pisound: An Audio and MIDI Interface for Your Raspberry Pi

It seems that from nearly the birth of the Raspberry Pi, hackers have seen its potential as an audio tool. This can take the form of a “simple” network streaming device, or as the heart of new and unusual electronic instrument. Putting everything you’ll need for your own experiments into one easy package is the pisound audio and MIDI HAT.

The pisound— now available as a fully funded Indiegogo campaign — attaches to the top of a Raspberry Pi, and features stereo inputs and outputs with gain and volume controls (using on-board knobs), as well as traditional MIDI I/O. The pisound is equipped with Burr-Brown OPA4134 op-amps, ADC and DAC for 24-bit/192kHz audio resolution, which enables it to exceed HD audio standards.

Beyond that, pisound has also been designed to operate in headless mode without an external monitor, keyboard or mouse. This is enabled by “The Button,” which responds to various interactions (click/double-click etc) and gives you the option of opening Pure Data and other patches right from a USB thumb drive.

Potential applications include everything from using it as a home stereo system to a guitar effects pedal. As pisound’s Indiegogo intro video puts it, “We truly believe that it’s the only Raspberry Pi HAT you will ever need for your audio projects.”