Topic by lewisalexander2020

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Topic: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

Hi guys,

Please forgive this post, if it has been covered before, however I'm seeking some advice please. This is a bit of a unique situation and something I want to achieve.

The situation is this, My church currently doesn't have a working piano, the last one, a failing yamaha clavinova from the late 80's early 90's gave up the ghost, between dodgy electrics, poor sampling and a sustain pedal kept failing due to a damaged lead and internal connector fault.

So, This church is rather special to me, The back story behind it is this church saved my life, that said, my vicar and now friend, saved my life. Short story as not to bore folk, In December 2017, dad died of a heart attack which could have been prevented, his life could have been saved. I'm a carer for my mum, although disabled myself (blind - using a mac with VoiceOver to handle things like this). When dad died, we were in a bad state of affairs, could have lost the house, so I sold my business as a musician and studio engineer, the entire recording studio, plus my accessibility equipment which I needed, but sacrificed to save mum and I from being on the streets. After the funeral, I started losing myself to the point I had no emotions, everything was just basic responses and I was becoming ill, trying to care for mum, she was my priority, so my own crisis didn't matter. Going through 2018 and 2019 was hell to the point of mental ill health. I gave up church life after dad died, I couldn't cope, I was a church organist for a few churches and left my job because music hurt me to the core after closing down the studio and having nothing to rehearse with, even an organ in the studio was sold. One day, I set foot in a church I'd not been to before, it was there I broke down, I couldn't hold on anymore. I didn't realise the vicar was there, next minute I knew, I felt a hand on my left shoulder. We talked, I let everything out, confessed my sins even. from that day, he saved my life in a number of ways, took me on as an organist, helped me with emergency funding to sort out basic needs, then 2 weeks ago, a gift which has changed my life for the better, forever, afunding for a piece of technology which becomes my eyes to print, effectively replacing my eyes with a digital print scanner known as an orcam readsmart, All I see is black, so am a white cane user.

I am a concert pianist and church organist by qualification and have given my life to my work. I'm now getting back on my feet, although the last year's covid stuff hasn't helped and I've been away from an organ for that long.

I want to support my church in a unique way. I provide support for our church as the web developer / media support while we host our online services and that's my starting gift as it has been since covid19 closed our churches last March. Music is a huge part of what we do. I can't stand the thought of not having a decent piano there.

So, I'm in the process in the next month of investing in a license of PianoTeq 7 Studio for my own work, but want to allocate a license to a system which can be embedded into a baby grand case, connect to a midi master controller, audio interface, to an amplifier controller and speakers which would be fitted inside the piano case sound board.

What I'd like to achieve is a way of a touch screen based pi or small computer setup where ideally linux can boot straight to load pianoteq and nothing else, so basically a single instance interface where on boot, pianoteq will load up, can be controlled by touch screen and hardware controlls, etc, finish a session and power down.

Is there anyone here with any such experience who could help please? I'm also trying to secure any help with hardware donations such as an sbc / pi based system, touch screen, amp controller, etc, so am spending time reaching out to manufacturers. If anyone could guide me or advise on whether such a computer setup could indeed be achieved, please could you let me know.

All the best and thank you so much for your time.

With blessings, keep safe and take care.

Lew

Blind Music Producer, Composer, pianist and Church Organist. Accessibility development specialist for MacOS. Developing a solution for blind organists to have an accessible digital organ solution.

Reply by Key Fumbler

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

Hi Lew,
It's not anything to do with Raspberry Pi but this article may or may not be of some interest for you. I see you already have very specific plans in mind, so me throwing a curveball may not be welcomed at all. In which case please ignore:
"How Komplete Kontrol is changing the game for visually-impaired musicians"

https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/komplete-...-musicians

Pianoteq can work within Komplete Kontrol.  I don't have the personal experience of your sight issues and Komplete Kontrol.  So it's probably something you need a very specific demonstration of, and this after talking to other folks with more experience of this. I don't know if the software would help or hinder you.

I would be a little concerned that any of the current Raspberry Pi systems would have enough horsepower to work with Pianoteq 7 with enough simultaneous voices for an advanced keyboardist such as yourself. Someone who presumably will want 128 simultaneous voices at a bare minimum. 256 ideally.

I hope you find a solution for your problem. I am not religious myself but I am glad you found people who will stand by you.
Good luck in finding your solution.

