Building a desktop piano synth with Raspberry PI and SFIZZ (Part 1)

[@mr_floydst]

*There is no latency at **6:34** - I messed this up in editing, sorry* Resources for this video: SFIZZ github.com/sfztools/sfizz Audio hat raspiaudio.com/produit/audio Salamander Piano sfzinstruments.github.io/pianos/salamander Join this channel to get access to perks: kzbin.info/door/NmTQerbBm8AFzXYYvs1ywQjoin Or become a patreon www.patreon.com/floyd_steinberg Table of contents 00:00 introduction 00:45 hardware needed 01:24 hardware assembly, installation 02:04 software setup 04:29 launching sfizz & stuff 05:23 important things to consider 05:44 trying this on a Raspberry PI Zero 2 06:32 ... and on the Raspberry PI 3b 07:00 conclusion, outlook, short demo 07:57 bye-bye

[@rot_studios]

SFIZZ link no longer exists. Awesome info though!

[@mr_floydst]

@@rot_studios Thanks for bringing that to my attention - I've updated the links.

[@rhodrillewellyn5127]

Legend! this seems like it has lot of potential, with a good sample library , open source ...., man , keep pushing, your efforts are appreciated.

[@mr_floydst]

I hope so ;) Thanks for watching!

[@dustyaudio]

I really like these RPi instruments videos, never sure if I’ll follow thru but this one seems promising, straight forward sounds and hopefully a simple/easy interface

[@mr_floydst]

I hope I'll build something worthwhile in the end :-) But I think it'll be a nice foundation to build upon at least.

[@lundsweden]

This is a great tutorial Floyd... I wouldn't be surprised if teachers used this video for IT classes.

[@mr_floydst]

Hm, not so sure about that ;-) But thanks.

[@matzer8846]

Great find and test .... very useful for us RPi addicts 👍 Thanks a lot for sharing

[@mr_floydst]

Glad it was useful :)

[@johngalvin6352]

Wow Floyd, every video you put out is so interesting, you just get better and better. Love that piece of music at the end. As always respect.

[@mr_floydst]

Thank you very much for your kind words!

[@GeoffPlitt]

This is SO helpful! I tried several other realtime synth setups on Pi (FluidSynth etc) and the latency was bad, so I can't wait to try this! Floyd you are a godsend. I watch all your videos. Please never stop innovating and sharing your passions!

[@mr_floydst]

Thanks! Latency really depends on your buffer and sampling rate settings.

[@TheTekordBay]

Amazing! Looking forward to try it on my Rasperry Pi 2

[@mr_floydst]

Thanks, and good luck with that!

[@GertBoers]

Great info! I've been dabbling with this myself, but your collection of programs is definitely worth a try! Btw, you have a small error on the onscreen at 4:50: You type a2jmidid -e in the console, but onscreen it says a2jmidi -e ( where the d of daemon is missing). Looking forward to your sequel.

[@mr_floydst]

Thanks for pointing it out - the "d" is necessary. ;)

[@JonathanDotExe]

That's a cool idea. Too bad there aren't many realisitic free sample instruments for bread and butter sounds. Was the delay between pressing the keys and the sound playing actually there or didi it happen while editing?

[@mr_floydst]

There is no latency to speak of, so that happened in editing or processing.

[@JonathanDotExe]

@@mr_floydst That's great :)

[@stephenhookings1985]

I skimmed the video so will recheck but I played with this sfz a while back - I thought it was a SoundFont player? And is so there are a ton of SFs for realistic instruments - the choirs alone are worth it - and who doesn't like a Star Trek emulator.

[@arcanics1971]

"You can't make this up." That made me giggle.

[@mr_floydst]

You sure? Or did it make you exhale ever so slightly more sharply? ;)

[@mikolasstrajt3874]

I think it can be done even Zero when using single cycle waveform for piano sample(s). With some attention it can sounds passable (as not so bad 90s rompler). I used this trick for my own VST/Raspberry Pi contraption, but mine version sounded really synthetic (but nice in bass region).

