I think there are two valid reason to call some grooveboxes daw-in-boxes:
- if it has a song mode allowing one to do a complete composition without having to record his live performance
- if it allows the installation of audio plugins
For example the akai mpc series are basically computers running linux and the mpc software DAW preconfigured to make use of the physical knobs and pads. Same for the NI Maschine+. To me they are Daws in boxes.
However an elektron machine will be more a groovebox.
As a hobbyist musician I'm bemused by the stickiness of the concept of a DAW. There are so many all-in-one devices that meet the definition of each letter in the acronym. But DAW is a proxy for something else, vaguely more professional or expensive.
Then you have the idea of DAWless. Oh well, every field has its vestigial jargon.
I've been holding off buying a Push since it's widely theorized Push 3 will include a groovebox like Maschine+. Ableton Live is good, but sometimes I want to work away from the computer.
Name a performance mixer with effects per track and bus, at least 12 channels, all channels available through a USB interface and a backing track drum machine? Even if you consider some of the boutique DJ mixers, they are very large and extremely expensive compared to this.
My two gripes with it are the minimal MIDI implementation and the tiny knobs for my thick fingers.
Basically a raspberry pi optimised to run puredata with a small screen and a bunch of buttons and dials. I have one it's pretty cool. I like the look of the LMN3 too though.
I'm a hack, by ear, guitar player and have been totally bemused by how anyone makes electronic music. This video kind of explained the concepts along with showing off a cool machine. I actually fancy building one!
This is great work! JUCE's licensing terms are a little confusing to me - do I correctly read that you can disregard the tier system as long as your usage complies with GPL3?
If you're looking to bring in more OSS and expand the sound synth pallet, you could bring in some of the Mutable Instruments code a la Arturia and the Microfreak. https://github.com/pichenettes/eurorack
This is a nice project but I don't see why they need both a rPi and a teensy - either of them are powerful enough and have enough pins to run the whole thing. The rPi is more convenient for running linux-ready software, but teensy-only would have been nice as it is a lot less powerhungry and can run a good while on battery.
So the screen on the Pi takes up all the pins. Thats one reason for using the Teensy (a different screen would be nice, but the Hyperpixel is the perfect form factor and just looks nice and is easy to install). Another is that using the teensy + MIDI over USB keeps things flexible if the project moves to something other than a Pi to run the DAW.
Teensy only would be nice, but it would have been much harder to write the DAW for the Teensy. using the Pi + Linux, I was able to use JUCE and the tracktion engine which simplifies a lot and does a ton of heavy lifting.
It would be nice in the future to possibly (not saying you would do this, truly excellent work btw) have forks of the DAW (with slight modifications) so that we would have alternatives for other rPi like boards. Not saying that there's anything wrong with the rPi, I have 7 of them myself, all from the very first UK release of the first board up to the most current. I just know that for many it's not the easiest board right now to find for a decent price, and it will increase in rarity due to supply still not meeting demand over a year after we started experiencing issues getting a board.
by design, it seems that the teensy+pcb are basically a stand-alone midi controller, while the raspberry instead provides all the "DAW" part of the machine
a nice project, even separated the two elements are reusable for other adventures!