Last edited by Key Fumbler (20-03-2021 10:10)

Reply by lewisalexander2020

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

Key Fumbler wrote:

Hi Lew,
It's not anything to do with Raspberry Pi but this article may or may not be of some interest for you. I see you already have very specific plans in mind, so me throwing a curveball may not be welcomed at all. In which case please ignore:
"How Komplete Kontrol is changing the game for visually-impaired musicians"

https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/komplete-...-musicians

Pianoteq can work within Komplete Kontrol.  I don't have the personal experience of your sight issues and Komplete Kontrol.  So it's probably something you need a very specific demonstration of, and this after talking to other folks with more experience of this. I don't know if the software would help or hinder you.

I would be a little concerned that any of the current Raspberry Pi systems would have enough horsepower to work with Pianoteq 7 with enough simultaneous voices for an advanced keyboardist such as yourself. Someone who presumably will want 128 simultaneous voices at a bare minimum. 256 ideally.

I hope you find a solution for your problem. I am not religious myself but I am glad you found people who will stand by you.
Good luck in finding your solution.


Hi there, Thank you for your amazing reply.

Yes, I'm aware of Komplete Kontrol, I used to work with Native Instruments as an accessibility dev. though an amazing system for sighted users and it does give some support for blind users like me, it suffers heavily from particular issues we've been trying to push to resolve but it's never done. I've owned their hardware and software. Though this would still be a usable solution for my studio, I have other ways around it.

So, let's rule out a raspberry pi, could you advise something compact as a base system that could fit somewhere within a piano case and some kind of small (not daftly small) touch screen that would work under linux?

lew

Blind Music Producer, Composer, pianist and Church Organist. Accessibility development specialist for MacOS. Developing a solution for blind organists to have an accessible digital organ solution.

Reply by Key Fumbler

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

I would remain cautious of Raspberry Pi performance for a serious pianist - especially when you consider the long-term. If you found yourself hitting high polyphony on high microphone count patches you may hit the limits of what Raspberry Pi  can achieve. Even more so with the new morphed and combination patches/presets which are effectively like running multiple instances of Pianoteq simultaneously.

I could be wrong. In your position I wouldn't want to be swapping out the computer in a few months time because a new piano model comes out that pushes your Raspberry Pi CPU beyond its limits.

I am wary that part of the charm of the Raspberry Pi computer is the getting a quarter into a pint pot as the Americans say.
Perhaps it is better to ask the other Raspberry Pi guys in these threads whether a current Raspberry Pi is really up to the job for high polyphony with any patch including morphing etc.

Related thread:
https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=8265

Last edited by Key Fumbler (20-03-2021 12:39)

Reply by lewisalexander2020

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

Key Fumbler wrote:

I would remain cautious of Raspberry Pi performance for a serious pianist - especially when you consider the long-term. If you found yourself hitting high polyphony on high microphone count patches you may hit the limits of what Raspberry Pi  can achieve. Even more so with the new morphed and combination patches/presets which are effectively like running multiple instances of Pianoteq simultaneously.

I could be wrong. In your position I wouldn't want to be swapping out the computer in a few months time because a new piano model comes out that pushes your Raspberry Pi CPU beyond its limits.

I am wary that part of the charm of the Raspberry Pi computer is the getting a quarter into a pint pot as the Americans say.
Perhaps it is better to ask for the guys in these threads whether a current Raspberry Pi is really up to the job for high polyphony with any patch if you're not just an enthusiast pushing the limits at the lowest possible cost.

Odroid XU4 sounds promising.Whilst more expensive it is dramatically more powerful in small space.

I can't thank you enough for your amazing help so far, yep, I agree that the pi itself wouldn't be strong enough. I've been rather sceptical about it I have to admit.
I had thought of a mac mini of a slightly older spec, but that then means someone having experience of MacOS, etc there's no way of doing a purely limited slim boot of MacOS where it just launches the software and doesn't allow any other functions to mess with. I hear it can be done on linux but I'm no linux expert at all, MacOS definitely yes, windows / linux, nope lol

The Odroid sounds like a viable option.

lew
Related thread:
https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=8265

Blind Music Producer, Composer, pianist and Church Organist. Accessibility development specialist for MacOS. Developing a solution for blind organists to have an accessible digital organ solution.

Reply by Key Fumbler

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

I have removed reference to the xu4 in the last post.
Despite the article I found it in being recently edited it only seems about as Powerful as a current Raspberry Pi but with less memory.
I'm not a Raspberry Pi user.
You're better off asking the Raspberry Pi users of their experiences with difficult patches/presets at high polyphony with high numbers of microphones. And also with the the morph or combination patches etc.

