Phil Atkin has been hard at work developing synth systems with the Pi. Here is a video (above) of his latest effort. I’ll let him explain:

A first-generation Raspberry Pi (Model B+ overclocked to 950MHz) runs a sequencing application which drives 8 simultaneous soft synths running on the Pi, and also renders the 2-oscilloscope waveform on screen via OpenGL ES. Additionally 4 stereo delay effects with low-pass filter are being rendered, and each instrument and each effects unit supports a send amount into a common reverb unit, which also has a low-pass filter in the effects path. So 8 synths, 4 delays, one reverb, one sequencer, two waveform displays.

6 of the synths are 2.5 oscillator Virtual Analog monosynths, the other 2 are 2-layer sample replay synths, each supporting 12 notes of polyphony. All percussion sounds were also sampled from the Pi Virtual Analog synth, so every sound – apart from the wonderful massed Caitlin Downie vocal ‘Mmmh’ and ‘Aaah’ – is derived from the same Raspberry Pi Virtual Analog codebase.