Hi everyone!
I just got my PiSound for my little home studio. I installed Raspbian Lite following the tutorial Headless Pi and I’m still using my Raspberry with VNC Viewer.
I want to connect my Akay MPK mini keyboard but I’m having problems with the audio output. I installed Qjackctl and qsynth and made all the connections, qsynth seems to recognize the midi keyboard but there’s no output sound. It doesn’t work neither connecting my guitar ampli to the pisound jack nor with my headphones in the built-in raspberry mini jack. I’m a newbie so I’m not sure about what to do.
Thanks for the help!
Hey, what sound do you want it to produce? You must run some software for it to process/produce the sounds and send audio output. I’d recommend starting with Patchbox OS and using the MODEP module: https://blokas.io/modep/docs/Setup/
Hey! Thanks for answering.
I installed Raspbian because I wanted to be able to register the sounds directly in the raspberry with a program like Audacity, and I thought qsynth could produce the sound (it works on my laptop). Does patchbox have a feature like that or does it work just as a pedalboard/sound editor?
I’m sorry if this questions sounds dumb.
You have to make sure that the software you are using is configured to use the correct audio input and output. Also make sure to use 48kHz, 96kHz or 192kHz sampling rates with Pisound.
Patchbox OS is preconfigured, making it easier to get started. As it itself is based on Raspbian Lite, you can install all of the same software.
Thank you, I installed patchbox and now I’m able to connect my ampli!
But I still have troubles with my headphones. I’m using qjackctl for the connections, I connected the qsynth output to system input in the audio section, but nothing comes from my headphones. I already forced the audio output to the 3.5 mm jack in the raspi-config page.
Forcing the output to 3.5mm impacts only whether the audio is sent over HDMI.
The 3.5mm output is located on the built-in Raspberry Pi’s sound card. The Jack backend service as well as most other software are designed to be used with a single sound card. You may run additional software, configured to use the 3.5mm output, but Pisound won’t output the same thing either. You should instead connect your headphones to your amplifier if it provides both speaker and headphones output, or put a mixer or a headphone splitter (preferably with amplification, otherwise the signal may be quieter) in the path to your amplifier. Or just connect your headphones directly to Pisound’s output using a 3.5mm<->6.35mm stereo adapter.
Btw, the 3.5mm built-in audio is pretty low quality, as it is being done with PWM, rather than a proper DAC chip, the artifacts are especially evident when playing on less than full volume.
Thank you very much! 
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