Maybe something like a NUC 11?
Or slightly older model.

Last edited by Key Fumbler (20-03-2021 12:46)

Reply by lewisalexander2020

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

Key Fumbler wrote:

I have removed reference to the xu4 in the last post.
Despite the article I found it in being recently edited it only seems about as Powerful as a current Raspberry Pi but with less memory.
I'm not a Raspberry Pi user.
You're better off asking the Raspberry Pi users of their experiences with difficult patches/presets at high polyphony with high numbers and microphones. And also with the the morph patches etc.

It's OK. I think if I were to acquire something like a dell small form factor system, ok it means a boot time compared to a SBC, it might be a better way, but it would seem daft to do that as this software doesn't need much at all to run, other than suitable ram and CPU, disk size doesn't matter.

ok, if anyone with SBC based computer knowledge can chime in, that would help.

lew

Blind Music Producer, Composer, pianist and Church Organist. Accessibility development specialist for MacOS. Developing a solution for blind organists to have an accessible digital organ solution.

Reply by Stephen_Doonan

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

I have no idea if this would meet your needs, but System76.com, which specializes in Linux computers and produces the Pop OS desktop (which I use on my Linux laptop) makes a mini computer the specifications of which may be more than adequate.

https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat

--
Linux, Pianoteq Pro, Organteq

Reply by Key Fumbler

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

Stephen_Doonan wrote:

I have no idea if this would meet your needs, but System76.com, which specializes in Linux computers and produces the Pop OS desktop (which I use on my Linux laptop) makes a mini computer the specifications of which may be more than adequate.

https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat

I wonder how that compares to the Intel NUC platform I mentioned earlier?
Maybe it's the same thing?
I see that the NUC computers now come with options of i3, i5, i7 and even i9 processors.

I build my own PCs but I've never had the need to build or use one of these ultra tiny format machines.

Last edited by Key Fumbler (20-03-2021 13:26)

Reply by lewisalexander2020

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

Key Fumbler wrote:
Stephen_Doonan wrote:

I have no idea if this would meet your needs, but System76.com, which specializes in Linux computers and produces the Pop OS desktop (which I use on my Linux laptop) makes a mini computer the specifications of which may be more than adequate.

https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat

I wonder how that compares to the Intel NUC platform I mentioned earlier?
Maybe it's the same thing?
I see that the NUC computers now come with options of i3, i5, i7 and even i9 processors.

I build my own PCs but I've never had the need to build or use one of these ultra tiny format machines.

an NUC would be a viable idea by the sound of it, small size ssd, 8gb ram, should do just fine, what would be a good CPU to support pianoteq? I'm on a macbook pro 2020 16" but been running it in demo mode, can't wait for the full license in about a month or so. As soon as that's sorted, I can allocate a license to the church piano project. the challenge still comes as to how to create a system that boots straight to pianoteq without having access to the OS, etc.

lew

Blind Music Producer, Composer, pianist and Church Organist. Accessibility development specialist for MacOS. Developing a solution for blind organists to have an accessible digital organ solution.

Reply by Key Fumbler

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

lewisalexander2020 wrote:
Key Fumbler wrote:
Stephen_Doonan wrote:

I have no idea if this would meet your needs, but System76.com, which specializes in Linux computers and produces the Pop OS desktop (which I use on my Linux laptop) makes a mini computer the specifications of which may be more than adequate.

https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat

I wonder how that compares to the Intel NUC platform I mentioned earlier?
Maybe it's the same thing?
I see that the NUC computers now come with options of i3, i5, i7 and even i9 processors.

I build my own PCs but I've never had the need to build or use one of these ultra tiny format machines.

an NUC would be a viable idea by the sound of it, small size ssd, 8gb ram, should do just fine, what would be a good CPU to support pianoteq? I'm on a macbook pro 2020 16" but been running it in demo mode, can't wait for the full license in about a month or so. As soon as that's sorted, I can allocate a license to the church piano project. the challenge still comes as to how to create a system that boots straight to pianoteq without having access to the OS, etc.

lew

I suggest you look at one of the better i5 CPU versions. i5 should be fine, but of course an i7 will have more shelf life into version 8 or 9 and maybe 10 say. Then again you will only want to run a single instance I imagine so..

Brand new:
https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/...tnki5.html

There are i3 and Celeron versions out there that are much cheaper, including refurb units from resellers on eBay. More risk involved with saving money there though..