[@mr_floydst]

The smaller soundfonts work flawlessly on PI Zero, but my goal here is to create a box that provides an expressive piano sound. In this case, bigger is better - but thanks for your input, I'll try to incorporate your idea. SFZ allows for more "synth stuff" to be applied to the samples and it should be possible to get more depth out of the material in software.

[@gernrene]

another great Raspberry Pi video, thanks!

[@mr_floydst]

Thanks for watching! :)

[@mksln]

Is "sounds like a late 90s workstation" a good or a bad thing? 🙂 And of course another fantastic video Floyd! Thanks for reminding me about Sfizz. In regards to sample format support, a while ago I implemented basic support for Dave Hilowitz's Decent Sampler format in WebAudio and looking on his website I see he has Linux support but only for x86, maybe we should ask him if he could do a arm64 version to use on RPi's as I think there are some fantastic sample libs in that format...

[@mr_floydst]

That really depends on what you're trying to achieve ;) Workstation pianos sound nice in EDM style music. But for that moody Chopin soirée, well, not so much. ;-) I'll take a look at the sampler you mentioned!

[@carl.wunsche]

Hey Floyd, excellent video as always. I have 2 questions: does the hiss goes away if you use a usb audio interface? and did you use jack midi for a specific reason? e.g does that has less latency than using Alsa midi? Cheers!

[@mr_floydst]

Thanks for watching! Yes, audio quality improves if you're using external interfaces. I used Jack + Alsa because it was the standard installation at that time, there's no specific reason to do that or not do that ;-)

[@Darmstadtiensis]

Hallo! Danke für deine tollen Anregungen! Noch immer suche ich etwas wie die kleine piano Box als Ergänzung zu meinem kleinen Synth, habe aber nicht genug Ahnung vom Informatik-Kram und höre da leider auch dieselben Knacker, die es auch bei meiner DAW immer wieder gibt. Was rätst du mir?

[@mr_floydst]

Huhu! Dann würde ich dies hier empfehlen. Einfach zusammenstecken, und fertig. kzbin.info/www/bejne/aXLOY6Jrj6l8b6s&lc

[@LS_Roblox-DG]

Every Producer, DJ, soft Maker and writer will love tNice tutorials feature. Please encourage soft-soft to make tNice tutorials happen. Fingers

[@mr_floydst]

Thanks for watching!

[@johnsaunders6510]

Great content Floyd. It's a pity that Raspberry pies are still hard to get hold of.

[@mr_floydst]

Thank you! There are other boards that are compatible: BananaPI, RockPi, and so on. Sadly, they've also seen a price hike.

[@HOLODECK-MUSIC-PROJECT]

Plane einen Raspi Standalone Ssntjesizer. Danke für deine Hilfe und deinen wertvollen Dschännähl 😊

[@mr_floydst]

Hi, vielen Dank! Hoffe, alles klappt, poste gerne mal das Ergebnis, wenn's soweit ist! :-)

[@Javier-qk7ms]

What about PianoTech? It is not a sampler but dynamic model, less RAM but more CPU usage. It does sound better as far as I know.

[@mr_floydst]

Thanks for your feedback! PianoTeq is an option, but it's not open source and the demo is lacking some notes. It's quite expensive at $129, too. But I'll mention it / show it in the next part, so thanks again for mentioning it.

[@postamesta]

Hi Floyd, great video as usual. I'm having trouble with Jackd. I started it manually (jack_control start) and now i can see the ports but in the end, after the instruction jack_connect "a2j:[mykeyboardaddress]" "sfizz:input" i receive this message: ERROR sfizz:input not a valid port Any suggestion about that?

[@mr_floydst]

Hi! Can you please copy the output of "jack_lsp -c" here? I guess sfizz isnt running, or it's using a different name to identify itself...

[@postamesta]

@@mr_floydst Yes, the output is: system:capture_1 system:capture_2 system:playback_1 system:playback_2 And, in the beginning, i have to start manually jack with jack_control start

[@mr_floydst]

@@postamesta Ok, seems sfizz is not listed there, which means it's not running. Are there any error messages when starting sfizz?

