In his latest video, synthesist Floyd Steinberg takes a look at the Alles mesh networking synthesizer for the Raspberry Pi – a many-speaker distributed music synthesizer, using UDP multicast over WiFi.
“In this video, I install the opensource software version of the “Alles” networking synthesizer on a Raspberry Pi,” notes Steinberg, “and do some Python programming to create a network of synthesizers, playing a very specific, well-known song.”
While Steinberg’s demo uses well-known song, he notes that the idea of a ‘mesh networking synthesizer’ could be ideal for creating original public music installations.
Topics covered:
00:00 hello
00:30 what is the Alles mesh synth?
01:35 hardware needed
01:48 installing & compiling
02:28 programming in Python
03:12 sampled sounds and oscillator basics
04:12 playing back your music
04:31 quick and dirty sequencing using arrays and timers (not the recommended way* )
05:04 using the virtual analog synth to play back a bass line
06:14 some very important things & shoutouts
06:54 programming the chord progression
07:58 addressing individual synths to play back sounds on a certain speaker
09:01 conclusion
09:41 bye-bye
Source code and project details for Alles are available in Github.
oh boy, finally a Beowulf Cluster of synths. can I do protein folding with it too?
It took me a bit to wrap my head around what this project is. Very interesting, though not for me.
I am very interested in the idea of multichannel audio, and those cheap Bluetooth speakers the developer is using got me wondering if there are any other software solutions for routing separate signals to multiple wireless speakers. Anyone know of anything?