Reply by Groove On

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

lewisalexander2020 wrote:

... What I'd like to achieve is a way of a touch screen based pi or small computer setup where ideally linux can boot straight to load pianoteq and nothing else, so basically a single instance interface where on boot, pianoteq will load up, can be controlled by touch screen and hardware controlls, etc, finish a session and power down.

I just built a standalone pianoteq sound module using the Odroid N2+. Cost is under US$200 (including the touch screen). But I hesitate to recommend it, because it's an actual DIY project, for example, you'll have to build the case or at least attach it somewhere useful. The ARM architecture is still fairly new and can sometimes be bleeding edge - so out of 14 million possibilities, there's only 1 way to actually beat Thanos (if you know what I mean). Finally, you still need all the additional peripherals to configure it before you make it into a standalone/headless setup.

With an x86 machine you can slap on a consumer friendly Pop! OS or Linuxmint and be happily up and running (neither will run on the Odroid N2+). Plus! - you can use organ/e.piano vsts that only run on the x86 machines. VSTs that work on ARM are still very rare.

Having said all that, I was able to tweak the N2+/Pianoteq configuration. Playback for live performance is pretty fantastic, extremely focused and stable.I trust the N2+ over my much faster (but scatter-brained) MacBook Air with a mobile i5 chip.

Practical Polyphony
At MAX settings (192000 Hz, 1.3ms, 256 poly)
128 for microphone heavy presets
150 for standard presets

At saner settings (48000 Hz, 1.3ms, 256 poly)
150 for microphone heavy presets
200 for standard presets

You might get a slight boost if you go down to 441000 Hz or use a higher latency setting. For live performance, 'Auto Optimistic' and 'Auto Pessimistic' are your friends - they both help keep overall polyphony in check. But I feel comfortable using the settings above for live performance.

Last edited by Groove On (21-03-2021 03:31)

Reply by lewisalexander2020

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Re: seeking some advice regarding pianoteq, linux / raspberry pi, etc.

Groove On wrote:
lewisalexander2020 wrote:

... What I'd like to achieve is a way of a touch screen based pi or small computer setup where ideally linux can boot straight to load pianoteq and nothing else, so basically a single instance interface where on boot, pianoteq will load up, can be controlled by touch screen and hardware controlls, etc, finish a session and power down.

I just built a standalone pianoteq sound module using the Odroid N2+. Cost is under US$200 (including the touch screen). But I hesitate to recommend it, because it's an actual DIY project, for example, you'll have to build the case or at least attach it somewhere useful. The ARM architecture is still fairly new and can sometimes be bleeding edge - so out of 14 million possibilities, there's only 1 way to actually beat Thanos (if you know what I mean). Finally, you still need all the additional peripherals to configure it before you make it into a standalone/headless setup.

With an x86 machine you can slap on a consumer friendly Pop! OS or Linuxmint and be happily up and running (neither will run on the Odroid N2+). Plus! - you can use organ/e.piano vsts that only run on the x86 machines. VSTs that work on ARM are still very rare.

Having said all that, I was able to tweak the N2+/Pianoteq configuration. Playback for live performance is pretty fantastic, extremely focused and stable.I trust the N2+ over my much faster (but scatter-brained) MacBook Air with a mobile i5 chip.

Practical Polyphony
At MAX settings (192000 Hz, 1.3ms, 256 poly)
128 for microphone heavy presets
150 for standard presets

At saner settings (48000 Hz, 1.3ms, 256 poly)
150 for microphone heavy presets
200 for standard presets

You might get a slight boost if you go down to 441000 Hz or use a higher latency setting. For live performance, 'Auto Optimistic' and 'Auto Pessimistic' are your friends - they both help keep overall polyphony in check. But I feel comfortable using the settings above for live performance.

That's brilliant. To be honest, anything's better than the previous yamaha 90's clavinova with 16 note poly and note choke when layering, sustain failures, etc. so 48khz is more than ideal and 128 note poly is a dream compared to what was there previously.  I had considered the pi tablet, can't remember who it was by but needs an sbc installed, has everything else in it such as usb ports, something like that would be ideal, then from that a decent audio interface over usb or a suitable audio hat maybe, run that to an amplifier controller, etc then sorted. The Odorid seems to be a popular module, would have been useful if there was something with a bit more to it like 8gb ram, etc.

how did you go about the software side of things? does it boot straight to pianoteq? I could really do with some guidance on this.

lew

Blind Music Producer, Composer, pianist and Church Organist. Accessibility development specialist for MacOS. Developing a solution for blind organists to have an accessible digital organ solution.