[@postamesta]

@@mr_floydst no, but i tried again and now the message is: system:capture_1 system:capture_2 system:playback_1 system:playback_2 a2j:Midi Through [14] (capture): Midi Through Port-0 a2j:Midi Through [14] (playback): Midi Through Port-0 a2j:Oxygen 49 [28] (capture): Oxygen 49 Oxygen 49Oxygen 49 a2j:Oxygen 49 [28] (playback): Oxygen 49 Oxygen 49Oxygen 49

[@mr_floydst]

That's strange, sfizz should be in that list, but isn't. What's the output of ps -eaf | grep sfiz ?

[@FuZZbaLLbee]

I saw a similar device on KZbin called the beat squeezer. But that one is very expensive

[@mr_floydst]

Thanks for mentioning it! I'll take a look.

[@victorramamoorhy2010]

Where are the Salamander samples kept? I have followed your video and still not able to make things work. The wget command URL reference seems to have changed. I am also unsure what triggers what. Thanks.

[@mr_floydst]

Hi, thanks for watching! I posted the link in the pinned comment. Salamander Piano sfzinstruments.github.io/pianos/salamander You need to press the "Code" button and then "download zip".

[@victorramamoorhy2010]

@@mr_floydst Hi I got the zip file downloaded in my pc. Where should I store the contents of the zip file in Raspberry pi (64 bit version)? I have already downloaded jackd and aj2midid on RPi. Since there was an error when executing wget, I had to resort to this work around. The idea of Sfizz seems to be great but I have not understood the internal structure of Sfizz. Thanks Floyd for your kindness

[@romekatomek2159]

on pi3 i saw extra big latency ( time between pushing the key and hearing the sound ) .. if yes - that's imho not playable. this must be honestly said before, before someone spends money because they want a piano at home.

[@mr_floydst]

No, sorry, that was bad editing. There is no latency to speak of. I think the preview of my video editor is the culprit here...

[@romekatomek2159]

@@mr_floydst then I am impressed.

[@dineshkombala]

Hey Floyd ... many thanks for your great tutorial , me tried on rasphberry 3 and 3b ,working fine, with IQaudio DAC , but rasphberry 5 getting error like "Segmentation fault" running sfizz_jack --helpfull , any body tried?

[@mr_floydst]

I'm sorry, but I haven't tried yet - at the moment, RasPi5 is not widely supported. They made a lot of questionable design decisions with that new RasPi, it seems. I'll take a look into it...

[@ysteineiane5595]

I got also stuck here with my PI 5. Executed: sfizz_jack -helpfull And got Segmentation fault. Do you know if we can have any luck on this Floyd? Anyhow enjoying your work!

[@kellerfrequenz2001]

in my case it seems the jack server could not be initialized. jackd is installed but cannot be started. What should I do?

[@mr_floydst]

Try running qjackctl, which can be used to configure jackd. It will also tell you what's wrong in a human readable format. ;-)

[@_c_y_p_3]

I wanna see you build an automaton band to play all the DIY instruments.

[@mr_floydst]

You mean a sequencer? ;-)

[@sebastienmedard5522]

Hello, I am just discovering your youtube channel about Raspberry Pi and music. I was wondering... Instead of playing with Jackd... Wouldn't it be better to use PipeWire ? This tuto is one year old. It seems that last Raspian version provides PipeWire or can use it...

[@mr_floydst]

You can do that, but there's no real benefit there (for the moment). Pipewire is another audio server that sits on top of Alsa, and while it certainly aims to improve a lot of things, JACK is a stable and mature low-latency audio solution for Linux.

[@sebastienmedard5522]

​​@@mr_floydstThank you for the time you took to answer me. I tried to use Surge XT on my computer (more efficient than a Rapsberry Pi) few weeks ago and experimented many audio crackles even with a low latency sound card. I tried to manage that with sample size, latency, etc. No way. Then I installed pipewire (because my Ubuntu version is not the last one) and used it in the Surge XT settings and it solved my problems. I can't tell why. But I didn't want to use jackd that is not user friendly (and you must launch it and select the good configuration every time you use the synth....)

