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Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico

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Re: Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico

#81

Tangentially related, I recently had some hand-me-down high-end full tower speakers lose their integrated subwoofer amps. I bypassed them and wired in an external amp but people said the integrated DSP would be missing. That's when I learned about CamillaDSP [1] and CamillaFIR [2]. I got a calibrated UMIK-1 microphone and did a frequency sweep in the room. Then I applied the Camilla-computed FIR filter to my snapcast…

Ah that’s super cool. Wish I knew about this a week earlier. Just last week I got the iLoud sub to correct speakers for my living room because I wanted a standalone piece of equipment that’s not my PC that can hold the corrected EQ/phase.

Re: Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico

#82

Can I use this to connect my electric guitar straight to my pc, or use this DSP for guitar effects?

No, like I commented earlier it's a (digital) audio output from USB only and the DSP part is mostly filters that wouldn't be musically very useful.

But there seems to be new features being planned all the time, so who knows what it might do in the future.

Re: Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I've tried Dirac Live and compared it to the correction suggested by REW [0]. In both cases, the measurements were taken with a UMIK-1, and the correction was done on a computer. Contrary to GP, I didn't have to fix borked components, just a random, untreated living room. Dirac seemed to have a fairly heavy-handed correction. In my case, I only had fairly narrow frequency ranges that needed correcting, but Dira…

I also have a UMIK-1, and tried the REW route once, but it made everything worse. I suspect a lot of the know-how in Dirac is how to automatically get good results.

It's equal parts science and art. Best left as a last resort, never a shortcut. These utilities are generally directed towards much louder systems, in bigger spaces, with far more than a few speakers. Everything that has bled down into the consumer space is a band aid for people who either can't or don't know/care/want to treat their rooms and position speakers correctly.

Ideally you want to be going into it intenting to correct a specific aspect of the room or the speakers, after already ensuring that you've placed the speakers correctly for the room and listening position. If you did not use a tape measure and the full dimensions of the speakers, start over. One of the most useful things REW/Dirac can do for you is confirm that you've placed everything correctly. It is not a magic "make it sound better" utility.

Hate to sound like an ad but the most impressive thing I've purchased wrt audio in the past 20 years has been some isolators from https://isoacoustics.com/. It's legit engineering magic, you will spend the first hour thinking something is wrong with your body because you can no longer feel the sound.

Re: Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a UMIK-1, and tried the REW route once, but it made everything worse. I suspect a lot of the know-how in Dirac is how to automatically get good results.

It's equal parts science and art. Best left as a last resort, never a shortcut. These utilities are generally directed towards much louder systems, in bigger spaces, with far more than a few speakers. Everything that has bled down into the consumer space is a band aid for people who either can't or don't know/care/want to treat their rooms and position speakers correctly. Ideally you want to be going into it intentin…

> a band aid for people who either can't or don't know/care/want to treat their rooms and position speakers correctly.

Indeed, but I'd bet many people are in the "can't" category. Especially for low frequencies, you need pretty hefty treatment to make a difference, which is oftentimes impractical to install in a room which wasn't designed for that. And I seriously doubt any sizable number of rooms in apartments are designed for that. Combine this with the ungodly amount of snake oil peddled, and I can easily understand why many people look at Dirac and similar solutions.

And while they are band-aids, in many cases that's enough. I used to live in a studio apartment where room correction made a night and day difference to my listening position. Elsewhere the sound wasn't that great, but I didn't really care since I never listened from theme. I was renting, and the space was rather small, so there was no way to install any useful treatment.

In my current apartment it works much worse, it's actually close to useless. But it's rather bigger, so I could put in some treatment. But I've spent a lot of time researching this, and it's still not clear how to go about doing this. People can't even seem to agree on what kind of material to look at. And while I love listening to music, I'm not keen on investing thousands, plus time living under construction for weeks just to throw multiple solutions at the walls and see what sticks.

Re: Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico

#87
post #66

Any chance of supporting 192kHz?

Just wondering, why? This is for carrying 96kHz frequencies in the signal?

In my personal experience as a music producer for the last 36 years, MIXING hundreds of channels benefits enormously from the available bandwidth. Think of it in the terms of graphics (anti) aliasing. If you open your canvas in 1920x1080, for example, and draw a diagonal line, your line will be jagged (aliased) to a certain extent. If you, on the other hand, start a canvas in 7680x4320 and draw the same diagonal line, and then rescale your output back to FullHD, your line will be perfectly smooth with no visible alias whatsoever. It is absolutely the same principle when mixing music: I MIX everything in 192kHz and I PUBLISH in 48kHz. And, yes, my ears can hear the difference perfectly fine. But, do people like me who are forced to run their audio clock at 192kHz most of the time, deserve a DSP processor like this? It could be very useful, yes.

Re: Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico

#88
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh it's worse than that, for distribution and playback sampling at more than 48kHz is likely worse in many ways due to unwanted ultrasonic noise and increased intermodulation distortion. 96/24 makes sense for production, and 96/float56 is common in DSP chains.

When the production produces unwanted ultrasonic noise, then that's not a sampling rate problem. It is instead a production problem. And that's perfectly OK, too: The neat part about having too much data is that other end-users (like you and me) are free to throw it away as expeditiously as we choose to. To that end: I, for one, welcome our 192kHz overlords. (And then I'll shove it through my hardware DSP that operat…

I don't LISTEN to music in 192kHz. I listen in 48kHz like everyone else and it sounds perfectly fine. But, I do MIX my music in 192kHz, however, before it's final export to 48kHz. It is about the anti-aliasing principle I described in my post above. But, while I'm mixing my audio clock is at 192kHz, and I can't escape that. Hence I will be looking at how to run this project on a beefier device that could run at 192kHz sample rate.

Re: Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico

#89
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? This is a device more for home audio/audiophile uses it seems? Why does latency matter there?

Audio systems get used for more than playing back music and film soundtracks. People use audio system at home to play electronic instruments. People also play video games. People do all kinds of stuff. Latency is an important factor in these things. Even videoconferencing and podcasting: With a microphone pointed at your face and a set of headphones used for monitoring that microphone, latency matters. (It matters mo…

Huh thanks for the info! I didn't know about any of this at all. Latency sounds like it could be an important consideration for some people.

Re: Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico

#90
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a miniDSP 2x4HD for like $225 that supports Dirac Live.

The optional Dirac Live firmware/licence for the miniDSP is an extra $199, so it's really $425. I have one and personally didn't bother, did the usual UMIK-1 + REW to create the room correction. > https://www.minidsp.com/products/dirac-series/index.php?opti...

Well they said hardware that supports it is expensive, so I was just mentioning the hardware price, not the Dirac license cost.
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