Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
If you read this file in an editor you should switch line wrapping on.
MiniSynth Pi is a polyphonic virtual analog audio synthesizer, running bare metal (without separate operating system) on the Raspberry Pi. On the Raspberry Pi 2, 3 and 4 it allows to play up to 24 polyphonic voices at a time, on the Raspberry Pi 1 only 4 voices.
You have to attach an USB MIDI keyboard controller (which supports the USB Audio Class MIDI specification) or an USB PC keyboard to your Raspberry Pi to play on it. Alternatively you can feed serial MIDI data (at 31250 Bps) into GPIO15 (Broadcom numbering), if no USB keyboard is attached. Normally you will need some external circuit to be able to attach a device with serial MIDI interface.
The audio signal is normally available on the 3.5mm headphones jack (I2S usage see below). Thus Raspberry Pi models without headphones jack (e.g. Raspberry Pi Zero) are not supported. The graphical user interface (GUI) of MiniSynth Pi can be controlled using a standard USB mouse or the official Raspberry Pi touch screen.
This version of MiniSynth Pi can be built so that it can be used with an external I2S interface. The audio signal is then available via this interface. Please note that only I2S interfaces are supported, which do not need additional device initialization (e.g. via I2C). MiniSynth Pi has been tested with the pHAT DAC I2S interface, which is based on the PCM5102A DAC chip.
Normally you need a Git client to get the MiniSynth Pi source code. Go to the directory where you want to place MiniSynth Pi on your hard disk and enter:
git clone https://github.com/rsta2/minisynth.git minisynth
cd minisynth
git submodule update --init
This will place the source code in the subdirectory minisynth/ and clones the submodule circle into the minisynth/circle/ subdirectory.
MiniSynth Pi uses the Circle bare metal build environment for the Raspberry Pi. You need an appropriate compiler toolchain for ARM processors to build it. Have a look at the Circle README.md file (in circle/) for further information on this (section Building). The build information herein is for Linux hosts only. For building on other hosts you have to adapt some script files.
When the toolchain is installed on your computer you can build MiniSynth Pi using the following commands:
./configure 3 arm-eabi-
./makeall clean
./makeall
The configure command writes a Config.mk file for Circle and patches Circle, so that it allows to use multiple CPU cores. "3" is the major revision number of your Raspberry Pi (1, 2, 3 or 4). The second (optional) parameter is the prefix of the commands of your toolchain and can be preceded with a path. Do not forget the dash at the end of the prefix!
An optional third parameter can be appended to specify the bit size of the ARM architecture to be used as build target. It can be "32" (default) or "64" (for Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 only).
If you want to build MiniSynth Pi for I2S interface usage, you have to define "USE_I2S" manually before build in the file src/config.h like that:
#define USE_I2S
If the build was successful, you find the executable image file of MiniSynth Pi in the src/ subdirectory with the name kernel.img (Raspberry Pi 1), kernel7.img (Raspberry Pi 2), kernel8-32.img (Raspberry Pi 3) or kernel7l.img (Raspberry Pi 4).
You will need a SD card with FAT16 or FAT32 partition to install MiniSynth Pi. This partition must be the first file system on the SD card. You have to copy the kernel???.img file, built in the previous step, to this FAT partition. All files have to be placed in the root directory of this partition.
Furthermore you need the Raspberry Pi firmware. You can get it as follows:
cd circle/boot
make
You have to copy the three files bootcode.bin, start.elf and fixup.dat from the circle/boot/ subdirectory to the FAT partition on the SD card. The Raspberry Pi 4 requires different firmware files. Please read the file circle/boot/README for details!
Finally you may copy the configuration files patch0.txt (example patch) and velocity-???.txt (keyboard velocity curve) from the config/ subdirectory to the SD card. The appropriate velocity curve file has to be renamed to velocity.txt to be used.
Put the SD card into the card reader of your Raspberry Pi.
Before powering on your Raspberry Pi, the following devices have to be attached:
- HDMI display (must support 800x480 pixels mode)
- USB MIDI keyboard controller, USB PC keyboard or device with serial MIDI interface (at GPIO15, requires external circuit)
- Standard USB mouse (if official touch screen is not used)
- Headphones or amplifier (on the 3.5mm jack or via external I2S interface)
The USB devices must not be removed or powered off while MiniSynth Pi is running. USB hot-plugging is not supported.
