Regular listeners to our Sonic TALK podcast will know that I'm a fan of the Raspberry Pi - a £25 computer which allows for plenty of custom programming and applications for all kinds of stuff. Indeed, there have been a number of audio applications developed that can run on a Pi, which has HDMI resolution video output, USB slots, Ethernet and GPIO hardware interface for things like switches and LED systems.

PureData is one such programming environment, but the basic Pi really struggles to compute real-time audio applications without boffin level optimization. All that is about to change with the announcement that the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is now shipping. Priced the same, and also compatible with previous Model B+ hardware versions (so your application will most likely run), the single 700MHz ARM11  Chip has been replaced with a 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 complex - taking the power up by a factor of six. There's also now 1GB of  SDRAM.

On a blog post on the RaspberryPi.org site posted this morning, it is also mentioned that the new Pi will run a version of Windows 10 when it becomes available. Windows 10 features a lot of new audio and MIDI optimization, making it more audio developer friendly.

Also according to the post, this will be free of charge. You just need to visit WindowsOnDevices.com to join the developers program. This means that it will be simpler to develop applications that can run across multiple platforms. AND that the new Pi 2 will be able to run universal apps - just like Windows mindblowing new HoloLens:

One thing we hope will happen is that there will be more dedicated synth and audio applications available to run on this $35 hardware.

Update - Web conference with Pi founder Eben Upton today (2/2/15) Here

More From: RASPBERRY PI

• The Worlds Thinnest Boobox 10-Jan-23
• RNBO and Max on Raspberry Pi 09-Jan-23
• Blokas pisound Turns Your Raspberry Pi Into a Complete Audio Workstation 15-Mar-17
• Raspberry Pi Synthesizer Experiments 04-Sep-12

Even more news...