Elk based midi controlled mixer?

General Elk Discussion
1

Dear Elkonians,

I just recently discovered this platform and I am intrigued. For quite a while I have been searching for a small audio mixer that would ideally be controllable via midi.
Somewhere on the journey I documented my project.
In the meantime Teenage Engineering released the TX6 mixer that ticks a lot of the checkboxes, but which is also prohibitively expensive. There is absolutely no way I could shell out this amount of money for a mixer.

I briefly skimmed the forum for a mixer topic and could not find any discussion about this. Please direct me to the right thread if this has been discussed before!

Do you think it would be possible to build a 4 stereo/8 mono channel mixer with midi capability with this platform? Two separate audio outs would be nice of course to allow for some send and return action.
If this is possible, what would be the maximum number of (mono) audio channels?

I know that Elk can run VST plugins and this would of course be awsome as it would allow for not only mixing but also putting effects on the tracks.

Would it be possible to configure this unit as an audio interface also?
I guess multi track recording on the device itself should be possible?

Thanks in advance for your comments and recommendations!

-rolf

PS: From discussions in other music related contexts I know that there is a demand for a small performance mixer, so if the Elk hardware allows for doing this, a project might gain some momentum.

2

Hi @jsilence,
Elk Audio OS does seem like a perfect fit for this kind of project.

You’ll have MIDI support easily configurable, audio plugins, other ways to control the mixer (through the gRPC & OSC APis), etc.

However, the challenge would be in the HW itself. 4 stereo / 8 mono channels requires a custom HW hat to be designed.

Our Elk Pi kit only has 6 ins & 8 outs (mono), and it is out of stock. It’s quite hard for us to schedule a production run these days but anyone could potentially do it since we released all the project documents under CC:

Otherwise, the currently supported HiFiberry hat only has stereo in/out.

Cheers,
Stefano

3

Thanks for your reply! Good news for me, even though the HW only has three audio ins. I would not be able to design and produce a PCB. That is beyond my knowledge and capacities.

I would be happy to develop a three audio in mixer from your PCB. I’m comfortable with microcontroller and Linux/Python development, also I have been doing some stuff with OSC in an earlier project. Happy owner of an original Lemur.
From what I gathered about the architecture I think I’d be able to configure and design a usable mixer / FX box prototype.

So I’ll patiently wait for the next production run, unless someone has a used unit for sale. Anyone willing to give his/hers away?

Edit: fixed typo