(^72) The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book raspberrypi.org/magpi
ver since he saw
Breakdance: The Movie in
1984, Daniel James wanted
to be a DJ. But he soon realised
scratching expensive vinyl or
carting it from venue to venue is
far from ideal. “Unless you are
famous enough to have a roadie,
large boxes of vinyl are heavy and
impractical,” he tells us. There’s
also the problem that a lot of music
Projects SHOWCASE
Digital music can’t be scratched – or can it? Daniel James and
Chris Obbard go ‘old school’ with a Pi-based digital vinyl system
Daniel
estimates a
Pi Deck setup
costs $182
There is no
soldering or
modification to
the turntable
Audio Injector
sound cards
cost around £20
A Serato CV02
control vinyl
pressing is
recommended
The FLAC
music format
gives the
best results
Quick
Facts
The music files are on a portable
USB stick connected to the Pi
PI DECK
E
DANIEL JAMES
Daniel James is the director of 64
Studio Ltd, which produces, integrates,
and documents free and open source
software for media.
64studio.com
is not being released on analogue
vinyl, despite the huge resurgence
of interest in the format.
Digital Vinyl Systems (DVS)
have long provided an alternative.
They allow you to DJ using digital
music files and software while
letting you benefit from the feel
of a turntable. You simply place a
special vinyl record on a standard
turntable and the system will read
the position of the stylus from a
timecode. This is used to play back a
digital music file at the same point
in time – but these systems can be
hugely expensive.
Not now. Daniel and his colleague
Chris Obbard at 64 Studio put a
Raspberry Pi 3 alongside a standard
vinyl deck, eliminating the hassle
and expense of hooking digital
decks to a laptop. They figured that
This specially tweaked version
of xwax lets you load tunes
and see their waveforms
As you interact directly with
the record, the Pi senses
the needle’s position
72 raspberrypi.org/magpi