How to build a home recording studio with Raspberry Pi 500: choose and install your software
It’s time to install and set up the software you’ll need for high-quality audio production in your home recording studio. This is the third and final part of a tutorial from Raspberry Pi Official Magazine; to follow the whole series, skip back to the first part, about setting up your recording space, and then the second, which will help you choose your equipment.
Raspberry Pi OS, like most other Linux distributions, comes with a wide range of audio production software of somewhat variable quality. We’ll guide you through your options for audio. We’re going to use JACK2 for low-latency audio alongside PipeWire for system audio, with a pipewire-pulse compatibility layer to route between JACK and standard desktop applications.
First, open a terminal and install the audio software:
$ sudo apt install jackd2 qjackctl pipewire‑pulse qsynth guitarix With that done, enter:
$ qjackctlClick ‘setup’, and in the Settings tab, make sure the driver is set to ALSA and the MIDI driver is set to raw. Click Advanced and make sure your audio interface is set as the output device and, if you have a standalone USB MIDI keyboard, that it’s set as the input device. Finally, click the Options tab and put the following into the ‘Execute script after startup’ section:
pacmd set-default-sink jack_out && pacmd set‑default-source jack_inSetting up your audio interface
Most USB audio interfaces are class-compliant, so will work on Linux, but you might encounter issues with devices that rely on proprietary software to configure them or update their firmware.
We chose a Focusrite 2i2 for our studio setup because it has full Linux support thanks to cooperation between Focusrite and the Linux kernel development community, and the hard work of driver developer Geoffrey Bennett in particular.
Ensure that you have a compatible version of the kernel – Focusrite audio interface support is built into Linux kernel 6.8 and above. At the time of writing, the default Raspberry Pi kernel was 6.6.74+rpt-rpi-2712; this doesn’t include the module for the 2i2, but fortunately the testing kernel (6.12) does.
You first step should be to check your kernel version. By the time this article is in your hands, the default kernel may have been updated to 6.12. Let’s find out. Open a terminal and type:
$ uname -aIf it reports a kernel version below 6.8, update to the experimental new kernel:
$ sudo rpi-update$ rebootInstall the Focusrite control interface
$ git clone https://github.com/geoffreybennett/alsa-scarlett-gui.git
$ cd /home/kg/Software/alsa-scarlett-gui-0.4.0
$ cd alsa-scarlett-gui-0.4.0/
$ sudo apt -y install git make gcc libgtk-4-dev libasound2-dev libssl-dev
$ cd src
$ make -j4Test to make sure that it works:
$ ./alsa-scarlett-guiThen install it system-wide:
$ sudo make installThe Focusrite Scarlett GUI should be automatically added to the Other section of the main menu. You can use it to update your Scarlett’s firmware, connect and activate various inputs, contain gain, and more.
Microphone selection
We use a Blue Yeti Pro condenser mic connected via XLR, rather than via its integrated USB audio interface. While you can use multiple audio interfaces, it’s easiest to manage latency and audio routing with a single device. If you use a dynamic microphone, like our Shure SM-58, you’ll want a pre-amp, such as Triton Audio’s convenient in-line FetHead. This connects to the cable between your mic and audio interface and give you a boost of 27 dB, which means that you won’t have to turn the gain up so high on your USB audio device. Cheaper in-line pre-amps with a little less boost are also available, as are many more expensive ones. This is a useful because many USB audio interfaces hit their signal-to-noise threshold at a little about 50% gain, which can lead to a staticky hiss on your recordings.
Your MIDI keyboard
We use various MIDI instruments, including a Novation LaunchKey 49 keyboard and an Alesis Vortex Wireless 2 keytar. Connect USB keyboards to Raspberry Pi directly or via a powered USB hub – unpowered hubs don’t provide sufficient power.
Drivers can be an issue under Linux, but recent Novation devices can be managed and updated in a Chromium-based browser via a web app. This is still a relatively unusual feature, but other brands with web app firmware updaters include PirateMIDI, Morningstar, and PandaMIDI. Our Alesis doesn’t require any firmware management, nor do older MIDI keyboards connected via USB MIDI adapters.
Once your keyboard is set up, the easiest way to test it is via Qsynth, a GUI frontend for Fluidsynth. This ships with an accurate, high-quality General MIDI voice set, but you can use it to load any SoundFont (SF2) file, such as the opl3-soundfont you’ll find in the repositories.
Instant FX rack
Guitarix lets you stack digital guitar pedals and other effects to give you the equivalent of hundreds of pounds worth of stomp-boxes and tools like a guitar tuner. These effects can also be used in most DAWs (digital audio workstations), with some being particularly well suited for integration with one or the other, such as a range of Ardour-specific LV2 effects. You can use these, as well as LADSPA effects, with Guitarix, while the DAWs also support VST3 and CLAP plug-ins, among others.
When downloading digital effects, you’ll have to find files built for aarch64 architecture or compile them yourself. Fortunately, there are plenty in the repositories. Some useful effects will be installed along with Guitarix to get you started.
Setting up a DAW
A digital audio workstation (DAW) is a complete environment for recording and producing music using either MIDI or live analogue instruments connected via your audio interface. Reaper, Ardour, FruityLoops-like LLMS, and lightweight favourite Qtractor are capable tools, as is PCM-audio focused Audacity and its forks.
We’re pushing the limits of what Raspberry Pi 500 can do when it comes to some of these applications. Most PCM recorders, with the notable exception of Qtractor, struggled to keep their visual waveform display in time with the audio recording, although the resulting audio capture was perfect. Some processor-intensive synth voices and effects also affected performance of the DAW.
Most of these tools can be installed directly from the command line:
$ sudo apt install lmms audacity ardour qtractorReaper is commercial software, but is very reasonably priced at $60 (£46), and is highly customisable, with a clear interface, loads of features, and a generous free trial.
To install Reaper, download the latest Linux aarch64 version of the software and extract it. Open a terminal and cd to the directory where you extracted it:
$ cd reaper_linux_aarch64/$ ./install-reaper.sh Type I to install it, then 1 to put it in /opt, Y to add a desktop integration, Y to symlink paths, and Y to proceed. Provide your sudo password when prompted. Reaper will be added to the Sound & Video section of the Raspberry Pi OS main menu.
Making connections
Once you’ve started JACK’s control interface, the Focusrite Scarlett GUI, and your music software of choice, you’ll quite probably find that you’re not actually hearing sound where you expect to. Both the Scarlett GUI and JACK’s graphic interface require you to make connections between devices to make sure they’re talking to each other properly, as shown in our screenshots.
We’d love to know if you use these tutorials to set up a recording studio of your own, or if you already have experience using the software discussed here with Raspberry Pi. Tell us in the comments.
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