ 1kHz 110dB *
Input Impedance 100kΩ || 2pF
Input Gain (G) 0dB to +40dB
Input Clip LED Yes
Input Clip Voltage 2.5V (Peak to Peak) *
Full Scale RMS output @ 1kΩ 0V to 2.1V
Loopback Bandwidth (-3 dB) 7.5Hz - 23kHz *
Loopback THD @ 1kHz < 0.045% *
Loopback Latency 2.092ms **
Phantom Power None
MIDI Parameters Value
Input/Output Connectors DIN-5 Female Sockets
MIDI Loopback Latency 2.105ms
Activity LEDs Input & Output
Other Parameters Value
Power Powered by Raspberry Pi
Current Draw < 300mA @ 5.1VDC
Dimensions 56mm x 100mm
Weight 67g

Want to Know More?

Head straight to our documentation page or to our community forums. If the question is urgent, just click the floating chat button at the bottom of this page!

Pisound Forum Pisound Docs
© 2024 Vilniaus Blokas UAB | Address: Užupio g. 5-13, LT-01200 Vilnius, Lithuania | Company no: 304090788, VAT no: LT100009648015 | Contact: hello@blokas.io