Linux System Requirements and Raspberry Pi B+

Can Renoise run on the recently released Raspberry Pi B+ given its specs?

Chip Broadcom BCM2835 SoC

Core architecture ARM11

CPU 700 MHz Low Power ARM1176JZFS Applications Processor

GPU Dual Core VideoCore IV® Multimedia Co-Processor

Provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and

1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode

Capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering

and DMA infrastructure

Memory 512MB SDRAM

Operating System Boots from Micro SD card, running a version of the Linux operating

system

Dimensions 85 x 56 x 17mm

Power Micro USB socket 5V, 2A

Connectors:

Ethernet 10/100 BaseT Ethernet socket

Video Output HDMI (rev 1.3 & 1.4)

Composite RCA (PAL and NTSC)

Audio Output 3.5mm jack, HDMI

USB 4 x USB 2.0 Connector

GPIO Connector 40-pin 2.54 mm (100 mil) expansion header: 2x20 strip

Providing 27 GPIO pins as well as +3.3 V, +5 V and GND supply lines

Camera Connector 15-pin MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI-2)

JTAG Not populated

Display Connector Display Serial Interface (DSI) 15 way flat flex cable connector

with two data lanes and a clock lane

Memory Card Slot SDIO

Cheers!

• Eric

I don’t know if it will or not, but my guess would be that it would technically run but you’d be a bit limited. IMO you’re better off running the new Sunvox release on Rasberry pi:

http://www.warmplace.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3469

Unless you’re using purely samples and want extra mangling power. With Sunvox you still have a sampler but you also have really cool generators (FM, PM, a padlike additive thingy, plus the typical subractive, and a drum generator and a dedicated kick generator), so you wouldn’t have to worry about getting plugins to run in Renoise with limited power.

it’s ARM, so no.

it’s ARM, so no.

can anyone provide the summary of “why renoise won’t run on the ARM architecture for dummies”?

you may want to refer to page 28 of https://www.scss.tcd.ie/~waldroj/3d1/arm_arm.pdf

Its like putting a motor of a bmw in a 2 CV.

For dummies? Theoretically such “could” happen, like with any software. But you’d need a build/compile expecially for the arm architecture. Haven’t heard about one of renoise yet. X86 and arm chips have a different instruction language, that is incompatible with each other (yeah, arm chips are way more simple), and binary program files are assembled mostly out of that very same instruction language. I’d also think for native compiles it’d be better to have an arm chip with native fp support for that. Arm chips are also very weak compared to most x86 chips, so one could expect severe performance limitations. If there was software that could run x86 software on arm via emulation (qemu etc.), performance would be even very much more worse. Remember it’s about realtime audio, not some game of solitaire or whatever! Side effect - almost all android phones sport arm chips. And if renoise code is made ready to be compiled on arm - huh, renoise for android? Would need to be a different build than for raspi’s “real” Linux though, and have a more compacted user interface.

can anyone provide the summary of “why renoise won’t run on the ARM architecture for dummies”?

Main reason (seems to me) is because the source code of Renoise isn’t open, and the current Linux binaries available for download are compiled for x86, not ARM.

On the one hand, everything said so far is pretty much true.

On the other hand, those nice new Qualcomm eight core chips, and supposedly up to 64 cores are around, or around the corner. Renoise is pretty good at handling multiple threads, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it as a potential use case, especially if someone builds a dedicated renoise portable.

What about Redux? I’ve read some people has successfully ran various VSTs on a raspberry pi and i also just found a special VST package specially developed for ARM Linux:https://www.overtonedsp.co.uk/download/download_rpi/

I’m not so shure it runs Redux though as it’s definately not made specifically for ARM Linux.

The Raspberry pi 3 b has a pretty powerful processor compared to its predecessors, but its still limited to 1GB RAM and uses ARM architecture. Maybe i’d rather get a small 86x based machine to run Renoise/Redux or whatever. I read something about running ZynAddSubFX through R pi, so i guess at least that is possible. I think i need to order a soundcard for my R pi, any suggestions to which soundcard i should get? Seems like there is a jungle of modules. Could i run DosBox in Ubuntu MATE? Then i could perhaps bring back some of the good old trackers?

Maybe i’ll just install Android instead? At least it seems easier to install apps on it and it has quite a lot of apps that should work well with the touch screen and there is already a DOS Box app for it.

Edit: Eh, now i see there is a Windows 10 version for Raspberry pi…could i run Renoise on that? I have my doubts, but what do you think?

I would think emulating x86 on an arm cpu would make renoise or any vst much too slow to be used in realtime. You will have to manage control on the renoise devs so they start offering an arm version, then it might indeed run ok on more potent arm systems.

For reference in terms of weak hardware, I run renoise on an old linuxed amd c-60 (x86, 64 bit, 2 cores @ 1ghz) netbook on trips, keeping it native instruments/effects only - it runs pretty well - i was very surprised when I just checked it out, but you have to restrict yourself on the amount of effects, channels, voices you use. Maybe older atom cpus are a bit too weak by design, but the c-60 is usable. For example, the older demo tunes mostly run on this thing in realtime if I crank up the latency, but more demanding stuff like “tension” is way out of range of that system. My plan is to use renoise in this scenario more like an oldschool 2nd gen tracker, resampling often and limiting instruments/effecs to the native devices, doing only what is vital for working on the sounds and restricting mixing to very basic moves, and then doing real mixing of such tunes later on a workstation that is able to handle convolvers & stuff.