MiniSynth Pi starts in about four seconds. It is controlled using the following GUI:
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| OSCILLATOR FILTER AMPLIFIER PATCHES |
| VCO VCF MASTER VOLUME 0 |
| < Wave > < Cutoff > < Volume > 1 |
| < Resonance> 2 |
| 3 |
| LFO LFO LFO 4 |
| < Wave > < Wave > < Wave > 5 |
| < Rate > < Rate > < Rate > 6 |
| < Volume > < Volume > < Volume > 7 |
| 8 |
| ENVELOPE ENVELOPE 9 |
| HELP < Attack > < Attack > |
| < Decay > < Decay > LOAD |
| < Sustain > < Sustain > SAVE |
| < Release > < Release > |
| MiniSynth Pi VIRTUAL ANALOG SYNTHESIZER |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
You will get that picture when you click the HELP button with the mouse or on the touch screen. By default the GUI does not show the help info, but the values of the different parameters of the currently selected patch (see Parameters).
The GUI allows to select ten different sound configurations (patches 0-9). There is always one (highlighted) active patch, which can be edited using the different parameter controls. The parameters of the active patch can be saved to a configuration file on the SD card (patchX.txt where X is the number of the patch). On start-up the configuration of all patches are loaded from these files (if available) or initialized to the default preset.
The USB PC keyboard allows playing two octaves (keys C2-C4). Its mapping is as follows:
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+-----+
|2 C#2|3 D#2| |5 F#2|6 G#2|7 A#3|
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
|Q C2 |W D2 |E E2 |R F2 |T G2 |Y A3 |U B3 |
+-----+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
|S C#3|D D#3| |G F#3|H G#3|J A#4|
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-----+
|Z C3 |X D3 |C E3 |V F3 |B G3 |N A4 |M B4 |, C4 |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
+--------+
|Key Note|
+--------+
The inscription of the keyboard may vary, but the physical position of the piano keys is the same on all keyboards. Using this scheme you should be able to find them. Please note that PC keyboards often do not allow to use all voices simultaneously.
A Raspberry Pi running MiniSynth Pi can be powered off at any time when the green activity LED is not on.
One patch of MiniSynth Pi has the following parameters:
| Section | Module | Parameter | Unit | Range | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OSCILLATOR | VCO | Wave | Square | Waveform (*) | ||
| OSCILLATOR | LFO | Wave | Sine | Waveform (*) | ||
| OSCILLATOR | LFO | Rate | Hz | 1-35 | 20 | Modulation frequency |
| OSCILLATOR | LFO | Volume | % | 0-100 | 0 | Modulation volume |
| FILTER | VCF | Cutoff | % | 10-100 | 80 | Cutoff frequency |
| FILTER | VCF | Resonance | % | 0-100 | 50 | Resonance parameter |
| FILTER | LFO | Wave | Sine | Waveform (*) | ||
| FILTER | LFO | Rate | Hz | 1-35 | 20 | Modulation frequency |
| FILTER | LFO | Volume | % | 0-90 | 0 | Modulation volume |
| FILTER | ENVELOPE | Attack | ms | 0-2000 | 0 | Attack delay |
| FILTER | ENVELOPE | Decay | ms | 100-10000 | 4000 | Decay delay |
| FILTER | ENVELOPE | Sustain | % | 0-100 | 100 | Sustain level |
| FILTER | ENVELOPE | Release | ms | 0-5000 | 1000 | Release delay |
| AMPLIFIER | Volume | % | 0-100 | 50 | Master volume | |
| AMPLIFIER | LFO | Wave | Sine | Waveform (*) | ||
| AMPLIFIER | LFO | Rate | Hz | 1-35 | 5 | Modulation frequency |
| AMPLIFIER | LFO | Volume | % | 0-90 | 0 | Modulation volume |
| AMPLIFIER | ENVELOPE | Attack | ms | 0-2000 | 100 | Attack delay |
| AMPLIFIER | ENVELOPE | Decay | ms | 100-10000 | 4000 | Decay delay |
| AMPLIFIER | ENVELOPE | Sustain | % | 0-100 | 100 | Sustain level |
| AMPLIFIER | ENVELOPE | Release | ms | 0-5000 | 100 | Release delay |
(*) Waveform can be: Sine, Square, Sawtooth, Triangle, Pulse 12.5% or Pulse 25%
MiniSynth Pi allows to use a specific keyboard velocity curve, which fits best to your keyboard and your playing style. It has to be provided in the file velocity.txt on the SD card. The default velocity curve is linear. Have a look into the example files in the config/ subdirectory. If you want to use one of these files, it has to be renamed to velocity.txt on the SD card. It should be easy to modify one example file to adjust the velocity curve to your own needs.
MiniSynth Pi uses the following source modules:
- Circle C++ bare metal environment for the Raspberry Pi (includes USB MIDI driver by Joshua Otto)
- uGUI library by Achim Doebler
- EMMC SD card driver (part of rpi-boot) by John Cronin
Additional information has been obtained from:
- Cookbook formulae for audio EQ biquad filter coefficients by Robert Bristow-Johnson
- Digital Synth WRA32 by Ryo Ishigaki