I don’t know if anyone has got Zythian working on one of the RPi alternatives? For example the Banana Pi M3 or the ODROID-XU4?
Both have Octa-core CPUs and 2GB of RAM. So possibly better performance with some of the sound engines. Looks like the Banana Pi M3 has the same kind of expansion pins as the standard RPi - not sure about the ODroid. But neither of them is too costly, and with no successor to the RPi 3 on the horizon yet, could these be made to work without too much effort?
They are much the same size too, so fitting them in cases should not be too difficult.
I may be getting an Odroid soon, just for experimenting with. Don’t know if there are any DACs like the HiFiBerry that would fit though…
My problems with ODroid and Co. is that they may have a not as stable Linux-OS as the Raspi. My other problem is: I have no time for testing
But perhaps this would be nice to try. If it works there should be much more power for generating noise. The problem maybe a noisy fan for the octa-cores…
They do a version with a passive heatsink. Also, there is a quad core, also with 2GB RAM and running at 1.5Ghz. But I take your point about the O/S. Thanks for the reply.
I have an odroid C2 on order. Just a quad core, but 1.5GHz and 2GB RAM. And it looks to be the same form factor as a standard RPi 3, sames ports in the same positions. I am going to try a direct swap over and see how it works in my Zynthian. If it is no good I will be using it to upgrade my Kodi box, (currently an RPi 3) as Libreelec is available for the C2. They are currently out of stock of the XU4 with the passive heatsink.
Odroid C2 arrived. The XU4 is based on the Arm V7 core, and so is eight cores but only 32-bit, by the way, the C2 is quad core, but Arm V8 cores and thus 64-bit.
Physically fits the case, but you lose the 3.5mm audio out, as the C2 doesn’t have one. 40-way connector is also in the same place and the hi-fi berry card mounts ok. But it will not boot the standard Zynthian build from the micro-sd card. You just get a white screen.
I am going to download the C2 version of Debian (https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?t=18771) and see what I can do with it. The C2 is supported by libreelec and other common RPi distributions, so I am hoping it won’t be too difficult to get it working.
Seems like there are other issues. Apparently Hardkernel, the makers of odroid, have not released any drivers for V4 of the Linux kernel. All of the available distros are running a V3 kernel.
And it will need to be a C2-specific kernel because of the slightly different hardware - different graphics chip, for example. As and when I get time, I will investigate further.
Does the Zynthian image use a real-time kernel, by the way? As that is another potential issue.
I don’t expect the image to work. We need to get a decent distro and run some scripts. Don’t know which yet, but there is something @jofemodo can point us to.
and then we have to fork it, so that we can make the changes. I don’t expect the scripts to be running either
My first goal will be getting a fluidsynth up and check, if a 1GB sf2 can be loaded.
My second goal will be getting a waveshare32 running.
And if I fail, it will be kodi-box
But if not I have to think of a soundcard.
I talked to the PiSound guys. The drivers won’t work but they are open source.
They react quickly on chat on their page and i have the feeling, that they won’t mind if someone is pushing the driver compilation for odroid c2.
What soundcard are you planning to use?
I like the PiSound because of Audio IN.
So actually I don’t need the zynthian-izing scripts before the soundcard is up and running…
I did some testing. Unfortunately, I might have gotten a defect one.
In the end 5 different kodi images yield to random crashes.
But I could test a vanilla jessie distro and dietpi.
Later is great. But my waveshare32 didn’t work.
So I take this as a sign, return it and buy a raspi3 and Audioinjector Zero instead.
