Raspberry PI 5 with Reaper, Surge XT and ZynAddSubFX – real world test with professional audio apps

39 thoughts on “Raspberry PI 5 with Reaper, Surge XT and ZynAddSubFX – real world test with professional audio apps”

• For mobile users: Three years ago, I did the same test on a #linux #raspberrypi 400, which failed at playing more than 4 notes on Surge XT #synthesizer . This video explores if it's possible to create a song using synth and production plugins and multiple audio tracks. There's a latency test as well using an "audio hat" and a USB sound card. Music made in this video is here: https://youtu.be/Jl1ylW8yA8k . This is a follow-up video, if you need step-by-step instructions, please watch my older videos on the topic.

  Artists in this video:
  Xavier Radix https://www.youtube.com/@xavierradix
  ZAELI https://www.fiverr.com/elisabank

  The finished track is here https://youtu.be/Jl1ylW8yA8k or https://floydsteinberg.bandcamp.com/track/waves

  Stuff shown in this video:
  Raspberry PI 5 https://amzn.to/3yfM1zV
  Touch screen https://amzn.to/3yniKmQ
  Hifiberry DAC+ADC https://amzn.to/4bxKLqh
  Reaper https://www.reaper.fm/
  ZynAddSubFX https://github.com/zynaddsubfx/zyn-fusion-build/wiki/Building-on-Linux
  Surge XT https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge

  Build commands for Surge XT (May 2024)
  cmake -Bignore/sxt -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DSURGE_BUILD_LV2=TRUE
  cmake –build ignore/sxt –config Release –parallel 8
  sudo cmake –install ignore/sxt

  Build commands for ZynAddSubFX (May 2024)
  make -f Makefile.linux.mk install_deps
  PARALLEL=1 make MODE=release -f Makefile.linux.mk all
  cd build/zyn-fusion-linux-64bit-3.0.7-release
  Sudo ./install-linux.sh

• Very nice, Floyd! You've always got a nice groove! The Pi has come a long way for sure. But I do hope on the Pi6 they can get the power consumption under control. Though I guess that depends on the chip makers etc.

• I just got reaper running on Winlator for android, could you suggest me some compatible plugins. I got Syrum to load, but the UI is skuffed.

• Fantastic! Great stuff!

• My new favourite channel! Awesome stuff sir!

• Awesome video sir! You should make the image available with everything already compiled for us less tech savvy followers 😂

• Audio on linux platforms is unfortunately a big pain in the arse… that's why I gave up using it for music.

• Did you happen to try Vital or any of its forks by chance?

• I would like a setup like that to multitrack recording on a venue with a digital mixer. the recordings usualy last about 6 or 7 hours, do you think it can handle it ?
  I just record 4 or 6 tracks

• I'd like to see you compile the latest version of Ardour for use with the Raspberry PI and knock out a jam! 🙂

• A lot of useful tips – much appreciated 👍👍 I may yet make the switch to Linux for music 😎

• Would this work with a microphone? I travel a lot and do voice work and reaper is way easier to edit in than on a phone

• Very Nice! Шикарно!

• have you tried using ubuntu as OS for Raspi? It should have pipewire…

• How would you say this compares to just using a midi keyboard with a phone or iPad?
  I was thinking something like this might be useful to turn a midi only keyboard into one that is more fully featured. But my thought was if there was some way to do this without the screen and mouse, i.e. booting the RPi would auto load the DAW and a VST, then you'd be able to control the instrument selection and parameters from the Midi controls of the keyboard. So you wouldn't be able to actually record or sequence anything, but it would just turn the keyboard into one with 'built-in' audio.

• As somebody allergic to dealing with computer frustrations, I'd be happy to pay someone the cost delta between this hardware and a microfreak for the labor involved in setup and debugging.

• I’d love to see how the DSP56300 project plugins perform on the Pi5

• More conventional hardware will always outperform Raspberry Pi in this area. It's still cool and I wouldn't mind messing around with it, but not really cost effective compared with admittedly more boring solutions like a used laptop or modest, low-end PC build.

• Great video mate. Do you have SoundCloud or another yt channel where we can listen to the final song composed in this video? ❤

• Hey Floyd! Great video, as always. I was wondering if you would get better results by using a real-time preemptive kernel on the Pi. You can check by looking at the output of "uname -a" for SMP and PREEMPT. Sorry if you know about all this… Keep exploring!

• Very nice but why would I want to give up on my Windows rig with all its VSTs and sample libs?
  Are there any advantages to run everything on the Pi5 instead?

• OK. This is impressive and cool.

• Raspberry pi used to be an unbelievably cheap way to get a decent little computer. Now though, getting the latest model, with enough parts to function as a full computer, it ends up being bigger and more expensive than a low-end mini PC, and the PC has better performance and compatibility. I loved my pi 2, 3, and 400, but it's hard to recommend the 5.

• I love "Waves"!

• Were you able to run jack2 over alsa?

• To prevent having to set everything up every time you want to deploy, consider using NixOS. I believe there is a rPi version. All packages and config can be baked into a handful of files and stored on github and used to make your own distro on on their site. I'm still learning NixOS at the moment and don't have an rPi5 at the moment but may try this with my ZimaBox. PS. Pipewire looks like an interesting modern Linux audio subsystem. I used it for the first time with NixOS which suggested it as the default.

• Love ReaXcomp 👌

• Legendary. You should ask Meldaproduction if they can port their stuff to Linux ARM. Their plugin suite is really efficient and comprehensive. You never know.

• Re-PULSIVE-audio! JACK will haunt you for this blasphemy!

• Zynthian Oram running Bookworm on the Pi5 is reasonably stable now (but not officially "stable") and provides built-in support for a large number of synths and effects. I'm currently running it headless with a generic USB audio interface and a USB to midi converter. Got about $120 into all in. Worth checking out…

• What is this, A DAW for ants? 😉

• Your brain is a crazy great muscle containing all that knowledge PLUS then knowing how to communicate this so we can understand things better. You are a gift!

• Great video as usual, however although I consider myself a music and technology enthusiast and nerd, I'm finding myself growing more and more pessimistic about my hobby.
  As an owner of a couple of Raspberry Pi's (that I run my own Juce applications on) Mac and PC laptops multiple analog and digital hardware synths as well as hardware samplers.

  I keep hearing voice's in my head that say why are you bothering with all that.
  Those voices belong to Suno and Udio.
  They will never make me give up my beloved hobby but they are slowing me down and making me less likely to do experiments like the one in this video.

• Sharing to Twitterino… 😉

• Very nice track. Raspberry pi 5 cpu upgrade is just what we needed

• you are knocking it out of the park fella! nice work!

• What’s the box you are using to accommodate the 7 inch screen and the Raspberry with the audio hat ?

• Thanks for the tutorial. Hopefully someone can make a generic sd image with everything already installed 😅

• this was really cool ! It's amazing how available music production is becoming ! Let's see how it continues 🙂

Comments are closed.