New Audio Hat

Hi Madeline,

From the video, it looks like they are using a PCM5102A chip for audio, musically it will perform like any other audio card for the Pi, because they nearly all use this chip.

I've not seen the board, so I have no specific feedback related to it, but I've used that audio chip, and it's comparable to an ipod (no better or worse I think).

The physical difference between the kickstarter board and existing audio boards is that it also has input/output features. They may also have software features but I didn't explore the kickstarter page in detail.

I think the seeedstudiooaudio hat is better:

R

you will get advantage of support and community and projects

and if you want the all in one then it must be Matrix creator but it is expenisve:

https://www.matrix.one/products/creator

it also has FPGA and lot more

The Hat you refer to explains its mission in the "easy-audio-prototyping" bit of its name. It's a board for easy hardware experimenting with audio on a PI.

If that is what you want to do then, subject to all the usual Kickstarter caveats, it looks good.

@Shabaz - where did you find the schematic ?

MK

Hi Michael,

It was a screen capture from their video, but due to its low-res I couldn't tell what was on the left side, maybe a microcontroller and I/O expander.

I recognised the DAC pinout though, here's the schematic from a BeagleBone Black project, the PCM5102A is the replacement (pin-compatible) for the PCM5101A:

Hello Shabaz, thanks for that.

I like this kind of Kickstarter project, looks like normal everyday young engineers making a modest start. Not sure it's ideal for the OP.

I did simple paid for projects when I was 17 or so - nearly got my fingers burned a couple of times when stuff didn't quite work as planned. (note to self c1971 never use audio parts from Sinclair !!)

Come to think of it I'm still doing much the same thing (but a bit more complex projects) nearly 40+ years later.

MK

Hi Michael,

I took another look at it, and now I finally think I understand why they are using I/O with a sound card. It looks like it can all work with Pure Data, so you could (say) have some sound synthesis, and use the I/O (e.g. a button or rotary encoder) to influence the sounds. Many people may not have heard of Pure Data, I had not heard of it, but it seems interesting!

In the past I've played briefly with CSound (my beginner attempt at some brief sound experiments is here), which is also an (older) programmatic way of creating sounds. In the professional sound effects world, a friend uses software on a Mac which instructs an external DSP. These are all really cool things, makes this project quite interesting.

Check out MagPi magazine issue 77 for some Raspberry Pi audio insight. The publication is available online without a subscription. The article is titled 10 Best DACs.

Sean