[cma-l] Raspberry Pi in the studio

[RJ THORNE]

There is a thread on the mediauk site about using a Pi as a clock/on air light. One of my colleagues in Scout Radio has developed the code and we have used it in RSL's very succesfully.
 
Roger Thorne
Scout Radio Active Scout Active Support Unit


________________________________
From: Two Lochs Radio <tlr at gairloch.co.uk>
To: London Chinese Radio <admin at londonhuayu.co.uk>; cma-l at mailman.commedia.org.uk 
Sent: Tuesday, 21 January 2014, 13:30
Subject: Re: [cma-l] Raspberry Pi in the studio



 
I believe Black Diamond FM (Edinburgh) is using one to create its online stream feed.

We have looked at a few uses, including acting as the encoding front ends for a DAB service and streaming, but I ten to agree with what Andy said - we use a couple of old (ancient) PCs in the back room running a multitude of rote tasks such as generating our streeam, off-air logging, automatic restarting of Sky satellite receives and channel switching on the Sky boxes, running our online weather station feed, and generating a couple of extra low bitrate streams for our private monitoring of audio. Even an old Pentium running XP can handle that lot no bother.
 
Another good solution (we use for a back up short-term hi-fi logger in case of wanting to re-use something broadcast live) is to use cheap laptops (eg Dell ex-business ones, around £100) - you can keep one in use and one identically configure as a hot standby - or just get an additional 2.5" disk ready to push in should the need arise (it never has yet for us!).

For audio in and out I haven't found anything to beat the convenience of the USB-to-XLR 2-in 2-out 3-metre leads - the leads include a decent USB audio convertor in a small module on the lead. Around £40. (There's also a mic version for half the price, but I haven't tried it - for plugging a standard dynamic mic into USB.) Haven't tried them on Linux, but they ought to work okay.

For lower demands/unbalanced needs, such as streaming and logging, or optical SP/DIF connection, the Behringer UCA202 is also excellent value at about £25 - we have several of these for years and none has ever given any bother or concern over sound quality for radio purposes. The newer UCA222 doesn't appear to have any advantage except being red instead of silver, if you prefer that! It claims lower latency, but I'm not convinced, certainly heard no significant difference and a few millisecinds of latency is unimportant for streaming. They work well with Linux (as per RasbPi).
 
Off-topic from RasbPi, theu USB-XLR or phone leads are extremely handy items to keep in the cupboard for times when someone turns up with a laptop that has poor quality 3.55mm jack audio.
 
Alex
 
----- Original Message ----- 
>From: London Chinese Radio 
>To: cma-l at mailman.commedia.org.uk 
>Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 11:13 PM
>Subject: [cma-l] Raspberry Pi in the studio
>
>Hi all, 
>
>
>Just wondering if anybody has experience of using a Raspberry Pi in the studio for dedicated jobs. For example as an audio logger or programme recorder, I thought it would be cheaper to get one of these to do what is a simple job, instead of paying for a whole PC to do it...
>
>
>Best regards,
>
>
>Peter VAUTIER
>London Chinese Radio
>
>-- 
>野火烧不尽，春风吹又生
>Website: http://www.londonhuayu.co.uk/
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>
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