Topic by hillcow

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Topic: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

Hi there, I'm new here.

I just upgraded from a Kawai CN25 to a Casio GP-300. Pianoteq sounds just beautiful using the Line-In of the GP-300. I already found a fitting velocity curve here (https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=8817) in your forum.

Now I don't intend to use my MacBook all the time for this. I prefer a smaller and easier solution. I found this tutorial for the Rasperry PI 3: https://www.modartt.com/download?file=P...Pi3_v3.pdf

I wondered whether there is an updated version of this, or what your current setups look like?

I'm thinking of using either a Raspberry Pi 5 or maybe I can get my hands on a Mini-PC from work.

In the mentioned tutorial a Suptronics X400 soundcard is used. I already own a Behringer Uphoria 204 HD audio interface and a Palmer Isolation Box 2 PAL-PLI05 for grounding, and now I wonder whether I should still go with the X400 due to the size. The obvious benefit of the Behringer is the Midi connection. Using that, I only need one cable between soundcard and PC.

Anyway, thanks all! @Team: Fantastic product

Casio GP-300

Reply by jari_42

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

I’m using a Casio GP-310 with a Raspberry Pi 5, an IQaudio DAC Pro sound card HAT, and a touchscreen. The Pi 5 is plenty powerful enough to run Pianoteq, I’m getting a performance index of 70 on the official 64bit OS. I wouldn’t go with the X400 as it’s been discontinued, is needlessly bulky, and you have to power the Pi off it which occasionally caused under-voltage issues on my old Pi 4 setup. Of course a proper audio interface will likely sound better, but this setup sounds nice to my ears.

I’d be interested to know which velocity curve you chose?

Reply by hillcow

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

jari_42 wrote:

I’m using a Casio GP-310 with a Raspberry Pi 5, an IQaudio DAC Pro sound card HAT, and a touchscreen. The Pi 5 is plenty powerful enough to run Pianoteq, I’m getting a performance index of 70 on the official 64bit OS. I wouldn’t go with the X400 as it’s been discontinued, is needlessly bulky, and you have to power the Pi off it which occasionally caused under-voltage issues on my old Pi 4 setup. Of course a proper audio interface will likely sound better, but this setup sounds nice to my ears.

Interesting, thanks! I'm still unsure whether I'd like to go the Raspberry PI route or simply iPad instead. What do you think makes Raspberry Pi the superior choice?

Another thing I'm curious about: Do you just leave this thing running or in stand-by or turn it off completely? How long does it take to turn on? How do you actually turn it on? I would like to make this process as easy and fast as possible. Thinking about a master-slave setup with the piano as a master.

After testing with my external JBL 305 monitors, I must say the internal speaker system of the GP-300 does indeed suck, haha. So I will choose external monitors. My JBL hiss heavily, though. I'm going to try JBL 104 instead.

jari_42 wrote:

I’d be interested to know which velocity curve you chose?

I'm still trying to figure this out, too.

I tried this one from the linked thread:

light 1 -  [0, 8, 24, 41, 55, 67, 80, 91, 102, 114, 127; 0, 0, 24, 51, 71, 86, 100, 109, 116, 122, 127]

and this one from the official PianoTeq page (https://www.modartt.com/velocity_curves):

normal - [0, 8, 18, 33, 46, 65, 76, 91, 103, 111, 127; 0, 0, 29, 57, 72, 94, 104, 117, 127, 127, 127]

What I definitely like more about the second one is the fact that I cannot possibly reach max velocity on my GP-300, no matter how hard I hit the keys. It tops out around 100. This one fixes that. Is it the same with your GP-310?

edit: After some more testing I definitely prefer the first one from the initial thread. The "official" one is too soft way too fast.

Last edited by hillcow (06-02-2024 18:36)
Casio GP-300

Reply by jari_42

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

hillcow wrote:

Interesting, thanks! I'm still unsure whether I'd like to go the Raspberry PI route or simply iPad instead. What do you think makes Raspberry Pi the superior choice?

Another thing I'm curious about: Do you just leave this thing running or in stand-by or turn it off completely? How long does it take to turn on? How do you actually turn it on? I would like to make this process as easy and fast as possible. Thinking about a master-slave setup with the piano as a master.

