Open Source Guitar Effects Pedal | Hacker News Reader

Open Source Guitar Effects Pedal

openstomp.com

86 pointscarlos26 comments

I think it's a shame that this is targetted at the hacker-musician community, but the development environment is almost Windows only. (Written in C#, partially working under Mono on OS X, not tested under Linux.)

I suspect the vast majority of musician-hacker types don't use Windows.

Edit: I see that the Linux version is mostly held back by a third-party Windows-only tool, and a cross-platform replacement is under development. Awesome.

This is the biggest problem for me; I'd love one of these if I had stable OS X or Linux software to run it.

+1 for OSX support. With GarageBand and with the huge popularity of Macs in audio circles in general, support for it seems pretty critical.

I suspect the vast majority of musician-hacker types don't use Windows.

Since the death of the Amiga and Atari ST, virtually all pro digital music stuff is done on Macs.

But more musicians probably use Windows than use Linux.

That was true a decade ago but, starting around 2008 and forward, that's just not the case anymore. Macs are good and still popular but they are not what powers "virtually all pro digital music stuff" in 2012.

Yes, most of the pro digital music production software is available for Windows and Mac (no linux): Propellerheads Reason, the whole Native Instruments product stack, Ableton.

There are just a few obvious Mac-only exceptions such as Garage Band and Logic Pro. Sadly none of the "industry standard" DAWs support Linux.

"virtually all pro digital music stuff is done on Mac"

Citation needed. I think this is pure speculation. Are you factoring in all the PC protools rigs in recording studios across the world? What about RADAR units? Or by "pro" do you mean "prosumer"?

More so, if it worked on linux then it could potentially run on Raspberry Pi, which is an obvious choice for such a device.

Latency may be an issue on a Rasberry Pi. You can subtly feel a latency of 10ms-30ms in the sound when playing a guitar. And over 30ms is outside the Haas effect zone, so is glaringly obvious. Rasberry Pi also has no audio input, and only HDMI audio output, which is digital. Guitar amplifiers take an unbalanced high impedance analogue input. I don't think embedded OS is as important as the programming OS. I would certainly like to see the other OSes supported for developing patches.

Turns out there is analogue audio out on the Rasberry Pi. Sorry about that. No inbuilt audio in though.

I was super excited about this until I saw the price tag. $300 definitely puts it into that "I'm gonna think 2x about buying this" categories. Not to say I wouldn't drop the cash if musicians I respect like it and use it.

Same here. Maybe a kickstarter project could bring the price down.

Indeed.

Considering that one can buy used effects pedals for much less, or even something like a new Yamaha THR10 or a new multi-channel mixer with built-in effects for a similar price.

Yeah, it's very overpriced. This is a common problem with tools like this because it's a niche market; specialty gear tends to be much, more expensive than the mass-market equivalent, to the point of limiting sales. It needs to a) be $99, at which price it will fly out the door, or b) have MIDI, because keyboard nerds are much more used to this sort of technology and likely to make up the bulk of initial sales, or c) have a much, much larger library of pre-programmed DSP modules.

I used to work in this field, and though I don't want to run down the excellent achievement of this project, it's an untried brand and technology in an area with multiple mature competitors. The only really new thing here is that it's in a pedal rather than a desktop device aimed at keyboard users. (Well, video out is novel - but Raspberry Pi has video out and costs $35.) For about $100 more you could pick up a used Nord Micro Modular, which would be enormously more versatile: http://www.clavia.se/nordmodular/Files/MicroModular_folder.p... ...not to mention a wide variety of highly configurable guitar stage processors like this: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/line-6-pod... or http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/adrenalinn-iii.html ...

I agree with the comment above about trying to get Kickstarter funding and doing a larger production run with the resulting economies of scale. Starting high and waiting for sales to drive down the production cost is a poor strategy, and one that has caused many products/manufacturers in this market to go out of production/business. I love this kind of technology and want to like this product, but for $300 I could buy a lot more signal candy.

Will there be an option to order the hardware pre-built? I'd love to hack on some effects, but my resources are a little thin for putting together the hardware side of things at present.

Whilst I applaud the effort, I think there needs to be PCB layouts and the like before this can be considered open source. At the moment the source code is there, and probably enough resources to give you a jump start on building your own, not detailed enough to build your own.

It's like me calling a program open source and ownly making the roadmap/initial spec publicly available.

The schematics are available; they're just not linked well on the site.

http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/cusapps/Pro...

I have been waiting for this device for ten years! This is great.

But my experience with digital effects processors in the audio domain, both guitar and recording gear, is the gear's AD and DA converters are super important. The software and digital side is important too, but if those 44kHz, 20 bit converters do a poor job, the units audio will subtly suffer, and emotional content from the playing will be masked.

There's a huge difference in sound quality of digital units on the market.

I'm hoping with the nature of the unit, that I would get very high quality components across the board. Seeing as every patch developed is dependent on that quality, and that I'd probably buy only one of these, and that I'm willing to spend more than on a normal, non-programmable pedal, then the unit better be seriously high performing.

High quality balanced +4dBu line level ins and outs on a rack unit version of these. That would be the next unit to do. Or even AES/EBU digital ins and outs and a wordclock in!

This is also available from Line 6, in a slightly different fashion. Line 6's solution would require more DSP programming knowledge. Open stomp looks analogous to a hardware version of Native Instruments Reaktor.

more info here: http://line6.com/tcddk/

I didn't know about this line6 offering. Thanks for pointing it out.

Great to see the musician/hacker community is alive and well. I would like to see an tablet app for Rakarrak myself. http://rakarrack.sourceforge.net/

I'm reminded of an Arduino-powered pedal on Instructables: http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Guitar-Pedal/

Those who are sad it is windows based might be interested in resurrecting Justin Frankel's http://www.cockos.com/jesusonic/

As a musician/developer who programs in Windows primarily and Linux only when I have too, this appeals to me. The price tag doesn't appeal to me however.

Would also love an option for a premium four button pedal, and maybe a bit more memory or some kind of storage option (SD card reader?).

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