[@DeafBassist]

Hi! I've followed this tutorial, with the difference that I am using a USB audio interface for my sound output. I do have the USB audio interface selected to output audio via raspi-config. I have otherwise followed the rest of the tutorial, but I am getting no sound output at all. I'm really hoping someone could help?

[@DeafBassist]

I forgot to add that I am using a Raspberry Pi 4.

[@mr_floydst]

Please check if qjackctl works correctly first - launch it and then press the "play" button. There's a setup screen there that allows you to connect all the audio software running on your system with "virtual cables". Please try that first.

[@DeafBassist]

@@mr_floydst Trying to start qjackctl on Raspbian OS Lite gives "could not connect to display" errors.

[@DeafBassist]

Oh, nevermind. I figured out how to get the qjackctl GUI working!

[@SteveJones172pilot]

From the youtube video it seemed there was still substantial lag.. Was this a sync problem between audio and video on the youtube conversion, or was it laggy in real life?

[@SteveJones172pilot]

Nevermind - I see other comments now.. I may have to give this a shot just for fun! Thanks!!

[@prakashkombala]

Anyone try this project in Raspberry Pi 5? It's not working for me. Please help me.

[@mr_floydst]

I didn't try yet, which problem are you running into?

[@brutdescan]

Hey Floyd !!! I don't know if it's the right place about ma technical question but I've got a big problem with this command line: sudo sfizz_jack --jack_autoconnect --preload_size 16384 Salamander\ Grand \ Piano \ V3.sfz with this answer: Flags - Client name: sfizz - Oversampling: 1x - Preloaded size: 16384 - Num of voices: 32 - Audio Autoconnect: 1 - Verbose State: 0 Positional arguments: Salamander Grand Piano V3.sfz, Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server request channel jackdmp 1.9.17 Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others. Copyright 2004-2016 Grame. Copyright 2016-2021 Filipe Coelho. jackdmp comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10 self-connect-mode is "Don't restrict self connect requests" Failed to connect to session bus for device reservation: Unable to autolaunch a dbus-daemon without a $DISPLAY for X11 To bypass device reservation via session bus, set JACK_NO_AUDIO_RESERVATION=1 prior to starting jackd. Audio device hw:0 cannot be acquired... Cannot initialize driver JackServer::Open failed with -1 Failed to open server Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server request channel Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server request channel Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server request channel Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server request channel Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server request channel jack server is not running or cannot be started JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock Could not open JACK client Merci d'avance de ta réponse !!!!!!

[@mr_floydst]

Hmmm. Obviously, JACKD can't start. In order to debug this, check what happens if you start jackd manually. Or perhaps JACKD is already running. In that case, terminate it and try again... Does that help?

[@MarzipanFondue52]

I had this problem I removed and reinstalled jackd and then rebooted. It fixed it but I think the reboot by itself would have done it.

[@praveenfernando717]

where can I get a full documentation for this. I'm using this on my rbi 4b with your tutorial. it runs perfectly. my idea is to make a sfz sampler python program. and I haven't seen any documentation to use this sfizz with python. first thing I need to load multiple sfz files as patches and change them via GPIO or midi cc. can u plz guide me. thank you

[@mr_floydst]

Thanks for watching! sfizz isn't well-documented unfortunately. Please try their GitHub page, sfz.tools/sfizz/ and their discord server.

[@praveenfernando717]

thanks you @@mr_floydst

[@praveenfernando717]

where did you find sfizz:input command . I need to access running sfizz_jack terminal in another terminal. so then I can run load_instrument instrument.sfz command and load another. I need to know more about sfizz:input @@mr_floydst

[@elnatan90]

Demo ??

[@mr_floydst]

Pardon?

[@Bene-cf3nd]

Hallo

[@mr_floydst]

Hi! :-)