NoisyVolt

Placeholder artwork of the Pisces synth's encoders and keyboard

Pisces

A modular hardware synth on a Raspberry Pi 4, with CSound doing the sound and a physical panel of encoders and OLED displays doing the playing.

Demo arpeggio (placeholder)

Pisces is a hardware synthesizer built around CSound running on a Raspberry Pi 4. You play it
from a panel of rotary encoders, buttons and little displays, or from a web interface on your phone.

VCO → VCF → VCA → FX → OUT
       ↑      ↑
   filter    amp
    ADSR     ADSR      (+ pitch / filter LFOs)

How it works

CSound runs on its own as a systemd service with one master orchestra that is always loaded.
A .NET app talks to it over OSC on the loopback interface, so nothing in the audio path depends
on the UI. Each module has a role (oscillator, filter, envelope, effect) and the selector encoder
steps through them; four parameter encoders then edit that module.

Hardware

  • Raspberry Pi 4 with a HiFiBerry DAC+ Light for I2S audio out
  • A 320×240 TFT for the module selector
  • Four SSD1306 OLEDs, one beside each parameter encoder, through a TCA9548A I2C mux
  • Five push encoders, two buttons (save and load patch), and a USB MIDI keyboard
The control panel, with an OLED above each parameter encoder
The control panel, with an OLED above each parameter encoder
Four SSD1306 OLEDs on one I2C bus through a TCA9548A mux
Four SSD1306 OLEDs on one I2C bus through a TCA9548A mux
The Blazor web interface for patches and modules
The Blazor web interface for patches and modules

Code: https://github.com/noisyvoltuk/Pisces

Status: active

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