Raspberry Pi DIY Gear from MakeProAudio
2 min readMakeProAudio are the latest company to hit the scene catering to the DIY synth and hardware makers. If you have ever wondered if you can build controllers and music gear from a Raspberry Pi, then this is right up your street.
They are launching their MPA platform, centred around a Raspberry Pi system where you assemble components solder-free to build that next bit of hardware you’ve been looking at. Whether you want an audio mixer, synthesizer, or a controller, you are in luck with MPA.
Alongside the individual creations, the true selling point to the MPA platform is it’s networking. You install their Glue software on the Raspberry Pi, which they claim is the “World’s first truly agile Network Distributed Software Framework for All-Things-Audio.”
The main benefit of this is that the instrument is not limited to a single component, instead, you can continually expand your setup to new horizons as you make more.
Frank Hund, serial entrepreneur and Founder/CEO of MakeProAudio, said: “We want to provide Makers with a huge new playground and enable them to build pro audio solutions that are a real alternative to off-the-shelf product.”
“Think of the MPA Platform as the LEGO® system for building pro audio gear, where anybody with the interest is empowered to build gear that’s unique to them and only limited by their imagination. Makers have so much talent and many have an avid interest in audio applications.”
How does it work?
MPA products are made on several levels. At the lowest level, you have your Tiles. These are easy to assemble components which you can put together in a housing to make a Block.
There are a number of Tile types:
- Control Tiles (faders, encoders, pads or anything your Arduino can do)
- Audio Tiles for audio processing and converters (DSP, AD/DA, AoIP) and USB audio and network audio interfaces
- Connect Tiles where you make common audio connections (XLR,TRS, MIDI, Headphone)
- Compute Tiles for network connection (Raspberry Pi, Intel NUC, Latte Panda)
- Control Blocks – featuring Control Tiles like motorized faders, encoder and LED buttons plus anything your Arduino can do!
- Mixer Blocks – featuring Audio Tiles like latest generation multi-core DSPs, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion Tiles; audio interfaces including USB and Audio over IP
- Synth Blocks – featuring specialized sound synthesizers like Dino Park the World’s best sounding maker board or other embeddable synthesis engines, commercial or community.
For more cool projects with a Raspberry Pi, check out our guide to the top Pi projects over at Tech Ordeal.