The reason I went the Raspberry Pi route is because Modartt hadn't released the iOS version back then (in early 2020). I did consider switching to an iPad recently, but I already have the the touchscreen and cables for the Pi and I'd have to get the iPad. I do think an iPad would probably be the superior choice though, as the Pi takes a lot of effort to setup and the touch is quite clunky (but you'd need separate cables for USB MIDI and Audio Out as the GP's don't have an audio interface unlike some of the newer digital pianos). I usually keep the Pi switched off (since I don't have time to play every day) and it takes about thirty seconds to boot up when I switch it on using the wall socket (the Pi5 has a power button but it's tiny). But if you want to have an always on headless Pi/mini-PC hidden away somewhere, there's this really nice mobile web app from a forum member for controlling Pianoteq:
https://github.com/robert-rc2i/ptq-client-webapp

hillcow wrote:

I tried this one from the linked thread:

light 1 -  [0, 8, 24, 41, 55, 67, 80, 91, 102, 114, 127; 0, 0, 24, 51, 71, 86, 100, 109, 116, 122, 127]

and this one from the official PianoTeq page (https://www.modartt.com/velocity_curves):

normal - [0, 8, 18, 33, 46, 65, 76, 91, 103, 111, 127; 0, 0, 29, 57, 72, 94, 104, 117, 127, 127, 127]

What I definitely like more about the second one is the fact that I cannot possibly reach max velocity on my GP-300, no matter how hard I hit the keys. It tops out around 100. This one fixes that. Is it the same with your GP-310?

After some more testing I definitely prefer the first one from the initial thread. The "official" one is too soft way too fast.

Yeah my GP-310 also tops out around 100 (I think it's the same keyboard as the GP-300, they only upgraded the Casio sounds) so I also prefer velocity curves that take this into account. I'm currently using this curve:

[0, 5, 15, 30, 48, 72, 98, 127; 0, 10, 26, 46, 70, 98, 127, 127]

calculated using the formula for slow keyboards from this excellent post:
https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=7798
I'm using b=0, c=98, and a=0.85 but it's easy to create your own!

Reply by hillcow

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

jari_42 wrote:

But if you want to have an always on headless Pi/mini-PC hidden away somewhere, there's this really nice mobile web app from a forum member for controlling Pianoteq:
https://github.com/robert-rc2i/ptq-client-webapp

That is actually awesome, thanks! My Raspberyy Pi 5 should arrive today. I decided to go for this instead of the iPad, just because it provides some more options for the setup. And I like the idea of everything turning on together and just working. Even if I have to wait 30s (which is surprisingly much - do you have a proper SD card?).

jari_42 wrote:

Yeah my GP-310 also tops out around 100 (I think it's the same keyboard as the GP-300, they only upgraded the Casio sounds) so I also prefer velocity curves that take this into account.

Thanks, I will try it! Do you use the "normal" velocity setting of the Casio? I'm really not sure why the Casio GPs top at around 100. You have to put quite some strength in to exceed that. Still, I have to say, I'm incredibly happy with the action, it feels fantastic. With a fitting velocity curve in PianoTeq it will be an unbeatable setup for the price.

Btw. what speakers do you use? If you would like to use the internal ones, I can recommend the Palmer Isolation Box "PAL-PLI05" to get rid of any unwanted noise. Works perfectly.

Last edited by hillcow (07-02-2024 14:03)
Casio GP-300

Reply by jari_42

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

hillcow wrote:

That is actually awesome, thanks! My Raspberyy Pi 5 should arrive today. I decided to go for this instead of the iPad, just because it provides some more options for the setup. And I like the idea of everything turning on together and just working. Even if I have to wait 30s (which is surprisingly much - do you have a proper SD card?).

Awesome! Yeah it's not the fastest, I have a SanDisk Extreme Pro but I should probably have a go at profiling the boot process using systemd-analyze and get rid of some unneeded services.

hillcow wrote:

Do you use the "normal" velocity setting of the Casio? I'm really not sure why the Casio GPs top at around 100. You have to put quite some strength in to exceed that. Still, I have to say, I'm incredibly happy with the action, it feels fantastic. With a fitting velocity curve in PianoTeq it will be an unbeatable setup for the price.

Yes I'm using the normal velocity setting, but I think if you change it to light1 or light2 it will send higher values (it's been a while since I tried this out though). Absolutely, the action is amazing and you can tell it was designed by Bechstein!

hillcow wrote:

Btw. what speakers do you use? If you would like to use the internal ones, I can recommend the Palmer Isolation Box "PAL-PLI05" to get rid of any unwanted noise. Works perfectly.

I mostly play on headphones but occasionally use the internal speakers with a Intona USB 2.0 Hi-Speed Isolator which is excellent if a little pricey (kind of annoying USB needs isolation but I guess it was never designed with audio applications in mind). I've got everything (including my electric guitar) going through a Behringer Xenyx 502 mixer so I can easily switch between things, bit of a crazy setup...

Reply by hillcow

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

May I ask whether you use active or passive cooling on your Raspberry Pi? I bought a case with a fan, but the fan is quite loud. I don't want that much noise near my piano every time I play. I will try a case for passive cooling now, but I suspect the Pi might get hot.

Casio GP-300

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

hillcow wrote:

May I ask whether you use active or passive cooling on your Raspberry Pi? I bought a case with a fan, but the fan is quite loud. I don't want that much noise near my piano every time I play. I will try a case for passive cooling now, but I suspect the Pi might get hot.

Good question, I'm using the official active cooler which only turns on briefly when the Pi starts up (I'm yet to have it turn on during playing but then it is the middle of winter). You can't use it with the official case but there are third party cases for it, e.g.
https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pibow-5
I don't actually use a case for my Pi but have it mounted to the back of the touchscreen.

