Raspberry Pi Forums

Hi all!
I'm a proud owner of a Raspberry Pi2 and I love all the stuff you can do with it!
In these days I'm working on a VST Host, and It's going well! Now, the problem is that I would like to process all the sound with my Line6 PODxt Live as I do on win/mac.
I found drivers made for linux and I would like to install them on my system in order to get all the options I need!
These drivers are not made for ARM Architecture, but I read that with the source code there is some way to use them on ARM arch.
http://www.tanzband-scream.at/line6/ here is the project of drivers made for linux that i'm talkin' about.
Please there is someone that can tell me something about my idea? It could be possible? Where I can find something useful?

Thank you all!

I did, after much paper-trail chasing and farting about, get a 3.16 or 3.18 kernel with decent support for many Line6 devices (inc Pod XTLive, UX2, KB37 and /almost/ UX8, which was pushing the Pi2's USB bandwidth, perhaps too far..) and a few other similar things, and an open source effects system which would eventually have seen a Pi2/3 installed inside instruments, before giving up, due to the fact that the foundation distributed (binary) kernel, patches, blobs, and kernel source in the raspbian repository were (and probably still are, but I can't be arsed checking /again/) hopelessly out of sync, apparently without coherent strategy, apart from perhaps disencouraging third party developers. This, and the lack of resilience inherent in SDHC storage which limits reliability in performance situations, worked.

I gave up, moved on, etc.

A few years later, and I may, thanks to lockdown, have some more time to play with the notion of sound production on Pi model B, which could be any of the 2/3/4 generation, all of which I have used for in-the-box mixing/mastering (using Ardour, of course!) though not recording, or (due to lack of any decent multi-channel audio interface that will work with a Pi) mixing with one of my nice old modular analog consoles.

Why would I want to do this?

Because the Pi is cheap, energy-efficient, and thus environmentally friendly, and silent. It's also not too bad in the RFI/EMC department, and just dandy in a nice metal case-come-heatsink, which keeps it good and running at consistent clock rate , which is important for sound production! (Monster heatsinks are your friend!)

I have managed to mix 8tk at 24/96, 16tk at 24/48, and 24tk

In so many ways the Pi is a great machine, but there are some gotchas so...

Why not to do this?

Well, i don't know if these problems are surmountable or not, but, yhe USB sound drivers for the most common cheap-but-reasonable USB interfaces (Line6 Toneport/Pod type things) don't seem to be included in the pre-built kernels for some reason. And when I say "some reason" I mean perhaps a "good reason", i.e. that there is some problem with running certain types of USB device with a Pi. Who would I ask who might know why, for example, I can't just plug and go with a Toneport UX2, Toneport UX8, Guitarport, Pod, PodXTLive, PodX3, PodX3Pro (all of which I have kicking around...) or any other Line6 device?

I have rolled kernels with these devices enabled, but with limited success. Playback works most of the time, with the occasionally mysterious complete system freeze. Recording (Obviously just as a simple USB audio interface, and without any modelling software for the 'port series) is just a no-go though.

*It is as though* the SOC (or it's "BLOB") just switches off some fairly short time after recording is started. it doesn't power down, just doesn't do anything. Is this a bug or a feature? How can I find out? (Oh, I get a similar thing with a cheap as Technika USB webcam btw.. which works fine with the x86 boxes I've plugged it into, but not any of the Pis, for Some Reason..)

I have all this stuff (except the driver for UX8, which is one of the too-many projects I have on) working on other Debian intel/AMD, both 32 and 64 bit based platforms, PCs and Laptops, with "almost no" problems, (and those depending on the specific hardware of the PC/laptop, with the latter usually giving a few more problems.) but many problems with the Pi, which is a shame, as I far prefer, for power consumption(green)/
TCO/noise level reasons, to use a Pi for most things these days. I think everything except sound production and CAD now.

So, who is the Pi USB hardware/blob expert? Shall we fix this??

First identify the problem, then try to find a way to solve it. Anyone?