Digital Sound Chips has launched a Kickstarter project to fund production of the Opus Max Board, a computer-on-a-board designed for audio.
They note, “We want to lower the development time for new professional high end gear from years, to weeks with low cost electronics, and do things that normally requires much more complex and expansive hardware.”
The Opus Max Board is a single-board computer for music gear. It can use multiple plugins on microSD card and change patches or plugins via MIDI patch changes over USB, MIDI connectors or UART (universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter).
Features:
- Supports 1 billion calculations per second, with 24bit audio I/O, MIDI I/O, 2 USB and microSD slot.
- 4 MIDI in, 4 MIDI out, 2 stereo in, 2 stereo out on 3.5mm jacks.
- Expandable with custom hardware user interfaces.
- Suitable for high-end commercial applications.
Pricing and Availability:
Development of the Opus Max is being funded via a Kickstarter campaign. It’s available to project backers for about $189 USD.
Note that participating in any crowdfunded project involves risks. See the project site for details.
Hm, let’s compare specs to a few alternatives with similar MCU (all from STM32H7 family):
This board – 128kb builtin flash, no external flash, no external SDRAM – ~160$
ZRNA Akso – 2Mb builtin flash, no external flash, 32mb SDRAM – $90
Electro-Smith Daisy – 128kb builting flash, 8MB external flash, 64mb SDRAM chip – $30
I don’t see anything special that would make me want to use this board and its price is too high. Also, it’s impossible to use internal flash for bootloader and user-replaceable firmware.
Daisy and ZRNO is not for making professional products, they don’t even have a schematic. A real development board always has schematics so you can make your own board.
Lets compare some more…
Elecro-smith Daisy has no audio connectors and no MIDI connectors, no SD connector, 1 USB and no schematics and no way to make your one board design.
ZRNA Akso has 2 mono in and 2 mono out, no MIDI connectors, no SD connector, 2 USB and no schematics and no way to make your own one board design.
OPUS MAX has 2 stereo in and 2 stereo out, 4 MIDI in and 4 MIDI out, 1 microSD connector, 2 USB, and will come with schematics. And you can buy the board design files and buy a $6 MCU and build your own boards. And it sells for $42 in bulk. Add a cheap SD card and you can have 32 gigabytes of flash.
That’s mostly wrong. Daisy has repository with schematics on github, along with schematics for official boards from ElectroSmith – freely available. There are already at least 4 manufacturers using it for commercial products. You can’t call that an “unprofessional product” and compare it to something that has 6 orders on kickstarter, this is just ridiculous.
Akso has microSD card on board (it’s on back side of the board), so you’re wrong about that too.
You’re bringing up serial MIDI like some amazing feature, when it’s just requiring a resistor and optocoupler to be added to UART’s GPIO port.
Also using SD card is not a substitute for proper flash on device. It should be either using an external flash chip with a value line MCU or using MCU that have enough storage for bootloader and firmware. And there’s no excuse for making an audio board with just MCU’s internal RAM without supplying SDRAM.
Please don’t be angry about this criticism and good luck with your kickstarter. I would consider getting one if it was priced better and had enough flash/SDRAM for DSP development.
No, the daisy has a a repository with 40 holes, good luck making a new board clone of that, it doesn’t even have schematic of the board. They live of making it close to impossible to make a clone of their board. So no, it’s not even a classic development board. Wonder why they sell a passive overpriced board to get connectors if it doesn’t matter to have physical connectors, and why they don’t even have a schematic, maybe that’s their way to make a living and lock you down in chains. Why sell your soul to save you a few bucks Scrooge.
Akso uses a cloned and modified Axoloti enviroment and is primarily not for coding, so that’s not for classic development. It’s for drawing wires in a graphical editor, it’s not primarily for coding and is more like something like Nord Modular to draw wires in a graphical editor on your PC.
That’s nice that the Akso has a SD slot. But the Akso don’t even have pinheaders for classic MIDI ports, and no you just can’t use a UART, it’s an Axoloti clone. And only have half the amount of audio in and out. But you can find test points on the board for one MIDI in and out and connect the extra needed components. Then you’re out of luck if you need more, it’s incompatible heretic Axoloti clone for usage with the graphical Axoloti environment without even a schematic to lock you in to be forced to use their hardware.
So particularity recommend you to use both of these boards, so you can save a few bucks and support the idea of crippled hardware development.
There’s no need to post ridiculous stuff here. You’re calling fully featured audio DSP dev boards crippled, but trying to get people to buy hardware that doesn’t have essential chips that would be used in any serious project. I won’t be reading your response, but try to promote your hardware in a more civil way. Don’t act like a raging child when you’re pointed out that something in your approach is not perfect, consider improving it instead.
Can anyone find schematics of that’s on those boards? Everything points to that their boards have proprietary design so people can’t make clones of them. Development boards without schematics is totally useless to base your own commercial design on. The hole idea with a development board is that you get a schematic.
And why not add a fast SPI memory for a couple megabytes if that’s really needed. That’s not rocket science.
Why would I buy from a company that insults people in the comment thread on their product announcement?
I’d love to see some cheap synth made with this thing. Guess I’ll have to wait.
This has stinker written all over it. Pure hype.