You might be okay without a fan (as pianoteq only seems to use about 20% CPU), but the only way to tell is to try it out. You'll soon notice if the Pi gets too hot and starts to throttle the CPU.

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

jari_42 wrote:

You might be okay without a fan (as pianoteq only seems to use about 20% CPU), but the only way to tell is to try it out. You'll soon notice if the Pi gets too hot and starts to throttle the CPU.

Thanks! I've switched to a passive cooling case for now and will see how it works out. Still waiting for the SD card to arrive now haha

Casio GP-300

Reply by jajw

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

Hi Hillock.- thanks very much for updating this to support the new Pianoteq. I tried to run your updated script but get the following error.

,"/repos/preferences":{"post":"smHAajGaz4ygtNmznZvJYNti5-syaYkWvZZCw6Nn9zz3-_p-_F_YhTAC_9zw6MY9pWb8sOlsoN2ydLgSozlpHw"}}},"title":"pianoteq-pi/setup.py at main · Hillcow/pianoteq-pi"}
                                      ^^^^^
NameError: name 'false' is not defined. Did you mean: 'False'?


with a huge amount of text before hand.

Do you have any idea as to what I'm doing wrong?

Apologies - I'm a novice at this so.

Many thanks for your help.
James

Reply by hillcow

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

jajw wrote:

Hi Hillock.- thanks very much for updating this to support the new Pianoteq. I tried to run your updated script but get the following error.

,"/repos/preferences":{"post":"smHAajGaz4ygtNmznZvJYNti5-syaYkWvZZCw6Nn9zz3-_p-_F_YhTAC_9zw6MY9pWb8sOlsoN2ydLgSozlpHw"}}},"title":"pianoteq-pi/setup.py at main · Hillcow/pianoteq-pi"}
                                      ^^^^^
NameError: name 'false' is not defined. Did you mean: 'False'?


with a huge amount of text before hand.

Do you have any idea as to what I'm doing wrong?

Apologies - I'm a novice at this so.

Many thanks for your help.
James

I assume you are talking about this: https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php...21#p995421

Did you execute this?

wget -qO setup.py https://github.com/Hillcow/pianoteq-pi/blob/main/setup.py && sudo python3 setup.py

Which device are you using? Which image did you install?

The exact steps are:

1. Install Raspberry Pi OS (64 bit) on your Raspberry Pi.
2. Download Pianoteq from the official website, and put the 7z/zip package you got into your Raspberry Pi.
- Or download directly on your Raspberry Pi.
Run the following command in the same folder of the 7z/zip package:

wget -qO setup.py https://github.com/Hillcow/pianoteq-pi/blob/main/setup.py && sudo python3 setup.py
Last edited by hillcow (17-02-2024 22:26)
Casio GP-300

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

jari_42 wrote:

You might be okay without a fan (as pianoteq only seems to use about 20% CPU), but the only way to tell is to try it out. You'll soon notice if the Pi gets too hot and starts to throttle the CPU.

By the way, what buffer size is available to you? I can only choose 128 with the Pi 5. I will overclock and try again. I'm not sure why it can only handle 128 with my audio interface. The Pi 3 was already able to do that. Latency is too high.

Last edited by hillcow (19-02-2024 15:21)
Casio GP-300

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

hillcow wrote:

By the way, what buffer size is available to you? I can only choose 128 with the Pi 5. I will overclock and try again. I'm not sure why it can only handle 128 with my audio interface. The Pi 3 was already able to do that. Latency is too high.

The smallest buffer size I have available on my Pi 5 is 64 samples (using an IQAudio DAC Pro sound card HAT). I’m currently playing with 128 samples (2.7ms) which seems fine to me (remember that acoustic piano actions will naturally have some latency due to the hammer travel times).

Reply by hillcow

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

jari_42 wrote:

The smallest buffer size I have available on my Pi 5 is 64 samples (using an IQAudio DAC Pro sound card HAT). I’m currently playing with 128 samples (2.7ms) which seems fine to me (remember that acoustic piano actions will naturally have some latency due to the hammer travel times).

Hm, this is odd. Not sure why I only have 128 available. Did you just select the soundcard in the Pianoteq interface or did you configure Debian to use the soundcard somewhere else?

I even overclocked my RaspberryPi to 2.800MHz

Last edited by hillcow (24-02-2024 14:44)
Casio GP-300

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Re: What's your Raspberry Pi / Mini-PC setup?

hillcow wrote:

Hm, this is odd. Not sure why I only have 128 available. Did you just select the soundcard in the Pianoteq interface or did you configure Debian to use the soundcard somewhere else?

I even overclocked my RaspberryPi to 2.800MHz

I just selected the soundcard in Pianoteq (direct hardware with no conversion), it looks like it’s your audio interface that doesn’t support 64 for some strange reason.

Last edited by jari_42 (24-02-2024 16:31)