External USB soundcard

Cujons, Wyleu, no m’has adonat del teu perfecte català! ;-DD

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Did anything ever come of this? Cause I actually have several Pis kicking around here, and I was thinking, why not a single interface managing multiple Pis in a unified set of tracks? There would definitely be limitations in terms of what kind or how much data could pass between tracks on other devices, but the possibilities in terms of building a tiny, massively multitimbral “supersynth” in a very small package are rather tantalizing.

There would be new problems introduced, like managing the signals from the different units, but old analog mixers are easy enough to get in most places where people can also afford to make DIY synths.

It seems simple enough in my head, if the UI is abstracted internally into a midi controller - that being the case, it would mostly be a matter of establishing a midi connection and routing signals accordingly, maybe in a PD device or maybe in a bespoke lv2 plugin. Which is plenty complex, I’m sure, in actual fact. :>

(I’m here in this ancient thread cause I’ve been figuring out how to get my Scarlett 2i2 working as the audio device - I reeeally wanna try out that Mod UI. But a good idea is a good idea forever. It’s science!)

This was more of a thought experiment than anything too real. The devil is in the details.
The provision of a GUI display on the controlling device is a complete design issue in itself, with an API to support that unless we tried something VNC like, or remote handling of X-Windows. Which is all a massive rewrite.
I’ve used an arduino device to remote control a Zynth without the graphical feedback of the screen via qwerty key presses and it might grow MIDI control at some point, but in truth it is probably best to roll this all up in to OSC. THis is one way only with remote encoders and buttons and works pretty effectively, and then you can use a VNC displaying tablet to produce the remote GUI screen. I tend to turn off the tablet touchscreen but it all gets pretty Meta and flexible if you position devices well.
But I doubt you could do anything over MIDI via sysex and make it responsive, I used the Nord Modular a fair bit which did something similar and that used a completely separate MIDI channel to handle those comms.

At the moment the remote control debate is developing around zynthian command. How, for instance, do we handle the remote control and button/key/device allocation for devices like the Sooperlouper chain? But in truth this kind of discussion has been put on the back burner till the stable release lands.