Running multiple microphones in "parallel"

[Flyverse]

Hey guys.

For a project of mine I need to be able to connect and listen to multiple microphones simultaneously. Connecting each microphone and simply listening it is probably really easy (Haven't done it yet, so I can't really judge, but I guess that it will be easy). The problem is that precision is crucial in my project: I somehow need to let the RPi listen to only one microphone in one thread, with all of those threads running in "parallel".

More precise explanation on why I want to do so:
After each Microphone input I receive, which hopefully is every few milliseconds or less, I need to perform some mathematical operations (Autocorrelation and such). I can't allow myself to let those operations put the other microphones input on hold, so I need to let them run in parallel.

Do some of you guys happen to know what layer of hardware I should use to connect the microphones with the RPi in order to achieve what I want to do?


Thanks!

Kind regards,
Flyverse

[sprinkmeier]

Using a normal audio API will most likely give you a fair degree of buffering.
pro: no problems with 'pausing' one mic while reading the other one
con: calibrating the amount of buffering is going to be ... challenging.

If you really want sample-by-sample accuracy get a multi-channel ADC.

[jb63]

Sounds like an interesting project. Are you after some sort of array processing / beamforming ?

[Flyverse]

@sprinkmeier
Thanks, I'll check that out

@jb63 Yep, exactly that!

[Flyverse]

Anyone here who could help me please =S?

[sprinkmeier]

@sprinkmeier
Thanks, I'll check that out :)

What have you found out?
Have you selected a chip?

@jb63 Yep, exactly that!

How many channels are you beamforming?
time-domain or frequency-domain?
what bandwidth (based on your original "After each Microphone input I receive, which hopefully is every few milliseconds or less," it's only a few hundred Hz)?

[fstakem]

Anyone else know of a good solution? I am trying to do the same sort of thing.